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   God & Politics in the Press, Oct. 31 The battle for votes and souls passes its final Christian sabbath today with Kerry at a "predominantly black church" in Ohio and Bush at a Catholic church in Miami -- the racial composition of which The Washington Post does not... [ Continue reading: ]  The God Vote Gets Tricky Jeff Sharlet in The Dallas Morning News: "Red and blue states? Sorry, but it's not that black and white." "While there are indeed Republican states and Democratic states -- 'red' and 'blue' -- the spiritual geography of the nation is not so simply mapped. For the last three years I've been traveling America, talking to ordinary people about faith and faithlessness and the vast territory in between. The only constant I've observed is that religious beliefs and political beliefs are not nearly so closely bound as pundits would have us believe. Take the 'blue,' Democratic state of New York... [ Continue reading: ]  "Spiritual War -- Now More Than Ever!" Every now and then The Revealer receives a press release that's worth publishing as a kind of primary document journalism. Last time we did this, it was with a press release for a Witches' Days of Prayer for the election. Now, from the "other side," comes this call for Christian spiritual warriors to gear up for the mother of all electoral spiritual battles this Tuesday... [ Continue reading: ] Don't Forget Poland... Nathaniel Popper of The Forward reports that Kerry has accused Bush of "'dragging his feet'" in a contentious class-action Holocaust restitution suit currently underway in Miami. Popper writes that Kerry's accusation resonates with Holocaust survivors and their advocates, who feel... [ Continue reading: ] Sorry, Witches "More than 3,500 Scots, mainly woman and children, and their cats were killed in witch hunts at a time of political intrigue and religious ferment. Many were condemned on flimsy evidence, such as owning a black cat or brewing homemade... [ Continue reading: ] Little Green Footballs is the smartest, bestest, fairest, kindest website of them all. Now please go away, footballers. LGF community: You are all models of virtue, reason, and light. I hallucinated everything I thought I read on your site. The only offensive emails I received were from trolls trying to besmirch your good names. You are kind, decent,... [ Continue reading: ] Deepening the Divide Shortly after the Lambeth Commission report attempting to resolve the Anglican church divide, African Anglican bishops said that the report did not go far enough and accused American Anglican churches of subverting the faith with false doctrine. The African bishops... [ Continue reading: ] Boykin Reprimanded The U.S. Army has taken unspecified, but in their words "insignificant," action against Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who embarrassed Bush's administration with his pro-war speeches that described the conflict as one between Christians and Satan.... [ Continue reading: ] Corporate Religion A Christian school in Michigan, Cornerstone University, is creating a religion-based MBA program that it hopes will bring Christian values to the corporate world.... [ Continue reading: ]  Oy, Halloween What are you going to dress up as for "Demonic Spirit Day"? That's what some evangelicals are calling Halloween this year. Dahleen Glanton of The Chicago Tribune covers the bases on this perennial story that's taken on a new twist... [ Continue reading: ] Reformation Redux Diarmaid MacCullough, an Oxford historian who's one of the preeminent scholars of the Reformation, warns that those who ignore Martin Luther's legacy may be doomed to live through the bloody wars like those of his times: "Donald Rumsfeld talked darkly... [ Continue reading: ] Virulent, Sadistic, Fascistic Fury Little Green Footballs fans have been writing en masse for two days to either wish that I be sodomized with a broken bottle for suggesting that the rhetoric of the site is fascist and hatemongering, or to assure me that... [ Continue reading: ] Didn't Zeus Turn into A Swan, Too? Terry Mattingly says surgical makeover show "The Swan" is an overlooked religion story.... [ Continue reading: ] Ruling on Faith-Based Initiatives A federal judge in Montana has ruled that Montana State University must stop giving federal funds from Bush's faith-based initiatives program to parish nursing programs, deciding it was impossible to separate parish nurses' religious activities from other aspects of their... [ Continue reading: ] Peace Prize Fight Some critics in Norway and Sweden are angry that the Nobel Peace Prize concert will be co-hosted by Tom Cruise, arguing that it's too difficult to separate "'artist Tom Cruise from Scientology Tom Cruise,'" and that Cruise's Church of Scientology... [ Continue reading: ] Big Brother is Reading Your Blog "What you say on the Internet can affect your real life." A Live-Journal blogger gets a visit from the Secret Service... [ Continue reading: ] Values for Coexistence Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican's permanent observer to the United Nations, addressed the assembly on "Religion as a Value for Coexistence," arguing for broadly defined religious freedom that should be seen as a positive value in the fight against terrorism,... [ Continue reading: ] The Dour Scot Leads the Way What's the flavor of Bush's much-touted optimism? Robert Wright, writing in The New York Times, looks to Bush's daily reading for some clues, and finds that Oswald Chambers, author of My Utmost for His Highest, teaches a particularly grim optimism... [ Continue reading: ]  Wild East "'They say that when a child is in the mother's stomach, it learns the entire Torah, but when it comes out, an angel strikes it on his lips and makes it forget,' [Max] Berlin said recently. 