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   No Jesus Jokes, Please "What's He Doing Here?" That's the title of Nextbook.com's public conference on Jesus in Jewish culture, to be held here in NYC this Sunday, April 29. Some of The Revealer's favorite writers, Jewish and otherwise, will be participating: Ilan Stavans,... [ Continue reading: ] Military Mythology Private Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman's brother reject Pentagon mythmaking. The Veterans Administration accepts Wiccan mythology (and why that's good news for First Amendment types, but not good enough).... [ Continue reading: ] The Way of All Flesh Jeff Sharlet: The title of Darcey Steinke's new memoir is Easter Everywhere, and her 1997 breakthrough novel was called Jesus Saves. Last year, she published a short novella, also religious, called Milk. Judged by titles alone, Steinke's ouevre might seem like that of a particularly wholesome Sunday school teacher. But take another look: Jesus Saves is the story of a child molester with a girl in his clutches. The heroes of Milk are a gay priest and woman dangerously obsessed with her own child. And in Easter Everywhere, Steinke connects scenes from the dislocated life of a hipster writer drawn toward the subjects of sex and God — natural fascinations, perhaps, for the child of a depressed beauty queen and an intellectually frustrated Lutheran minister.... More at Nerve.com. [ Continue reading: ] The Real Truth About Alien Abductions The over-drugged and under-loved make their own way in the world, even when the FBI tries to make them forget. By Marissa Kantor Numbing the senses can be glorious. Just ask some of the members of Fellowship Place, a psycho-social club in New Haven for adults living with severe and persistent mental illness. You can always pick out the ones who have been fixed. Like a spade or neutered dog or a cat, they no longer feel urges. Larry shuffles across the dining room floor to grab a cup of coffee; Audrey slurs her words and one corner of her mouth droops; Teddy has slumped down in the blue vinyl chair and his head is bobbing from side to side. Sometimes they misplace the concept of personal hygiene. Their clothes are stained with coffee, spaghetti sauce, or other condiments, and they like to scratch themselves in public in what are considered "off limits areas." They are, in technical terms, "overmedicated."
At Fellowship, you can mark time by cigarette stubs on the patio floor; at the beginning of the month, the ashtrays overflow, while closer to the end it becomes difficult even to bum a stray Marlboro off someone. Today is Friday; I know this because in the front corner of the room, the Fellowship singing group is practicing...
[ Continue reading: ]  God Bits Neil Young, Jack Nicholson, Bob Dylan, Michael Moore, Jane Fonda, and Patti Smith talk religion in Rolling Stone's 40th anniversary issue. Doug LeBlanc at Get Religion clips the God bits. To get to the good parts, you have to go through Doug's conservative commentary. It's cheaper than buying the magazine... [ Continue reading: ] Europe and Her Enemies It's time for the West to recognize that it is engaged in a clash of civilizations. Europe, the source of all that is good in the West, is under attack by a dark-skinned race that speaks a language unrelated to... [ Continue reading: ]  Big Leagues Former Revealer contributor(here, here, and here) and NYU journalism grad student Elizabeth Rich makes her Washington Post debut. It's not a religion story, but it's great urban reporting by one of The Revealer's own.... [ Continue reading: ]  Ira Glass, Televangelist The New Yorker's TV critic, Nancy Franklin, thinks NPR's "This American Life" annoys her because host Ira Glass sticks to structure of a sermon -- anecdote, declaration of meaning. But it goes down smoother on TV, she writes, because "we've... [ Continue reading: ] You Got Some 'Splainin' To Do! S. Brent Plate: Finally on YouTube: God himself. For the first time we find out the reasons for Down Syndrome, the Holocaust, and Celine Dion. We find out why there were TEN commandments. You know: ten fingers, ten toes, Letterman's list. We find out that Job had a good tan... [ Continue reading: ] Keeping It Unreal Jeff Sharlet: I've a review of Faking It: the quest for authenticity in popular music, in the U.K. magazine New Statesman. "Barker and Taylor, two publishing professionals who have turned out their personal record collections to produce a persuasive defence of inauthenticity as the defining characteristic of great popular music, borrow the title of their book, Faking It, from a suicide note - the most authentic, and also the stupidest, genre of all. "The fact is," wrote Nirvana's singer Kurt Cobain shortly before eating the muzzle of a shotgun in 1994, "I can't fool you, any one of you . . . The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I'm having 100% fun." (The italics are Cobain's.)" Speaking of fakes, you can save your eyes the trouble and instead listen to "me" read the essay out loud, in my alter ego as a female British radio announcer. [ Continue reading: ] Teenage Holy War Behind-the-scenes with the most militant Christian youth cruade in America. By Jeff Sharlet. [ Continue reading: ]  The NYT Plays "Where's Sadr?" Jeff Sharlet: The holes in Edward Wong's New York Times front-pager on a massive anti-U.S. occupation rally in Najaf are big enough to drive a bomb-laden truck through. The fact that nobody did so is one of them... [ Continue reading: ]  Rapture and Rose MacGowan Sharlet: Bob Garfield and I discuss jihadi rhetoric, mole tactics, naked Rose MacGowan, and how it all relates to Ron Luce's BattleCry movement on NPR's On The Media. Also on the show: Jerry Jenkins, co-author of Left Behind, on the... [ Continue reading: ] Time's Bad Religion Sharlet: I disagree with blogger Bruce Wilson's assesment of David Van Biema's Time cover story on teaching Bible-as-literature in public schools, but Wilson is on to something when he puts Time's April 2 American edition next to its international editition.... [ Continue reading: ] A Timid Man Russell Shorto is one of The Revealer's favorite religion journalists, and his latest New York Times Magazine story on Pope Benedict XVI two years into his papacy doesn't disappoint. The inside headline is bland: "Keeping the Faith." But the magazine's cover line is more to the point: "The Anti-Secularist." Benedict is that, by his own frequent declaration, but there's more to the story when you start to wonder, as Shorto does, what "secularism" means. On Shorto's personal website, he hints at the story that got away: the possibility that Benedict, "'a timid man,'" might support an end to priestly celibacy if doing so didn't require him to go out on a limb. [ Continue reading: ] Ethiopia's Ghosts There's a ghost of a religion story in The New York Times' report on a North Korean arms deal with Ethiopia. The Times rightly focuses on the fact that the U.S. is winking at the violations of its own sanctions... [ Continue reading: ]  "Blog Against Theocracy" Talk 2 Action is joining with blogger Blue Gal to co-sponsor a "blogswarm" to "Blog Against Theocracy" over Easter weekend. And these lefties are doing more than just talking to one another: Talk 2 Action is claiming the scalp of... [ Continue reading: ] Teenage Holy War Jeff Sharlet: Rolling Stone has posted online the opening section of my latest feature, "Teenage Holy War," along with video of its subject, evangelist Ron Luce's "BattleCry" campaign. Rhetorically, BattleCry is the most militant Christian youth crusade I know of in American history, but in the lives of the kids involved, it's as absurd as it is angry. Consider, for instance, the pledges BattleCry kids sign to give up "secularism" in any form it appears to them, including sex, music, non-Christian friends, "medication," and, in the case of one confused young man, "A&W Root Beer," a wholesome beverage, he believes, sadly corrupted by worldliness. The video's worth checking out; if Rolling Stone doesn't post the whole story, I'll post it here next week. [ Continue reading: ] Cells and Souls The Revealer's colleagues in New York University's Department of Journalism have teamed up with The New York Times Company Foundation to offer a four-day program for journalists called "Cells and Souls: The Science, Politics, and Ethics of Embryonic Stem Cell Research." Here's the pitch... [ Continue reading: ]  Bible Time David Van Biema's latest Time cover story, "The Case for Teaching the Bible," isn't so much a report as qualified advocacy. That makes it a better piece of work than an ostensibly neutral article. Van Biema takes the best efforts... [ Continue reading: ] National Magazine Awards Have you ever had unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard? If so, you need to read Janet Reitman's 14,000-word Rolling Stone report, "Inside Scientology," nominated in March for a National Magazine Award (winners will be announced May 9). When the story first appeared, I had this to say. I'm thrilled to see that Rolling Stone itself, for which I'm a contributing editor, is a finalist in the general excellence category, too -- a reflection, I'm guessing, of the magazine's increasing emphasis on extensively reported, longform narrative stories at a time when most publications are shrinking word counts. Here are the rest of the nominees. [ Continue reading: ] Take This Bread See Scott Korb's review of Sara Miles' Take This Bread, above. When Miles sent me galleys for the book months ago, I was certain I wouldn't have much use for it. It's about Miles' life as a cook, and I don't like books about cooking; and about her conversion to Christianity, and conversion stories are usually more interesting as data than as narrative; and about Miles' leftist Christian faith, and, much as I admire such faith, it's usually too earnest for prose. I was the worst possible audience for this book -- and I thought it was beautiful. Here's an excerpt at Killing the Buddha. [ Continue reading: ]  Bread and Loneliness Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion, by Sara Miles, reviewed by Scott Korb. [ Continue reading: ] |