timeless What We Think We See in Iraq Artist Karina Aguilera Skvirsky brings the war home by photographing reenactments of Iraqis at prayer or in reflection in American "backyards," ordinary settings which reveal to us the depth of the grief that photojournalism portrays as part of a naturalized landscape of suffering... [ Continue reading: ] Prepare for the Awesoming! Awesomed By Comics isn't, technically, about religion. It's about comics. Totally awesome comics. Not so much the kind of graphic novels that get reviewed in The New York Times or the elegant "funnies" serialized for yuppies in the Times Magazine as the pulps: Daredevil, the Fantastic Four, Hulk (and Hulkling), Avengers and New Avengers and Young Avengers and old Crusaders. The comics that resist that ol' disenchantment of the world, the trash-lit underside of secularism, chronicles of de facto clergy in capes, matters of ultimate concern addressed with super strength, power blasts, and lots of explanatory dialogue... [ Continue reading: ] Jewish Anarchists In the late 19th century, the biggest political movement in Jewish America was anarchism, equally opposed to church and state. One of the offspring of that movement was a Yiddish paper called Freie Arbeiter Stimme, "The Voice of Labor," lovingly documented in this hour long film available for a free download here. [ Continue reading: ] Apocalypse Savings "The mind is capable of artful compartmentalisations; in one moment, a man might confidently believe in predictions of Armageddon in his lifetime, and in the next, he might pick up the phone to inquire about a savings fund for his grandchildren's college education or approve of long-term measures to slow global warming." Novelist Ian McEwanreads the story of the end of the world. [ Continue reading: ] We're All Gay Episcopalians Now There's some irony in an Episcopalian informing us that the concerns of the Anglican Communion, which has in the past been the dominant church of an empire (Britain's) and a rising power (America, before we became an empire, back when Episcopalians were even more overrepresented in Congress than they are today) should concern us all... [ Continue reading: ] "Can I Borrow A Feelin'?" We're using the inclusion of numerous Christian music album covers in the Florida Sun-Sentinel's fabulous collection of the worst album covers ever to justify linking to this masterpiece of kitsch-beat reporting. There's "A Hard Day's Work," by the Electric Amish; "Thank You for the Dove," by Mike Adkins; the incredibly tight scoop-neck sweater vests of "Country Church"; the strangely peppy turquoise cover art of preacher Freddie Gage's "All My Friends are Dead"; and The Handless Organist's "True Miracle of God." There are also serious questions of theodicy raised by much of the secular work on display. How, for instance, could a just God have allowed Cody Matherson to pose thusly for the cover of "Can I Borrow a Feelin'?" [ Continue reading: ] Beyond Belief Founder porn: a fetishistic fascination with the behind-the-scenes, under-the-covers, shifting whimsy of a group of men who set down their best ideas--the ones they hoped would actually endure--in a few readily available public documents. Founder porn even sounds naughty.... [ Continue reading: ] Whose Land? Under the heading of American mythology, our national religion: "No-Man's Land," a meditation in The Believer on gentrification and Little House on the Prairie, by Eula Biss. [ Continue reading: ] Introducing Vanessa Hartmann The Revealer welcomes assistant editor Vanessa Hartmann. Keep an eye out for her byline. [ Continue reading: ] The Kaus Problem "Besides the Jew," writes Joshua Cohen in the Jewish Forward, "there is no greater hater of the self than the journalist, whose work is labored over intensely, then printed on sheets that quickly disintegrate. The Jew has internalized the hatred of the centuries, and so continues to destroy himself by the example of others. The journalist must perish, too, but he must publish first; it is a wonder that he should care about his words, or his style, at all. The Kraus Problem is exactly that. Karl Kraus isn’t read today because Viennese newspapers aren’t read." Ah, but Kaus -- the anti-reporter and an artist of self-loathing -- should be. [ Continue reading: ] Hurry Up, Harper's Could Harper's' timing have been better? Just as the California Supreme Court issues its landmark ruling on same-sex marriage, the latest issue hits the stands with a major new essay by one of the best religion writers we know, Garret Keizer, on the Episcopal Church's angst of homosexuality. Unfortunately, Harper's' website isn't as well-tuned -- they've failed to post this most timely of articles online. So go down to the newsstand and fork over a few dollars, regardless of your views on the issue, for a larger perspective guaranteed to rise above the cable news rabble. Here are two other Keizer gems: "The Reverent and the Rude," published right here on The Revealer, and "Left, Right, and Wrong," in Mother Jones [ Continue reading: ] Science and Spirit Jeff Sharlet: My longtime collaborator and frequent Revealer contributor