'That's a good description... [ Continue reading: ] Little Green Footballs, Take 3 Earlier today I noted that much of the rhetoric on Little Green Footballs, one of the web's most popular blogs, resembled Nazi rhetoric -- so much so that a "quiz" put together by another blog reveals that it's hard to... [ Continue reading: ] Right now: Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet live on "The Gary Null Show," on WPFW, 89.5, in the Washington D.C. area -- talking about religion, politics, and Killing the Buddha.... [ Continue reading: ] Protecting "Religious Freedom" in India... Last year Nazma Bibi, an Indian Muslim woman married to an poor laborer with a drinking habit, got into an argument about money with her husband, Sher Mohammad. Mohammad, who was drunk at the time, shouted "talaq, talaq, talaq," a... [ Continue reading: ] Not All God's Men Are Simple "If Bush is incurious, it's not God's fault." Beliefnet editor Steve Waldman, writing in Slate, considers the new popularity of the phrase "reality-based," in liberal critiques of President Bush, and agrees with conservatives that the mockery has an antireligion basis... [ Continue reading: ] A Bush-Religion Book for Each Side Religion-themed, election week books for all! Darrell Turner of the National Catholic Reporter reviews two upcoming books on President Bush's faith -- Peter Singer’s The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush, and Paul Kengor’s God... [ Continue reading: ] Evacuating Gaza Israel's parliament voted last night to remove Jewish settlements from Palestinian territories for the first time after 37 years of occupation. Ariel Sharon broke with his right-wing constituency to promote the plan, which will evacuate about 8,000 settlers living in... [ Continue reading: ] Little Green Footballs EDITORIAL Jeff Sharlet: The Revealer made a mistake. Writing for our "Today" column a few days ago, I said that the wildly popular blog Little Green Footballs actually merited the much misused slur of "Nazi." I stand by that. My... [ Continue reading: ] Da Vinci Tourist Trap "'They set off explosions at all hours and climb over the cemetery wall to dig up the dead.'" It's not Iraq, it's Rennes-le-Chateau, France -- a devil-infested town in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, but a sleepless and fan-besieged... [ Continue reading: ]  More Fig Leaves? The country's largest faith-based association of doctors, the Christian Medical Association, today called California's Proposition 71 -- a ballot initiative concerning funding for stem-cell research -- a "welfare" bill for scientists, and suggested that scientists who supported embryonic stem-cell research... [ Continue reading: ] Messianism in Gaza "We cannot leave. We are Jews." Avirama Golan, of Haaretz, takes issue with the new, highly loaded, slogan of Israeli settlers unwilling to evacuate the Gaza strip. The "We are Jews" argument, Golan writes, ignores any personal or political reasons... [ Continue reading: ] Afrocentric Anglicans African Anglican bishops are considering establishing a theology, and a number of theology schools, that will conform to the continent's culture, notably its widespread rejection of same-sex marriage. "'The Western world is embroiled in a new religion which we cannot... [ Continue reading: ] Free Choice Catholics v. Chaput Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), a reproductive rights advocacy group, has filed a complaint with the IRS, asking the agency to take immediate action against the Archdiocese of Denver due to Archbishop Charles Chaput's attempts to "influence the outcome... [ Continue reading: ] It's All the Same God, Right? How the The New York Times makes Bush into a theological moderate... [ Continue reading: ] Tocqueville on the Campaign Trail Diane Winston: Was President Eisenhower channeling Alexis de Tocqueville when he said, “Our government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply religious faith, and I don’t care what it is”? Ike’s pragmatic, political appreciation for religion’s national role surely would have resonated with the French nobleman. And one can’t help recalling America’s pet peripatetic philosopher when evaluating political coverage this campaign season... [ Continue reading: ]  If Hitler Was a Blogger What if you had a "best blog contest" and Hitler won? Neo-Nazis will have to stick to wishful thinking and settle for second best: hate-spewing anti-Muslim blog Little Green Footballs won Washington Post's reader poll for "best international blog" with... [ Continue reading: ] Khmer Rouge finds Christ Hundreds of former Khmer Rouge fighters involved in the massacres that led to the Killing Fields have been baptized this year and now consider themselves evangelical Christians. In the four years between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge attempted to... [ Continue reading: ] In the Navy A British naval officer has just become the first registered Satanist in England's military. The recognition gives him the right to perform satanic rituals on board, and entitles him to have his funeral carried out by the Church of Satan... [ Continue reading: ] Kerry Sees Face of God Yesterday Kerry made perhaps "the most overtly religious speech of the campaign by either candidate," in calling for a government that fulfills its moral and social obligations to "the least" of American people. "'The Bible tells us that in others... [ Continue reading: ] Black Icon Jesus As a finale to Black History Month, New Nation has published a list of the 100 greatest black icons ever. Jesus tops the list, followed by Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali.... [ Continue reading: ] Our Magical President Jeff Sharlet on how Bush goes beyond the Bible to create his own reality: Believing, it seems, is more important to the President than the substance of his belief. Jesus Christ’s particular teachings -- well, those are good, too. But what really matters is that if you believe you can do something, you can. What Bush’s more orthodox Christian supporters seem to dodge, is that this is not Christian doctrine by any definition. It is, in fact, a key element of the broad, heterodox movement known as New Age religion. [ Continue reading: ] Boom. 380 tons of explosives -- one pound of which is enough to destroy a 747 -- have gone "missing" from a known bomb-making factory left unguarded by U.S. forces. Department of Defense explains that bad guys "stored weapons in mosques,... [ Continue reading: ] Serbs for Bush A small, fascinating story of how a holy war in the Balkans led to The Cleveland Plain-Dealer endorsing Bush.... [ Continue reading: ]  Better 'n Hot Yoga Hey -- ya like yoga? Great. Then you'll love Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible, co-authored by me, Revealer ed. Jeff Sharlet. Sez Yoga Journal, that smart, glossy magazine known for always telling the truth and always being right: "Audacious, flinty, yet somehow compassionate at heart, reporting (mostly) nonjudgmentally on beliefs that sometimes strain an observer's credulity, Killing the Buddha looks fearlessly into the American soul, a feat that likely will not be matched by many other pundits anytime soon." That's means it's better than a hot yoga headstand. [ Continue reading: ] Jack Chick, Revealed! At last, one of the great mysteries of American Christendom is solved, sort of: You know those little rectangular comic books with wacko, paranoid, fundamentalist stories you sometimes come across? The ones that rail against the pope, the