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   The New Monasticism "Church is not something we attend," says Jake Neufeld, part of a "new monastic" movement in evangelicalism, "it's something we are." That's a pretty idea, but in practice, Neufeld and his fellow Christian communalists in Billings, Montana are a prickly,... [ Continue reading: ] The Washington Independent Leftist bloggers call the brand-new Washington Independent a "progressive Politico," but from day one (or month one, anyway; the site's been live for awhile) it's already more interesting than that... [ Continue reading: ] The Sodfather "I'm here to capture the rapture and the resurrection," says master composter Tim Dundon, self-proclaimed "guru of doo-doo," in the latest Arthur magazine. Daniel Chamberlain's profile isn't online, but Arthur has posted a short video interview with "the Sodfather," talking about his faith in shit. Arthur -- most easily found in coffee shops and used book stores -- is one of the best contemporary chronicles of the chaos/magick/indie rock/punk/pop strands of latter day new age religion. [ Continue reading: ]  The Martyrdom of Brad Will He was an anarchist and an independent journalist who went to Mexico to document revolution -- and ended up filming his own murder. From Rolling Stone 1044, January 24, 2008. By Jeff Sharlet. [ Continue reading: ]  There Will Be Oil Stuart Klawans identifies the plot twist that makes There Will Be Blood seem both relevant to the present moment and strangely alien: the oil man and the man of God, "in reality... allied for decades" are pitted against one another by director and writer Paul Thomas Anderson, "an imaginative reordering of society so radical that it almost qualifies as political in itself." [ Continue reading: ]  Rudy, Christ If Giuliani pulls off a miracle and wins Florida, the press will pay attention to "America's [self-proclaimed] mayor" again. Until then, only hometown rags like the Daily News are watching Rudy's reinvention as a holy fool. For observers of religion... [ Continue reading: ] The Martyrdom of Brad Will Sharlet: The CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective has posted my new Rolling Stone story on their fallen friend, Brad Will, the anarchist activst and Indymedia journalist who filmed his own murder while covering last year's uprising in Oaxaca. [ Continue reading: ]  Cafeteria Catholicism "It reminds me of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, when we had indulgences." -- Republican leader John Boehner on why the congressional cafeteria should not offset carbon, or serve broccoli rabe. [ Continue reading: ] Pity the Man Are you a "postabortive man"? Or are you puzzled by the term? Sarah Blustain diagnoses the anti-abortion movement's latest epidemic in "Pity the Man." What makes her piece better than the usual dispatch from the abortion wars is her acknowledgment... [ Continue reading: ]  Religion and Real Estate The Church of Scientology's Celebrity Centre trades as much on the glory of the stars who stayed there when L. Ron Hubbard was just a junior thetan -- Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Swanson, Ginger Rogers. That was before Scientologists bought the Château Élysée, a long-term residential hotel for movie stars, and filled it with the glamour of... Kirstie Alley's fat jokes. But the Scientologists still sell the aura of the fallen stars. "It’s as if Falun Gong bought the Algonquin and advertised the gin Martinis that Dorothy Parker used to drink," writes Dana Goodyear in the New Yorker. What makes her Scientology story stand out is her emphasis not on the oddities of the religion, but on the faded grandeur of its real estate. It's the best thing the New Yorker has done on religion in a long time. [ Continue reading: ]  Huck's Old Wine How Huckabee repackages old-timey fundamentalism. By Jeff Sharlet
D. Michael Lindsay, the Rice University sociologist who upended conventional wisdom about evangelicals and class with his recent book Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite , argues on The Immanent Frame that Mike Huckabee is a new kind of evangelical who is "less interested in 'taking back the country' for the faithful and more interested in his faith being seen as authentic, reasonable, and attractive." Maybe so, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder; what Huckabee finds "attractive" is a Christian nation. Says Huck: "I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."