Peter Manseau has been given charge of a magazine called Science and Spirit. I'll have lots more to say about it soon, but in the meantime, check out Peter's inaugural issue. Peter writes on Ben Stein's Expelled. Meera Subramanian, another Revealer veteran, writes on animal extinction and religious practice in India. And our Killing the Buddha comrade Ashley Makar writes on the United Church of Christ's plan to pitch God to the scientifically-minded. Also sounding off on science and religion in this issue: P.J. O'Rourke, Christopher Hitchens, Francis S. Collins, and much more/ [ Continue reading: ] Tulsa, City of (Somebody's) Dreams Akshay Ahuja on tour with Cremated Souls, an Indian death metal band for whom Tulsa is a distant city of dreams... [ Continue reading: ] Real Wright and Wrong Sharlet: I'm putting Diana Butler-Bass' response to the Jeremiah Wright media tour in the "timeless" category because her response on Beliefnet's "God's Politics" blog speaks of enduring questions and ideas. It's the exact opposite of the literally pathetic fretting of Obama supporters who want Wright to just go away so they can go back to believing that Obama's candidacy signals the end of racial division in America... [ Continue reading: ] Between the Motion and the Act "Between the idea /And the reality," reads Omri Elisha's epigraph for his new anthropological study of evangelical compassion, "Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow." — T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men. Omri, a Revealer contributing editor, spent 15 months conducting fieldwork with an evangelical church in Knoxville, Tennessee... [ Continue reading: ] Cult Rock! NPR reporter Jennifer Sharpe describes her journalistic immersion into the "ooga booga" of Father Yod's Source Family commune, the most beautiful cult of the 1970s. "After a few weeks, I started noticing a shift in my mental state. Father Yod's teachings unexpectedly began to resonate. Suddenly, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to stop eating meat. So I did." Ok, but did she learn how to rock to the transcendental vibrations of Pithius, Zunthar, and Octavious --YaHoWa13, Father Yod's musical ministry? Click here, and you will (Don't miss the slideshow). [ Continue reading: ] A Pat Robertson Retrospective Bill Sizemore of the Virginian-Pilot has spent much of his career reporting on Pat Robertson, the last alpha male of the old Christian Right. Now he brings all the threads of the story together in "The Christian With Four Aces," a literary essay for the Virginia Quarterly Review. There's nothing new here for those familiar with the bits and pieces of Pat's biography, but it's an excellent synthesis of decades of reporting on a transformative figure in American religious history, one whose influence will likely be felt long after he's "promoted to Heaven." [ Continue reading: ] How to Name a War "Euphemism and American Violence," an essay in the New York Review of Books by David Bromwich, may be the most important commentary on the uses and abuses of words since George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language." [ Continue reading: ] Fetal Rock What else to call the new CD from Christian industrial rocker Eowyn, Silent Screams, which borrows its title from the famous anti-abortion film once screened in the White House by Ronald Reagan? Eowyn wants to be the evangelical P.J. Harvey but comes off more like a polite Alice Cooper... [ Continue reading: ] One Nation Under Elvis "Hound Dog," allegedly stolen by Elvis from Big Mama Thornton, was written by two New York Jews. One of the greatest icons of country music, considered by fools to be foolish, was the paradoxical Johnny Cash, theological fundamentalist, musical heretic, and politically a self-described "dove with claws" who opposed most American wars. Such are the contradictions of "One Nation Under Elvis," mapped by contrarian prose psalmist Rebecca Solnit in the latest issue of Orion. [ Continue reading: ] There is No God! (But If There Is, He's In On It!) With the growing popularity of anti-religion / 9/11 conspiracy theory "documentaries" such as Zeitgeist, 9/11 Truthers are starting to get religion, writes the Seattle Stranger's Paul Constant -- and that's where they go really wrong. [ Continue reading: ] Orgone Sounds Like? If you happen to be in Vienna and in need of... stimulation, you'll want to visit Jewish Museum of Vienna's current exhibit on Wilheim Reich, mad scientist of psychoanalysis and inventor of the Orgone Box, for which he served two years in prison. Writes Gideon Lewis-Kraus at Nextbook: "It seems not to matter to the show’s curator, Birgit Johler, that one of Reich’s central explanations for Freud’s unresponsiveness to his earth-shattering orgasm theory of 1927 was that Freud’s vestigial obligations to Judaism left him frigid, which is to say unimaginatively monogamous." After that, the story gets weird. [ Continue reading: ] Save "Spiral Jetty"! The artist Robert Smithson died in 1973 when a small plane malfunctioned while he was filming his masterpiece, "Spiral Jetty," from above. The piece is literally a