devil, and Islam with lurid tales of ordinary joes who make the wrong choices? They're the work of one man, Jack Chick, and he's distributed a half a billion of 'em. But despite being one of the most widely-read writers in the world, almost nobody knows what he looks like, or what he really thinks -- until now! Jimmy Akin, a Catholic evangelist-cowboy, attended the world premier of a Jack Chick movie earlier this year, and reports on his own slightly wacky site, Defensor Fidei! Or as the evil pope would say in a Chick pamphlet: "Haw! Haw! Haw!" [ Continue reading: ] Just Now: Just Now: Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet live on Wisconsin Public Radio's "Here on Earth, with Jean Feraca," discussing the campaign and religion. Tune in in Wisconsin, or on your computer, here. Lots of great questions from callers. They grow 'em smart and skeptical in Wisconsin. [ Continue reading: ]  A Matter of Misinterpretation The Revealer generally lines up with conservatives when it comes to Nicholas D. Kristof, the NYT columnist who is the human embodiment of Earnestness, with a dash of ignorance and a dollop of arrogance. We've been pretty rough on him in the past. But all those qualities serve him well today, as he calls for banning marriage, period. That's right, you heard it here: The NYT hates marriage! [ Continue reading: ]  Muslim Power Will Loom! Now that American Muslims aren't supporting Bush, it's okay to go back to defaming them, err, we mean, Telling the Truth About Islam. Conservative commentator, J. Grant Swank, Jr., poses a Cheney-like ultimatum. "If Kerry wins," he warns, "Muslim power... [ Continue reading: ] Bad Satire "'I'm not going to debate this with you, God! You're beginning to sound like you belong to the reality-based community!'" Bush's persona endures another imagined conversation with God, this time courtesy of The Guardian. Though Bush probably regrets it more,... [ Continue reading: ] The Unpopular Evangelist In the fallout after Pat Robertson's appearance on CNN -- where he claimed that President Bush hadn't believed there would be any U.S. casualties in Iraq, and that God had informed Robertson himself that Iraq would be a "messy" "disaster"... [ Continue reading: ] Politicians? Manipulate? Christian theologian and author, Tom Beaudoin, doesn't want to hear any more about candidates' personal faith. "Today a public confession of faith by a presidential candidate is so deeply enmeshed in the calculating politics of manipulation that it simply should... [ Continue reading: ] Reality-Based Russia Russia-Belarus Union Secretary Pavel Borodin proposed a rederendum to allow President Vladamir Putin to run for a third term in office, saying that Russia is ruled by tsars and that Putin's power comes from God. Putin's spokespeople quickly distanced the... [ Continue reading: ]  NYT Gets It Wrong NYT gets it wrong: David E. Sanger reports that "Mr. Bush has never answered the question of how he would react if Iraq or Afghanistan or other nations in the Middle East held free elections, and freely chose fundamentalist Islamic... [ Continue reading: ] Easy Answers "'Media have a tendency to think of religion as inherently controversial. That leaves them prone to accept the easiest answer instead of investigating it further.'" Revealer contributor Stewart Hoover tells it like it is, regarding how the mass media is... [ Continue reading: ] Holy War Hits the Farm Indonesian Muslims attacked several Christian-owned pig farms with machetes, slaughtering around 20 animals accused of emitting an offensive smell. A Muslim leader said that the odor was especially offensive during Ramadan. Local police did nothing to stop the attack.... [ Continue reading: ] The Lambeth Chill "'I mean, can you imagine having a commission study racism with no people of colour at the table, or study sexism and have no women at the table? And yet it seems perfectly fine -- in fact [on the contrary]... [ Continue reading: ] Bomb of the Spirit Pastor Jose L. Gonzalez, of the Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement, was arrested and charged with making a false statement after joking to an airport security officer checking his luggage that his Bible was his "bomb." Though a subsequent investigation... [ Continue reading: ] Witchless in Washington A Washington state school district has cancelled Halloween celebrations in all of its schools, due in part to concerns that children's costumes --particularly witches' costumes -- might be offensive to Wiccans' religious beliefs. There are several Wiccan groups in Puyallup,... [ Continue reading: ] ADL Criticizes Presbyterians The Anti-Defamation League has released a statement critical of the 24 leaders of the U.S. Presbyterian Church for meeting with Hezbollah in Beirut. The church leaders were on a "fact-finding tour" of the Middle East, and at least one delegate... [ Continue reading: ]  The Next Best Thing Jesus says Vote ... for Bush! Or, rather, the guy who played Him on TV says so. That's right: Passion of the Christ Jesus, Jim Caviezel, has been enlisted by Redeem the Vote to tell Christians that Bush "shares their... [ Continue reading: ] What Kind of Coexistence is this? Surveys say: 40% of U.S. scientists believe in God. Unfortunately, that's about all that can be taken from Stefan Lovgren's feel-good report in National Geographic News, "Evolution and Religion can Coexist." In Lovgren's attempt to reconcile science and God, more... [ Continue reading: ] Sikh Students in Court Three Sikh boys in Paris have gone to court after being barred from school for wearing turbans, thereby violating France's recent ban on conspicuous religious clothing.... [ Continue reading: ] Heresy The Bush-Cheney campaign has funded the publishing of five full-page ads containing "An Open Letter from Fellow Catholics to John Kerry." The ad challenges the sincerity of Kerry's faith in light of his stance on abortion rights, and is signed... [ Continue reading: ] God and Kids at Desert Sands Parents, grandparents and teachers in Desert Sands, California, protested to the local school board about "inappropriate religious activities" that had been taking place on district school campuses. Among their complaints were the presence of Christian posters hanging on school walls,... [ Continue reading: ]  None of the Above Mark Noll, America's leading evangelical historian, explains why he won't be voting for Kerry -- or Bush.... [ Continue reading: ] American Prospect: Bush is Not a Christian "Like no president in recent memory," writes Ayelish McGarvey, "George W. Bush wields his Christian righteousness like a flaming sword." And like no other journalist, McGarvey, one of The Revealer's