[ Continue reading: ]  Huck's Constitution Huckabee, yesterday: "I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And... [ Continue reading: ] Rich Cohen is Not an Anti-Semite It's important to state right off that nothing in Rich Cohen's WaPo column on Obama and Louis Farrakhan suggests Cohen harbors racist views. And if that seems to imply just the opposite of what it says, then you already get what's grotesque about Cohen's column, in which he writes "It's important to state right off that nothing in Obama's record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views or agrees with Wright when it comes to Farrakhan." What makes Cohen's argument so repugnant is that he applies this standard only to black churches. Nearly every major Republican candidate, for instance, has courted fundamentalist power preacher John Hagee, a far more dangerous anti-Semite precisely because his Christian Zionist politics -- combined with his massive budget -- allow him to actually interfere in Jewish affairs. Lately, Hagee's been encouraging the politicians who court him to prepare for war with Iran, ostensibly for the sake of Israel and actually in the service of Hagee's rapture theology. That ought to be more troubling than Obama's church offering some respect for Farrakhan, but Cohen hasn't written a word. [ Continue reading: ] Huck's Melody Mike Huckabee, says NYT's David Kirkpatrick, is like the melody and the harmony of evangelicalism. The Revealer often disagrees with Kirkpatrick, but he's been doing good reporting on Huckabee and Fresh Air's Terry Gross asked the right questions on yesterday's... [ Continue reading: ] If Mitt Romney was a Trappist Monk Sharlet: I opened the latest New York Review of Books looking forward to the great Garry Wills on "Romney & Religion," then got distracted Colin Thubron's wonderfuly untimely essay on the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor's short book on his monastic sojourns... [ Continue reading: ]  Faith-Based Candidates Will the uneasy merger of church and state known as faith-based initiatives survive into the next administration? A Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life examination of the candidates says yes. Every major candidate is in favor of some version of the program. The only candidate wholly opposed isn't exactly a candidate. And he's crazy. That's right -- Alan Keyes hates faith-based initiatives. For a more nuanced account, see the new report by Anne Farris and Claire Hughes of the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy. [ Continue reading: ] The Democratic Black Church Chicago Dyke, of the group blog Corrente, warns that the Democratic courtship of religious voters -- and, in South Carolina, black religious voters -- is more complicated than it appears in a press that loves the "authenticity" it attributes to... [ Continue reading: ]  Count 'Em After Obama's win in Iowa, we waited eagerly for the poll numbers revealing the depth of his white evangelical support (non-white evangelicals already tend to vote Democratic). Huck surely dominated that demographic, but Obama must have taken a bite. We'll never know; the same pollsters who counted evangelical votes for the GOP didn't bother asking Democratic voters about their religious preferences. Faith-based Democrats want to see that changed, they say, because it'd reveal that their party has a religious base, too. Of course, it'd also strengthen their position within the party. Maybe it'd also persuade reporters to look at rightward trends in the Democratic Party. That's not to say that religious voters are necessarily conservative, but that on many issues evangelicals are. Those who are now voting for Democrats are meeting them in the middle -- and the compromise between evangelical moderation and faith-based Democrats is moving the party away not just from its commitment to, say, queer rights, but also from its traditional union base. [ Continue reading: ] Huck's Army Last week we criticized the NYT's reliance on evangelical VIPs for its "insight" into Huckabee, so it's only fair that we note this week's piece by David Kirkpatrick on "Huck's Army," young evangelicals turning out for the Southern Baptist preacher... [ Continue reading: ]  "How I Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back" Frank Schaeffer, son of the late Christian Right icon Francis Schaeffer, speaks out about how modern fundamentalists have abused his father's legacy. [ Continue reading: ]  Huckabee Makes the NYT Nervous The NYT's explanation for why Huck won Iowa is a perfect example of what many evangelicals are talking about when they say that the NYT just doesn't get them. Noting that Huck drew a third more evangelicals to the polls... [ Continue reading: ] Jon Stewart's Brave New World In which The Daily Show host discusses Aldous Huxley, Eugene V. Debs, Ralph Nader, and his faith in the future with Jeff Sharlet. [ Continue reading: ]  Holy Iowa! If the Iowa results prove anything, it's that religion isn't leaving the public square when W. rides home to Texas. Huckabee's huge victory over robot Republican Mitt Romney is the most obvious sign that Holy Ghost power still matters in power politics, but Obama's victory should be read as almost as big an indicator that we are living in a deeply religious moment of American history. [ Continue reading: ] Fear of a Huck Planet The NYT's Timothy Egan gives a succinct summation of the Republican fear of a Huck planet: "It’s okay to have faux rubes, a la Bush senior and his pork rinds, or George W. and his Midland malapropisms. But when something... [ Continue reading: ]  Pentecostalism for the Exurbs The Revealer is back -- almost. While you wait, read the latest from Chris Lehmann, "Pentecostalism for the Exurbs," even if you don't care about Pentecostalism and don't know what an exurb is. Excerpted fromSlate. [ Continue reading: ] |