landmark of conceptual art, a 1500 foot long, 15 foot wide counterclockwise coil, formed from mud, salt crystals, and rocks, that juts into Great Salt Lake. It's also one of the great works of mysticism in the 20th century, intended by Smithson to "heal" those who engaged with it. And beyond that, it's beautiful. But now it's facing its end. In Afghanistan, the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhists with a more abstract god in mind. Same principle here, only instead of fundamentalist Islam lighting the dynamite, it's fundamentalist capitalism -- the plan, it seems, is to drill for oil in Great Salt Lake, a project that will destroy "Spiral Jetty" and endanger the lake. Sound like a bad idea? Then save "Spiral Jetty." [ Continue reading: ] God is a Monster Gabriel McKee on sin and redemption in Cloverfield. The Revealer editors were reminded by a recent viewing of I Am Legend that horror and sci-fi movies are often the best religion journalism around -- documenting popular religious ideas, and fears, most of us lack the courage to express in more sober venues. For a full-on film festival, add to your Cloverfield reading "Godzilla, Born Again" and "The Last Man on Earth: A Romance," by The Revealer's Kathryn Joyce. Then visit McKee's SF Gospel blog for further adventures in the religion of science fiction. [ Continue reading: ] Eat, Pray, Loathe Jewcy's Izzy Grinspan may be overly-optimistic in reporting a backlash against Elizabeth Gilbert's spiritually infantile Eat, Pray, Love, but we're glad she called our attention to Maureen Callahan's "Eat, Pray, Loathe" ... [ Continue reading: ] The Myth That Ate Itself Revealer contributing editor S. Brent Plate is evidently saving his best stuff for the all-new Religion Dispatches, where he has this to say about There Will Be Blood: "Here is mythology as a critique of mythology. This is why this film is worth watching: because it shows how the use of mythological structures and elements can be used against other, perhaps more oppressive stories. Propositional logic (the kind Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens use) offers straightforward, non-fictional language that makes truth claims and offers critiques. That may offer a viable critique of the ideologies of myth, yet here is another, more subtle, and I would suggest altogether more powerful way to approach myth. Let the fires burn themselves out." [ Continue reading: ] Praying With Lior The Jewish Week calls attention to Lior Liebling, 12-year-old Jewish "spiritual genius," and a new documentary about his prayers and the fact that he has Down's Syndrome, Praying with Lior. Faye Ginsburg, one of the founders of The Revealer, comments: "Faye Ginsburg, a professor of anthropology and director of the graduate program in culture and media at New York University, said that the increase in the numbers of these films, beyond the relative ease of using today’s cameras, and the prominence of sites like YouTube that support all manner of video, can be attributed to a shift in the culture in the area of perception of disability. “There’s a sea change in terms of public acceptance of disability in the Jewish community,” she said. “It’s an issue we need to take on.” [ 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: ] 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: ] 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: ] "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: ] 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: ] Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Nada: Nothin. [ Continue reading: ] Jewish Dialogue, Christian Monologue? So a rabbi, a pastor, and Christianity Today's David Neff walk into a bar... John D. Spalding on the unfunny outcome. [ Continue reading: ] Oh Yes, Oh Yes, My Darling! Sharlet: "Oh Yes, Oh Yes, My Darling!: The Great Unsung Song of Lee Hays" -- or, as Oxford American's 9th annual Southern Music issue retitled my essay about the co-writer, with Pete Seeger, of "If I Had a Hammer," "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," and so many other important American songs, "The People's Singer." The essay was online, then offline, and now it's online again; and here's a link to a correction I posted. This story is music history, but there's more than one ghost of a religion story within it. Hays, a socialist, was also a preacher's son who never saw any reason to draw sharp lines between politics and religion, so long as both were liberatory, and, maybe even more importantly, singable. Also online from this issue: Sean Wilentz on the "Mystic Nights" of Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" sessions; Alex Rawls on the Cowsills, famous long ago for a psychedelic mini-epic that featured back-up singers singing "six, six, six"; and Bill Wasik on how blogging killed the ephemeral indie-rock star. [ Continue reading: ] New Revealers Coming Soon A while ago The Revealer advertised for new revealers. We received a wonderful response! And will soon be announcing the new crew. Stay tuned. [ Continue reading: ] The Road Not Taken In which we reveal fundamentalist little man Gary