favorite religion writers, does the same. In "As God Is His Witness," a feature for the normally religion-blind American Prospect, McGarvey summons the Christian fury of an abolitionist preacher and the vision of a clear-eyed reporter to reveal what she suggests ought to be the biggest religion story of the campaign: Bush is not a Christian... [ Continue reading: ] Pagan Sox What is the faith of the Red Sox faithful? Though Mark Sappenfield of The Christian Science Monitor speaks with Cornell University V.P. Isaak Kramnick about the effects of the Puritan legacy on New Englanders who believe "that bad can triumph... [ Continue reading: ] Daschle Rationale Tom Daschle finds a reason to support the separation of church and state: Moonies!... [ Continue reading: ] "Vote Reality" In a speech sponsored by MoveOn.org, Al Gore accuses Bush of masking "'the most radical effort in American history to take what rightfully belongs to the American people and give as much as possible to the already wealthy and privileged,'"... [ Continue reading: ] Faith-based Land Redistribution Dr. Pieter Bingle, minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Cape Town (historically an Afrikaner church) announced to the South African parliament that his church felt it had a calling to give prophetic witness regarding land reforms. In the church's... [ Continue reading: ] Special Forces Jesus "Did you see Special Forces op Jesus in his camo toga out murdering civilians in the Roman Green Zone? If He had done that, He would not have been the Son of God. He would have been just one more... [ Continue reading: ] Not Just Sports "'The church is not just about sex scandals and papal decrees.'" It's also, in part, about soccer. The AP reports that Vatican Radio now features a weekly show with a different cardinal each week commenting on the state of Italian... [ Continue reading: ]  Ayn Rand v. W. It's not often that we get to recommend Ayn Randian anything, much less the views of a Randian scholar on religion. But Chris Matthew Sciabarra breaks the mold, and his survey of contemporary religion and politics -- particularly Bush's religion and politics -- seen through the historical lenses of pietism and the liturgical traditions is well worth a detour into the weird world of the "Randroids," as Sciabarra himself sometimes calls Randian true believers. [ Continue reading: ] Dobson in D.C. "'If you watch MTV today, you will see they are registering those kids who have been filled with propaganda.'" Focus on the Family's James Dobson warns an audience of Christian conservatives attending last Friday's "Mayday for Marriage" demonstration that people... [ Continue reading: ] Preacher Kerry? The Washington Post's Jim VandeHei describes the evolution of John Kerry's religious persona from a reserved and private Catholic to a "Democratic preacher of sorts" who increasingly finds himself behind the pulpit: quoting "Amazing Grace," preaching about the Good Samaritan,... [ Continue reading: ] Westboro Baptists Do It Again The Westboro Baptist Church spreads ... something in Alabama outside Crossroads Church, site of the recent funeral of Scotty Joe Weaver, a 19-year old gay man who was beaten, stabbed and strangled by attackers and then set afire. Margie Phelps,... [ Continue reading: ] Sharia Law and Human Rights "Sooner or later, we have to realize that the issue is not women's rights, but human rights and it ought to be framed as such." Leonard Pitts Jr., writing in The Miami Herald, reacts to the sentencing of two more... [ Continue reading: ] Lambeth Commission The Anglican Church's 17-member Lambeth Commission, headed by Irish primate Robin Eames, has sharply criticized the U.S. Episcopal Church for consecrating V. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire last November, and asked the church to apologize and refrain from... [ Continue reading: ] The Beelzebub Plan More on religious dieting: The Boston Globe's Rich Barlow asks whether spiritual leaders should remind their flocks that gluttony is a sin in a time when nearly two-thirds of Americans are overweight. Barlow tallies religious edicts against over-eating -- from... [ Continue reading: ]  Very Good News Jon Stewart: I'm here to confront you, because we need help from the media and they're hurting us. ...You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably. Tucker Carlson:... [ Continue reading: ] Chlorine, Christ, and No Condoms "The overpowering smell of chlorine failed to deter thousands of university students from squeezing into the narrow aisles in order to absorb the evening's message: Love Jesus, and don't have sex until marriage because condoms are untrustworthy..." Blake Lambert talks about sex -- not having it -- with Ugandan evangelicals in Kampala. [ Continue reading: ]  More Communion Controversies According to Tony Blair's family priest, Father Timothy Russ, the British Prime Minister "'may well'" convert to Catholicism. The speculation arises after rumors that Blair has been taking Communion. According to Russ, Blair's interest in the Church is growing and... [ Continue reading: ] New Moon Science is clashing with tradition in debates about when the Muslim Holy Month of Ramadan should officially begin this year. According to tradition, Ramadan should begin on the first sighting of the new moon, and Sharia judges in Bahrain sat... [ Continue reading: ] Gadflyer Applies the Ten Commandments Paul Waldman, editor-in-chief of The Gadflyer thinks through the public policy implications of posting the Ten Commandments, and searches and searches for their secular purposes. "No other gods before me?" A splendid end to David Hasselhoff worship. "No graven images"?... [ Continue reading: ] Teen Faith in the White House A study released by the American Bible Society finds that 67% of 500 American teens polled think that God or faith in God belong in the White House.... [ Continue reading: ]  Which Side Are You On? Two recent Revealer items are driving a lot of conservative readers to The Revealer. They're angry with what they consider bias. One item links readers to a piece by a Vancouver writer who accuses the U.S. of religious fascism; the other item, by Revealer writer Kathryn Joyce, raises what we think are legitimate questions about competing legal rights in the case of a pharmacist fired because he felt he couldn't in good conscience fill a prescription for birth control. What's interesting about the angry letters we're receiving is that they seem to assume that because we linked to the Vancouver writer, and because we acknowledge that the current legal system actually exists, we are therefore anti-American and raving abortionists looking for babies to kill... [ Continue reading: ] Save Our City New York magazine's Franklin Foer went on a "prayer walk" with a group of young missionaries from Georgia, come to Hell's Kitchen to win hearts for Jesus and tour the Big Apple -- one of a number of missionary... [ Continue reading: ] Islamic African Relief A Sudan-based relief organization, the Islamic African Relief Agency, has had its assets blocked pending accusations from the Treasury Department that the group has helped finance Osama bin Laden.... [ Continue reading: ] Cheap and Tawdry Lynne Cheney accused John Kerry of not being "'a good man'" last night, saying that his mention of Mary Cheney's homosexuality was "'a cheap and tawdry political trick'" meant to hurt the Bush-Cheney ticket among religious conservatives.... [ Continue reading: ] Armies of Compassion "'You did that,'" said Senator Sam Brownback. "'This wasn't on anybody's foreign policy agenda.'" He was speaking to the Christian Coalition, praising their lobbying efforts for international affairs, notably, taking action on Sudan -- a conflict they, and Farah Stockman... [ Continue reading: ] Global Anti-Semitism Review The State Department opposes a bill passed by Congress last weekend, that would document attacks on Jews around the world, saying that it's already engaged in fighting anti-Semitism and that separate reports on various religions or ethnicities were unwarranted. The... [ Continue reading: ] Kerry to Protestants: Bring it On! Adam Becker writes: Kerry quoted James 2:14 last night in the debate -- "There's a great passage of the Bible that says, What does it mean, my brother, to say you have faith if there are no deeds? Faith without... [ Continue reading: ]  Group Areas Acts Hanna Swaid, head of the Israeli Arab civil rights group, the Arab Center for Alternative Planning, criticized a bill preliminarily passed by Knesset as an "apartheid" act that recreated South Africa's 1950 Group Areas Act -- the law which legalized... [ Continue reading: ] The Gay-Fertility Gene A study at Padua University suggests that homosexuality is linked to genetic factors that promote high levels of fertility in women, and implies that homosexuality will be more prevalent in societies with declining birth rates, as the fecundity gene becomes... [ Continue reading: ] Kerry's Religious Rhetoric In response to reports of John Kerry's stopping in two Miami churches Sunday, Welton Gaddy's liberal Interfaith Alliance has asked the Kerry campaign to ease off using religion for political purposes. "'Our concern is to protect the sanctity of houses... [ Continue reading: ] Interfaith Inmate Freedom The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case on the constitutionality of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law protecting the religious expression of inmates in state prisons. The case arose out of the complaints... [ Continue reading: ] Civil Rights, R.C.C. style Six months after it blocked students from starting an NAACP chapter, Catholic University has relented, and allowed the group to form, so long as the group does not support abortion rights or any other positions in conflict with Church doctrine.... [ Continue reading: ]  Ten Red Herrings Stop the presses -- the Supreme Court has decided to hear cases on displaying the Ten Commandments. To which The Revealer says: yawn. This news is a red herring of Moby-Dick proportions, a massive distraction that will pull religion writers... [ Continue reading: ] Countries With a View What does Jak King see in his unobscured View From Vancouver? A Talibanized America, but not the one Chuck Colson means... [ Continue reading: ] Back to the Wafers! "'We are not telling them how to vote. We are telling them how to take Communion in good conscience.'" The New York Times' Laurie Goodman and David Kirkpatrick report on the efforts of Catholic bishops to influence the election by... [ Continue reading: ] Pray for the persecuted misogynist Neil Noesen, a former K-mart pharmacist who refused to fill a college student's birth control prescription or even transfer it to another pharmacist who was willing to fill it, defended himself to the judge presiding over his disciplinary hearing by... [ Continue reading: ] Voila, we're Muslim Turkish ambassador to France, Uluc Ozulker, says that the objection to Turkey joining the E.U. is religion. "'If Turkey were Christian, there would be no problem. But, voila, we are a Muslim country.'" French President Jacques Chirac supports Turkey's membership,... [ Continue reading: ] Quit it! Christians in Jerusalem want Jews to stop spitting on them. After years of enduring petty harassments at the hands of yeshiva students, Christian clergy in the Old City want the government to condemn the spitting and fight-provoking. Daniel Rossing, director... [ Continue reading: ] Pesky Cheney The elusive beliefs of Dick Cheney almost come above ground in rural Ohio, where the VP campaigned this week. Well, so he said the word once --"'We believe that our nation is one nation under God. And we believe Americans... [ Continue reading: ] Loudspeakers That Shake The World Cairo's minister of religious endowments, Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq, has declared that the call to prayer issued by the city's 4,000-plus mosques is out of control in terms of volume, style, timing and length: Especially at dawn, The New York Times'... [ Continue reading: ]  GOP Candidate on Lesbo Bathroom Action BREAKING NEWS!!! Oklahoma GOP Senate candidate Dr. Tom Coburn announces that southeast Oklahoma is THE place for lesbian bathroom sex. "Lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to... [ Continue reading: ] Faith & Values Action Team The Democrats' new Director of Religious Outreach, Alexia Kelley, is already in action with the launch of a new DNC website for the Kerry/Edwards campaign, KerrySharesOurValues.org. The website champions the "other" religious issues (poverty, war), that are meant to displace... [ Continue reading: ] The Underdog's Got Bite Gay marriage, persecuted Christians, porn, abortion, "Plan B" emergency contraception, workplace religiosity, school prayer, the Ten Commandments and Roman-style decadence. Whew! Wes Allison's tour de force report on Tampa's chapter of the evangelical group, Concerned Women for America, in The... [ Continue reading: ] Anti-Apparel Equity A German federal court has ruled that a regional law in the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, forbidding Muslim teachers from wearing hijabs in public schools, must also be applied equally to the state's Catholic nuns, who will now be required... [ Continue reading: ] Our Customers are Always #2 "'It's such a lousy