Bauer's secret roots in prog rock. [ Continue reading: ] Sacred Spaces, Unholy Real Estate Two stories from opposite sides of the globe point to the problem of turning sacred spaces into holy real estate. In Tennessee, a Methodist pastor rejects a proposed Bible theme park as an encroachment on his congregation's view of God's creation (as shaped by a few hundred years of farming). In Australia, the Anangu people are suing the nation's telecom giant Telstra for turning their sacred space -- the rock formation known as Uluru, Australia's most famous landmark -- into virtual real estate on Second Life. At issue in the Tennessee is the physicalization of scripture, making the Bible stories of believers' imagination into plastic displays subject to the weather. At issue in Australia is the virtualization of the physical, making the mysteries of place, ritual, tradition, and belief into so many digital 1s and 0s. [ Continue reading: ] The Abstinence Gluttons Here's a news story for the "timeless" file, the sort of hardboiled investigative reporting on an overlooked corner of government that the press doesn't do enough of: "Following the money swirling around [Bush donor Raymond] Ruddy," writes Michael Reynolds in The Nation, offers an eye-opening glimpse into the squalor at the heart of the abstinence-only project... [ Continue reading: ] Harlan County, U.S.A. If only it would rise again. A ghost story... [ 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: ] 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 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: ] 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: ] The Colorful Apocalypse On The Revealer's sister site, Killing the Buddha: Greg Bottoms set out on the quest that resulted in his new book, The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art, with his schizophrenic brother -- driven by visions to Christian fundamentalism -- in mind. But he doesn't pathologize the religious art that he finds, or fetishize it as sacred kitsch, or succumb to its theology. Instead, he takes Revelation seriously. [ Continue reading: ] Is Terabithia a Christian Nation? "Safety and faith are different things," Katherine Patterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia tells Christianity Today, rejecting the "safe for children" interpretation of religion and art... [ Continue reading: ] A Marriage Made in Heaven? Peter Manseau: One evening just before Christmas, in a modest, two-bedroom apartment on 16th Street in Northwest Washington, the most controversial clergyman in the recent history of the Roman Catholic Church took a moment to sing me a song... [ Continue reading: ] He Shall Rise Again! (Or Not.) Not sure if I'm alluding to the South or Jesus there, or if there's really a difference, but anyway, what I'm really talking about is the pulp myth known as Captain America, shot down dead on the courthouse steps as he prepared to fight for civil liberties, the boring legal way. As American resurrection myths go, superheroes are in a distant third place behind the South and the savior, but that's not bad -- the death of a hero, even an imaginary one, probably resonates longer and in more subtle ways than the decline or departure of any baseball franchise but the Brooklyn Dodgers. Captain America killed? That's news, and The New York Times thinks so, too... [ Continue reading: ] Heebie-Jeebies! Steve Beeber, author of The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk, asks: Was punk good for the Jews? [ Continue reading: ] In Character Gets Some Mark Oppenheimer: "When politicians have to belong to churches, and when religion journalists seem to write only about churches, we can feel pressured to join up, sign on the dotted line, profess allegiance. Or, in our refusal to, we can be unwittingly pushed into a camp of extreme atheism that actually is no more comfortable. Most of us are somewhere between camps: pious one day, sentimental the next, skeptical on alternate Sabbaths." [ Continue reading: ] Not Even Solomon Could Solve It A Polish P.I. and his sidekick, a rat named Watson, attempt to solve the Case of the Meaning of Life in "Essence," a graphic novel by Grzegorz Janusz and Krysztof Gawronkiewicz translated and excerpted in Words Without Borders' fantastic new comics edition. Words Without Borders is worth a bookmark -- a brilliant online magazine of translated stories, poems, and now comics from around the world. [ Continue reading: ] How to Make a Martyr "A martyr’s story tends to eclipse both the martyr and his message," writes Martyn Oliver. So it was with Mansur al-Hallaj, a Sufi teacher executed in Baghdad in 922, and so may it be with Saddam... [ Continue reading: ] Talking about Into Great Silence Angela Zito: "Tiny bottle of Chartreuse in hand, I emerged in mid-town a few weeks ago from watching Into Great Silence, my promised dinner date long-gone. The two-hour documentary about a monastery that I'd thought I was going to see had morphed into an amazing three-hour experience of silent imagery." [ Continue reading: ] Jewish Freaks and Geeks "Jewish Freaks and Geeks," presented by Eddie Portnoy. The most wonderful thing the new Jewish magazine Jewcy has published yet. I usually hate those alternaJew, "look, we're freaky" features, but this one's historical, y'see. Only, I'm not being snarky -- I really love it. [ Continue reading: ] Oops Sharlet: File this under "roads not taken": In Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (published by U. of Kansas press last year), historian Kenneth Osgood offers a brief account of the U.S. propaganda puffing of Buddhism during the 1950s. Not long after Henry Luce famously instructed his editors to "puff Graham" -- Billy, that is -- a network of agencies dedicated to Cold War "psychological warfare" -- the U.S. gov't term -- began promoting Buddhism to the American people, sponsoring research, exchanges, and the all around general celebration of Buddhism. Enlightenment thinking? Hardly. Buddhism fell under the heading of anything-but-communism. Anything, that is, but Islam, which, according to Osgood, the "total war" never got around to addressing. [ Continue reading: ] The Critical Practice Sharlet: I've started a blog, Call Me Ishmael... [ Continue reading: ] Are You A Golemist? This interview with novelist Marc Estrin, author of Golem Songs, will probably only be of interest to readers familiar enough with the Jewish Golem myth to follow Estrin as he spins out its implications through the psychology of a "new kind of Jew," in interviewer Ron Jacobs' words, "an out-of-control potentially homicidal Jewish man in the Bronx," an amalgam of "wonderful maniacs I have known," in Estrin's. And then there's "Golemism," writ large: "No one, no nation is 'the Golem.' Golem is an idea, a disturbing myth, a strategy of self-protection at all costs, regardless of the consequences for others, and often for oneself or one's own nation. We see examples of golemism all around us, all nourished on fear, from the obvious lethality of some nations, to the manipulation of elections, to the backlash against threatening feminism, to the catastrophic overuse of antibiotics "just in case.'" [ Continue reading: ] "What the Fuck Would It Take?" That's how historian and William Sloane Coffin biographer Warren Goldstein opens his report on the rise and fall and (maybe) rise of Yale Divinity School, in YDS' alumni magazine, no less. The question was posed by Phil Donohue 26 years ago. He was trying to provoke a disinterested Coffin into recognizing the growing strength of the Christian Right. But Coffin, for all his brilliance, never quite got it, and neither did Yale Div. Yale, a recent chaplain of the school tells Goldstein, "'sat out the culture wars and has been a victim of its own class stratification; it's seen the evangelical movement as a poor people's movement. Its refusal to engage [was] a function of perception of class, as well as of ignoring William James' -- who celebrated 'the varieties of religious experience' in his 1902 book of that name." But now, says a YDS grad who leads a growing liberal church in North Carolina, "the worm has turned.." [ Continue reading: ] The Trouble With Bibles Holly Berman: Daniel Radosh, in The New Yorker, offers up everything you ever wanted to know about Bible marketing. To religion journalists -- and to many observant Christians -- news of the wacky world of scripture packaging -- Bibles for surfers! Bibles designed to look like teen magazines! etc. -- is old news, but surely some readers will find Radosh's catalogue/article fascinating. But I read between the lines that deadliest of qualities in a reporter setting out to document a religious subculture... [ Continue reading: ] An Interactive Blog Experiment Mitch Stephens, a Professor of Journalism at New York University, has developed an experimental new site in connection with his blog (Without Gods) at The Institute for the Future of the Book. He has posted a twelve part paper on the site that includes controversial ideas from the the early chapters of his forthcoming book on the history of disbelief. The paper -- "The Holy of Holies: On the Constituents of Emptiness" -- will be presented tomorrow, Dec. 8, to the working group on "Secularism, Religious Authority, and the Mediation of Knowledge" of the Center for Religion and Media at NYU, but the intention is for the comments, criticism, and ideas that their meeting generates to be expanded upon through the interactive, reader-friendly site. [ Continue reading: ] Secret Prayers Peter Manseau: "Did Pope Benedict XVI pray in the Aya Sofia? How could we really know? Prayer, after all, is an interior act. It is often made visible with prostrations and gestures, and it is often made audible with words, but it is first of all a movement of the mind, as impossible to detect as a passing thought or a daydream..." More on the pope's Turkish trip and the methodology of religion writers, at The Revealer's sister-site, Killing the Buddha. Also new on KtB: Danielle Trussoni, whose memoir Falling Through the Earth has just been named a top 10 book of the year by the New York Times, writes about prayers of her own in a Buddhist temple in Vietnam. [ Continue reading: ] Helluva Play From Thornton, Colorado