business, and it's so dishonest across the board. God has told me, "You can do it a different way."'" Christian Brothers Automotive founder, Mark Carr, talks to Pamela Yip of The Dallas Morning News about the... [ Continue reading: ] "Safe, legal and rare"? Mark W. Roche, Notre Dame dean of the College of Arts and Letters, takes on the old Catholic hierarchy of values (read: voting issues) in The New York Times, but finds a few new things. Beyond what's become a common... [ Continue reading: ] Kerry's Church Circuit John Kerry packed two times the God campaigning into one Miami Sunday, visiting a Haitian Catholic church yesterday before meeting Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton at a Baptist service, where Jackson told worshippers that the political concerns they should... [ Continue reading: ] President or Prophet? David Domke and Kevin Coe: The religious outlook of George W. Bush has been the focus of recent stories by several major news media. In these pieces White House officials and allies consistently have made the case that Bush’s faith and language are no different from past presidents. In the words of the Rev. Richard Neuhaus in The Washington Post, “This is so conventionally Christian piety and Christian faith” that Bush’s faith is “as American as apple pie.” That simply is not so. Bush’s fusion of faith and politics is anything but conventional for the presidency... [ Continue reading: ] Take One Risk "Curator" Amanda Stern: "The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series (voted the bestreading series in Manhattan by New York Press) features the most interesting storytellers, writers, musicians, raconteurs and personalities in NYC and REQUIRES THEM TO TAKE ONE PUBLIC RISK. Musicians play five original lyric-driven songs and one cover of their choice." This Wednesday, Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet will take that risk, presenting, with independent radio producer David Miller, selections from their radio documentary on getting lost and found -- Godwise, that is -- in America. Wednesday, October 13th, @8:00pm (doors open at 7:30pm). Plus: Andy Borowitz, winner of the first ever National Press Club Award for Humor (really?), who will probably say something funny about the debate to follow the show, and musical stylings from Seafoxx, all brought to you live by novelist Amanda Stern at Happy Ending Bar, 302 Broome Street @ Forsyth; 212-334-9676 (B,D to Grand Street or F, J, M, Z to Delancey). [ Continue reading: ] Killing Religion Journalism Jeff Sharlet: The reader wants to know facts, of course, but the reader also needs to understand all the stuff of what’s usually considered literature but might just was as well be called journalism: character and motivation and culture and sequence and consequence. What Paul, speaking of faith in the New Testament, called “evidence of things not seen.” [ Continue reading: ]  Revealing Photos Archives Don't Forget the Bodies, by Jeff Sharlet. Ordinary Life and Death, by Jeff Sharlet. The Mirror and the Leash, by Jeff Sharlet. The Third Martyr, by Ameer U. Shaikh. Pictures from an Inquisition, by Jeff Sharlet. The Light at... [ Continue reading: ] Dispatches From Printland Dispatches from printland: Kelefa Sanneh, a new contributor to The New Yorker, outdoes all the old hands with his profile of prosperity preacher Creflo Dollar in the latest issue. Too bad the magazine sees fit only to put its old... [ Continue reading: ] Kerry Wins God Points In terms of religious rhetoric, Kerry won a surprise victory in Friday night's debate. Christian conservatives will likely stick with Bush's clear opposition to abortion, and forgive him his apparent flip flop on stem-cell research. But Kerry was the one who got to say... [ Continue reading: ]  "And Then There Was the Time We Had the Boys Rape Some Nuns..." E. Howard Hunt on the Good Old Days E. Howard Hunt, American spy and catalyst of the Guatemalan civil war that killed 200,000, blames it on a priest. "I had a few agents from Washington with me," the 86-year-old Watergate crook tells Slate's Ann Louise Bardach, "and I had recruited a few others … [including] a young Catholic priest. So the priest came to me one time, and he said, 'I'm sending down several young men to Guatemala to get a view of the situation there. It's not good.'" That'd be "not good" as in "democratic," so Hunt and his henchmen installed one of the hemisphere's most murderous and genocidal regimes, a fact he's still proud of. And don't even get him started on how great it was that his buddies cut off Che Guevara's hands... [ Continue reading: ] Gibson Suffers On BBC News reports that Passion director Mel Gibson has taken out a restraining order against a homeless man who allegedly stalked him, demanding that they pray together.... [ Continue reading: ] Love Is a Many Splendored Thing The American Academy of Religion's Annual Meeting next month will feature several workshops on the religious themes of sadomasochism, transvestism, transsexualism and polyamory including "Ecstatic Communion: The Spiritual Dimensions of Leathersexuality," and "'You Seduced Me, You Overpowered Me, and You... [ Continue reading: ] Ali vs. wali: Gossip in Iraq Bad news, indeed: Press fear of people in Iraq has reached the point that we must turn to the New York Observer's media gossip pages for religion news from the war zone. In a piece on naughty reporters getting spanked... [ Continue reading: ] Afropessimism Makes Baby Jesus Cry Journalists of Ghana: be not vessels of destruction, but rather seek the word of God in your reporting, so to "publish and broadcast information that would unite Ghanaians to help maintain the good image of the country." Ghanaian Methodist Bishop,... [ Continue reading: ] Does "the Base" Swing? "The Christian-Political, Pro-Life, Anti-Bush Argument": "I recognize the conflict experienced when considering casting your vote for John Kerry when what you hold dear is your intrinsic faith and pro-life beliefs. George Bush has openly discussed his religious beliefs in forums... [ Continue reading: ] Faith-based Debates Rev. Dr. Welton Gaddy, leader of the progressive Interfaith Alliance, and Paul Weyrich, conservative CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and "father of the religious right," have authored joint letters to presidential debate moderators Bob Schieffer and Charles Gibson, requesting... [ Continue reading: ] Christian Right Godfather Gone Ed McAteer, a Southern Baptist who didn't shirk from the label of "Godfather" of the Christian right died on Wednesday with not much more than a blip in the press outside Tennessee. The brief but best obit comes from the... [ Continue reading: ]  NYT Just Plain Wrong Turns out the NYT Jodi Wilgoren piece on Kerry and Catholics (blogged below) was not only so boring and beside the point that it numbed us into tongue-twisting alliteration; it was also factually wrong.... [ Continue reading: ] Honor Killing What's God got to do with it? Not much, in Hadil Jawad's harrowing tale of "honor" crimes in Iraq, as told to Lauren Sandler. It's a story striking for what it reveals about the brutal economy surrounding women bound not... [ Continue reading: ] Pew Polls Predict Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Peppers Pew polls predict plurality of people prefer pious politicians -- say it three times fast, and it's like a magic spell for pundits, aka campaign "reporters." We guess we're obliged to note Jodi Wilgoren's NYT poll-parsing piece on Kerry and... [ Continue reading: ] Have You Had the "Gay Talk?" Sharlet: I was at a conference at the University of Southern California a few weeks ago when I discovered that one of the assistant organizers was not only a Revealer reader, but a Killing the Buddha fan. So when she later sent me a link to her brand new blog, Feminary, I kind of shuddered, because I believe in the Golden Rule and doing unto others and little blogs helping out even littler blogs, but... what if it sucked? Well, gracious me, but it doesn't... [ Continue reading: ] Christian v. Christian "'She said if I considered myself a Christian, I would be a Republican. Before I could even open my mouth to retort, she began a tirade on just how I did not even deserve the name of "Christian" because I... [ Continue reading: ] If you open that door... A Michigan judge has ordered that Ann Arbor Public Schools pay the legal bill for a Catholic student who charged that her religious and free speech rights were violated by a school discussion about gays and religion. The student alleged... [ Continue reading: ] I will not make a phone call to God joke here. With 15 anytime, all time, minutes, 60 percent of American adults would choose to make a cell phone call to God, according to a Harris Interactive survey. Next up, at 11 percent, people would like to have a few words... [ Continue reading: ] Who You Calling Messianic? Here's a good religion reporter's quandary: What to do when knowing what you're talking about gets you in trouble too? Jeffrey Weiss of The Dallas Morning News knew he was courting controversy with his report on Bus 19, an Israeli... [ Continue reading: ] Re-Godding the Courts Is this an activist judge? The "'most important words'" in the oath a judge must swear in promising to uphold the Constitution and treat everyone equally are those of the last sentance: "'So help me God.'" Well, so says Mississippi... [ Continue reading: ] Eco-Justice Church The liberal National Council of Churches tries to expand the definition of "religious issues" with a new political ad campaign looking for "Political Leaders to Tend God's Garden," and asking readers to sign a prayer petition to make environmental issues... [ Continue reading: ] Broward County From Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible, by Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet Broward County, Florida Who knows the power of your anger? Psalm 90:11 “Are you a preacher?” Dawnia DaCosta might have asked that night, the lilt of Jamaica... [ Continue reading: ] Hector Becerra Excerpted from “Mother's faith battered by death of Marine son / She's still a believer but no longer talking to God,” by Hector Becerra, published in The Houston Chronicle, August 20, 2003. LOS ANGELES -- There was a time when... [ Continue reading: ]  Church v. State, Israeli Style "'Even if the constitution includes the Ten Commandments, we will oppose it,'" said Israeli former Shas leader, Aryeh Deri, expressing the ultra-orthodox fear that an Israeli constitution could give the Supreme Court authority to change the religious status quo. Yuval... [ Continue reading: ] Astrologer of the Free World Joyce Jillson, astrologer to the Reagans, has died at age 58.... [ Continue reading: ] Ten Commandments Watch Ten Command- ments Watch: This time it's six feet tall, outside a police station in Everett, Washington, challenged by a 21-year old agnostic, and defended by the town as secular. And this time it's U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik... [ Continue reading: ] In Search of the God Gene 80 years after the publishing of Siddhartha, Dean Hamer, molecular biologist and author of The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired Into Our Genes, confirms that hedonism is in fact a path to mysticism. Well, kind of. In his search... [ Continue reading: ] The Judiciary Strikes Back A Louisiana "activist judge," William A. Morvant, threw out the state's three-week old amendment banning gay marriage yesterday, calling the amendment flawed for having the dual purposes of banning both gay marriage and civil unions. Tony Perkins, president of the... [ Continue reading: ] Elizabeth Edwards Responds Elizabeth Edwards to The Revealer: "At the Democratic National Convention, I said, 'We deserve leaders who allow their faith and moral core -- our faiths and moral core -- to draw us closer together, not drive us farther apart.' [Jeff Sharlet] responded, 'It's one thing to engage in bland political speech, but it's another to implicitly claim spiritual authority without providing a clue as to the nature of its source.' Do we really need a source for a lament that leaders use the language of faith to condemn the positions of political opponents or to justify their own positions? [ Continue reading: ] Dalai Lama and the Revolution The Dalai Lama spoke at Mexico's National Cathedral on Monday, criticizing the manipulation of religion for economic or political ends as an emotionally destructive practice liable to "get out of control." Chinese officials protested Mexico's welcome of the Dalai Lama,... [ Continue reading: ]  Forensic Theology, Ideological Surveillance Would Osama bin Laden call his enemies foreign "agents" or "infidels"? Would he speak of 9/11 as an "event" or a "raid"? Would Abu Musab al-Zarqawi quote the 13th Century anti-Shiite religious leader, Ibn Taymiyya, in a screed against the United States? The Atlantic Monthly's Stephen Grey reports on the growing importance of religion scholars and theological expertise in fighting terrorism, wherein theological experts are called upon to authenticate terrorist documents, help identify perpetrators, suspect religious groups, and targets for surveillance based on a familiarity with "the trademarks of extremist thought." [ Continue reading: ] Freestyle Agnostics? Gustav Niebuhr wonders which candidate will