to Brooklyn, New York, Hell House performances defy neat boundaries between audience and performer, secular culture and religious event. By Ann Pellegrini [ Continue reading: ] South Park Takes On Richard Dawkins Daniel Sorrell: Given a public figure on a high horse with a pompous, in-your-face manner, sooner or later South Park will point its satirical barbs in their direction. In a recent two-part episode, Dawkins came under heavy fire for his belligerent atheism and hyper-rational tirades against religion... [ Continue reading: ] Arrows for the War Kathryn Joyce: The Christian "Quiverfull" movement measures a mother's spiritual resolve by the number of children she raises, each one an arrow in the quiver of God's army. [ Continue reading: ] Lou & Ted's Excellent Conversation Rev. Lou Sheldon, president of the ironically-named Traditional Values Coalition: I knew Ted Haggard was a homo! [ Continue reading: ] James v. Hubbard J.C Hallman visits a Scientology Center, with William James on the mind. [ Continue reading: ] For Whom Do You Pray? Jill Hamburg Coplan: During these Jewish High Holy Days, coming on the heels of the latest war in Lebanon, my mind returns to a Rosh Hashanah of 24 years ago, a day that changed my life. It was 1982 and my 17th birthday. The Israeli army invaded Lebanon that summer and occupied Beirut. That holy day, its soldiers stood guard while the Lebanese Phalangist militia roamed through the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, killing between 300 and 1,200 Palestinians. My family heard the news before heading to synagogue. [ Continue reading: ] The Happiness of Alligators Meera Subramanian: On this December day, it is a comfortable sixty-five degrees in the shade and there are alligators to think about. How, exactly, do such man-eating creatures fit into the divine scheme of things according to God? [ Continue reading: ] Bad Moon Rising Jeff Sharlet "Bad Moon Rising” isn’t even the best Creedence Clearwater Revival song, and Creedence isn’t, technically, even a Southern band. They were from California. But their specialty was swamp rock and twang, big spooky beats and white-boy blues, whammy bars and caterwaul, all of it uncool and “classic rock” from the first day they recorded. “Bad Moon Rising” is just a foot-stomping jingle, really, jackhammer guitar and an earnest vocal, the lyric not really bluesy so much as churchy. Not pious, but scared, the sort of worry that knows this world is no good and bound to get worse, so you'd better stay indoors. The moon in this song isn’t a symbol of the nighttime, but of the darkness rising: “I fear rivers overflowin’,” Creedence sings. “I hear the voice of rage and ruin.” [ Continue reading: ] Jesus Camp Jeff Sharlet: Jesus Camp, a new documentary, opens in New York City this Friday. I've assigned a review of the film for The Revealer, but in the meantime, I can't recommend it strongly enough. Jesus Camp turns out to be perhaps the best work of journalism -- or art -- dealing with contemporary Christian conservatism. It's a film of bleak beauty, to borrow a phrase from the great photographer Danny Lyon, and like Lyon's work, Jesus Camp is both unsentimental and heartbreaking, harrowing and absurd at the same time. It's a movie about the Christian Right and that movement's political ambitions, but it's also a story about kids and what they believe and how they absorb the beliefs of the adults around them. Jesus Camp transcends its moment even as it reports on it with precision. This is a film of scriptural intensity; see it if you can. [ Continue reading: ] Buzzards Circle Reagan's Roost By Meera Subramanian:A visit to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Southern California reveals the stone façade of a secular temple, a lot of blue blazers and a great big plane, but ultimately more is hidden than revealed. [ Continue reading: ] Amoral Infection Nicole Greenfield: The media is continually fascinated by what is interpreted as the paradoxical lives of the religiously devout. Most stories center on Christians, mainly evangelicals, and ususally have something to do with their engagement with popular culture. Evangelical hipsters, skaters, sports stars, punk rockers--each has been the subject of countless profiles. [ Continue reading: ] Searching for Sufis Jill Hamburg Coplan: Through the centuries, wherever Sufism held sway -- like Ottoman Turkey -- Jews could find safe haven. If I could find a Sufi, I thought, I could approach him with genuine respect, bringing my own real curiosity about mysticism, and produce for American newspaper readers a kind of encounter that might help them understand Islam in a different way than a demonizing story about a radical hostage-taker or half-crazed suicide attacker ever could. And if not, well, Judaism reserves its mystical texts and practices for old male scholars who've mastered everything else. Perhaps the more tolerant Sufis would open a door for me... [ Continue reading: ] The Jewish Friend Elizabeth Rich: "Today's program reads, as it does every Sunday, 'We are a growing family, focused on loving God, loving others and making disciples of Jesus Christ.' I'm here with my friend, Sharon, who brings me, 'her Jewish friend,' to this Oklahoma Baptist church as often as I allow. We watch the church-goers float down the aisle in outfits of red, white and blue. Jeweled flag pins decorate the women's blouses. Fireworks tumble down men's neckties. Sharon squeezes my hand..." Keep reading at Killing the Buddha. [ Continue reading: ] The Long Leash of the Lord Noel Black: When Rob Brendle, Associate Pastor at New Life Church, agreed to write a column for my Colorado Springs-based monthly satire and humor rag, The Toilet Paper, I thought I had staged a major coup. [ Continue reading: ] I Heart Decadence Christianity Today's Philip Yancey considers "The Lure of Theocracy." He's against it -- we think. [ Continue reading: ] Queen of the Night and Stone Flower "Long ago when the Sun thoroughly warmed the Earth blessed by the good gods, where the Gypsies lived their lives, I mean, where our country once was to be found, there stood a camp pitched not far from a forest, at the edge of which was a beautiful castle..." Traditional Roma knowledge from Luminita Mihai Cioaba, a poet who is also a Gypsy princess. [ Continue reading: ] You Must Draw a Long Bead to Shoot a Fish Jeff Sharlet: "I've a letter demanding an answer. It's from my friend Sue, who has gone home to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to watch her father die. He is, or maybe now was, a self-made millionaire, a maverick Mennonite, a builder of hard, bony houses, and a shooter of animals on land and in water, which is saying something, since you must draw a long bead to shoot a fish." More at Killing the Buddha, excerpted from Revealer contributor Laurel Snyder's new anthology, Half/Life: Jew-Ish Tales from Interfaith Homes. [ Continue reading: ] 1/3 of a National Magazine Award Sharlet: I feel like I am entitled to claim at least 1/3, or maybe 1/18th, of Harper's' National Magazine Award for "general excellence" in the 100,000-250,000 circulation category. The prize is based on a submission of three issues; two of the issues in Harper's winning submission featured cover stories on religion -- Erik Reece's "Jesus Without the Miracles,", on Thomas Jefferson's Bible, and the double feature of last last May's issue, a piece of mine, "Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch," and a story by Chris Hedges, "Feeling the Hate with the National Religious Broadcasters." [ Continue reading: ] Buddha, Bodies, and Irony Cleve Wiese: Is The New York Times' mockery of lite religion lite journalism? [ Continue reading: ] Expose Yourself The Revealer seeks new revelators. We've been weaned off the foundation teat, and we're all busy trying to feed ourselves with paying journalism. But we plan to keep on revelating, which means we need to deepen our talent pool. We're looking for three media critics to join our staff as contributing editors... [ Continue reading: ] The Real Point of the Spear An anthropologist examines faith and deception in End of the Spear, this spring's evangelical film controversy. By Lucas Bessire. [ Continue reading: ] Containing the Christian Right "Christianity, the Brand," Strawberry Saroyan's interesting profile of an Christian Right PR man in Sunday's New York Times magazine, is an entry for The Revealer's "Timeless" column not because it's profound journalism, but because the paper of record's repeated rediscovery of the fact that evangelicals are good at marketing is a journalistic episode that seems to exist out of time. Have they no access to their own archives? How many times must they report this story? [ Continue reading: ] Emil and Karl One of the very first books about the Holocaust was a Yiddish children's novel, Emil and Karl, published in 1940. Now, Jeffrey Shandler (a Center for Religion & Media member) has brought Emil and Karl into English for the first time, in a "clear and graceful" translation... [ Continue reading: ] Holy Ghost People Ashley Michelle Makar: "When Aunt Judy almost died last week, I was watching people speak in tongues, in Peter Adair's 1967 documentary Holy Ghost People. Aunt Judy was being resuscitated in a north Alabama emergency room, her blood sugar sky high, while I was getting exhilarated, in a New York screening room, high on cinematic testimonies, the quickening power of the Holy Ghost. I was watching at first in awe -- the convulsive jerk of an Appalachian woman's head before she broke into tongues; a younger woman talking about the Lord dealing with her through a tingling in her stomach. As I listened to those Holy Ghost people getting worked up, or the Lord working on them, as they put it, something like revelation came up on me: My people are Holy Ghost people. Their strange Word is my Grandmother tongue. It's in my blood. Like cancer..." More on our sister site, Killing the Buddha. [ Continue reading: ] God’s Lovin’ It Nicole Greenfield wonders why more Christians don't feel The McPassion. [ Continue reading: ] American Gods Virgins, senators, spiritual warriors, Gandalf, God's gift to women, terrorist angels, secret societies, big radio, little Buddhas, unfinished