court the agnostic vote.... [ Continue reading: ] Hamas Relief Press release: The Simon Wiesenthal Center asks Canada and the U.S. to suspend payments to the UN's Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees until an investigation is made into the agency's hiring of Hamas members. A UN representative defended... [ Continue reading: ] Lord of the Hanging Chads The Rev. Walter Humphrey, a pastor of two mostly black churches, has "serious doubts" about how Bush "won" Florida in 2000. But that won't stop him for voting for Bush. "'I don't view that as an election that was stolen'... [ Continue reading: ] Evangelical Sniper Evangelical apologist Francis Schaeffer, writes Patton Dodd, "sits atop the Fortress of Reason like a Christian sniper, his scope trained on everything in sight, taking down enemies with precision. Hegel, Picasso, Bergman, and infinite others receive the Schaefferian rapid-fire hit... [ Continue reading: ] Rumi, American Poet Every year, millions of Americans continue to swoon and sigh over the verses of a "fundamentalist" Muslim. Cat Stevens, AKA Yusuf Islam? Nope. A devout Muslim mystic born eight centuries ago in Afghanistan -- Maulana Jelaluddin Rumi...... [ Continue reading: ] What Secular Media? What secular media? NPR religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty explores Bush's faith by... profiling an evangelical mission for drug addicts in Washington, D.C. Gospel music and testimonies by former addicts become the voice of the president, who did not actually... [ Continue reading: ]  Freedom of Civic Religion (i.e., People Should Vote): Thousands of Ohio voters are at risk of not having their ballots counted on Election Day due to directives from Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell... [ Continue reading: ] Praying for the President TONIGHT! Our friend David Miller's radio documentary about an evangelical Christian group in Des Moines that's praying for the presidential election will air on NPR's "All Things Considered." Airtimes vary city by city, but throughout most of the Northeast the... [ Continue reading: ] WW(JV)F? Following Thursday's debates, North Carolina police were called to stop a fight between two UNC students arguing over which candidate Jesus would vote for.... [ Continue reading: ] The Era of Faith-Based Medicine How do you define institutional conscience? Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman shudders to see new developments in "the era of faith-based medicine," notably, the Bush administration's announcement that federal employees are to be offered a Catholic health plan (defined as... [ Continue reading: ] Not Another Two Churches Story Fran Pendry thinks Bush's Christianity is sincere and believes that God wants "'godly people'" in office. George Mitchell think the war in Iraq violates every Christian principle he knows. Remember how this one goes? NPR's Steve Inskeep jumps on the... [ Continue reading: ] Seeing Rwanda "I am afraid that moral condemnation, trade penalties and military efforts by African countries are simply not going to be enough to stop the killing [in Darfur] -- not nearly enough. I know, because I've seen it all happen before."... [ Continue reading: ] Last Days of Summer Jeung San Do, a Korean religion created in the early 20th century, will gain exposure at this week's Frankfurt Book Fair, where its bible, the Dojeon, will be offered in seven translations. Though the religion is sometimes dismissed for its... [ Continue reading: ] How to Keep a Presidential Prayer Tour Tax-Exempt The Christian Defense Coalition is seeking "'clarification'" from the IRS about whether or not churches can pray for President Bush's re-election before they launch a two-week prayer tour in swing states Pennsylvania and Ohio.... [ Continue reading: ] Uganda's Moral Values Oh, this is the church they've joined. A radio station in Uganda, where homosexuality is illegal, has been fined and ordered to make a public apology for hosting gay guests on a talk show. The Information Minister, Nsaba Buturo, defended... [ Continue reading: ] Animal Welfare Sunday Happy St. Francis of Assisi Day: The holder of the world's first position in theology and animal welfare at the University of Oxford, Reverend Andrew Linzey, wrote a prayer service for the Anglican church, "Prayers in the Service for Animal... [ Continue reading: ]  A Portrait of the Suicide Bomber as a Young Man Ismail Maasawabi was 8 years old when the first stones of the intifada were thrown by Palestinians at Israeli troops. When he was 10, he was mistakenly arrested by Israeli soldiers and didn't try to escape because "it was better... [ Continue reading: ] The Bible Belt Widens "'I didn't realize we're in the Bible Belt, but I guess we are.'" A Maryland Board of Education's controversial list of goals for Charles County schools includes handing out Bibles to students, removing science books that are "'biased towards evolution'"... [ Continue reading: ] Episcopal Fault Lines "'We're not part of the American church anymore. We're part of Uganda.'" The New York Times' Neela Banerjeee surveys the Episcopal split at its most bitter, in Los Angeles, where the diocese is suing three breakaway churches and has suspended... [ Continue reading: ]  Erotica and LaHaye Richard Bartholomew, of Bartholomew's Notes on Religion, finds a New York Observer article about Left Behind author Tim LaHaye's move into mainstream publishing, including a contract with Kensington. Bartholomew kindly posts Kensington's company profile: "We are considered a leader and... [ Continue reading: ] Google Him "'To those doubters out there who still don’t believe that God exists, I have just one piece of advice: Google Him.'" So says Dr. George Darlington of U. of Minnesota Divinity School, about what Newsweek is calling "the most conclusive... [ Continue reading: ] Going on a Debate and What Should I Bring? "I had a good time up there talking about what I believe. It's not all that hard to debate if you know what's in your heart." A post-debate Bush adds to the heart talk. In the debate, we counted: two... [ Continue reading: ] Christ for the Undocumented A life-size fiberglass statue of Jesus, found on the banks of the Rio Grande, is now in the custody of the Eagle Pass police force, who are keeping it propped between two doors in their evidence room. The station has... [ Continue reading: ] 1 October, 2004 Spain has approved draft legislation which would legalize gay marriage and extend the same rights that heterosexual couples have, including the right to adopt children. The Roman Catholic Church has fiercely opposed the bill, comparing it to "releasing a virus... [ Continue reading: ] |