books, militiamen, Peter Singer, and the intimacy of killing: Jeff Sharlet's partial archive... [ Continue reading: ] Word for Word, the Dumbest Sentence David Denby Ever Wrote "Only the West could have made a movie in which blowing up civic temples is a 'provocative' media statement." (From Denby's review of V for Vendetta) [ Continue reading: ] Lost in the Shit Pile Martyn Oliver: For some, freedom of speech is under attack. For others, common decency and respect have been lost. For others still, there is mystification at the effects of post-modern, sacrilegious humor and repulsion at the violence. Apologists abound on all sides, and it only leads to the shit piling higher. But pushed to the periphery is the robbed and beaten individual: the victims of 9/11, of colonialism, of oppression, of fundamentalism, of stupidity. More at Killing the Buddha. [ Continue reading: ] Brand Name Buddhism Melissa Benner eats Tet and keeps clean in Vietnam, where detergent commercials blend Buddhism and advertising. [ Continue reading: ] Half/Life: Jew-Ish Tales Sharlet: Publishers Weekly reviews Revealer contributor Laurel Snyder's new edited volume, Half/Life: Jew-Ish Tales From Interfaith Homes."'Half' is an interesting, incorrigible, perplexing and profound moniker in its own right, a label that somehow captures the existential angst that all people experience." Mine, anyway; I've an essay in the book, which is forthcoming in April. Fellow contributor Katherine Weber's essay, "Oy, Tannenbaum" appeared this past December in the NYT. [ Continue reading: ] If Brooke Hurley Had Breasts, She Would Not Be Dancing With Ben Tel Sharlet: Lest anyone think my taste for stupid dick jokes is limited to making fun of fundamentalist swordsmen, a link to a rare exercise in Jewish adolescent fiction kindly published by my comrades at Killing the Buddha. Of course, the real joke is that the right wing magic sword thing is true, while the mundane teen angst tale is entirely made up. I never had a thing for shoes. [ Continue reading: ] Poppa's Got A Brand New Sword Do you experience erectile dysfunction? Would you like a little more size? Pastor Rod Parsley wants to help -- he'll turn your "male headship" into a deadly weapon with extra inches. [ Continue reading: ] Imams for Hire NYT reports that the Lincoln Group, a U.S. contractor recently exposed as subverting the Iraqi press by placing propaganda articles, has also been making quiet payments to Sunni clerics in Iraq. The Times article, by David S. Cloud and Jeff Gerth, is a clumsy effort, unsure of where to point readers' indignation. After all, is it a bad thing if the U.S. hires Sunni clerics to advise the military on better relations? Yes, actually, if you believe in freedom of religion. [ Continue reading: ] Chronicling C.S. Lewis: Marketing and Mythology Lewis' theology was concerned with myth, which is why he cannot be fully appropriated by the kind of evangelicalism that is buying up copies of Mere Christianity. [ Continue reading: ] You Say Jesus, I Say Geezus! Sharlet: One of my colleagues here at The Revealer saw more virtue in Sylvia Topp's Village Voice rant about Bush's religion than I did. The awkward part is that I'd already responded to a friend at the Voice to the effect that the best I could say about the essay was nothing. But since The Revealer has now endorsed it, I'll balance the scales with a rant of my own, the note I sent my Voice friend... [ Continue reading: ] Changeallujah: The Reluctant Religion of Reverend Billy Brad Tytel: Whether this is theater or religion remains an open question. I have come to see a man expound a moral truth to a crowd of believers while his choir sings hymns from the dais behind him -- in a church no less. So how is that different from any religion? If the preacher is a fake, but he preaches his sermon sincerely to a crowd of authentic believers, is it an act or is it conviction? [ Continue reading: ] All That I Have Is Yours Scott Korb: It was a cool, overcast Wednesday in the spring. I had left work by midafternoon and stood under the awning at my office with the smokers, out of the drizzling rain, to confirm my appointment over the phone. I dropped the design off yesterday, I explained. It had taken me months to decide how the letters would connect and overlap...I’d donated blood the day before, in preparation, knowing I would not be able to give blood for a year after this (according to the rules of blood donation), and hoping that one session with one long needle could prepare me for the thousands of buzzing pricks I was about to face in taking this mark of my inheritance... [ Continue reading: ] The Devil Made Them Do It? Elizabeth Rich: The day before Halloween 2005, The L.A. Times Magazine reported the first recantation in the infamous satanic ritual abuse case that engulfed California’s McMartin Preschool in the 1980’s. More than two decades after Judy Johnson reported to police that teacher Ray Buckey sexually molested her son, another former McMartin preschooler, Kyle Sapp, now Kyle Zirpolo, admitted he was one child who lied to investigators. [ Continue reading: ] Malevolent Design J. M. Tyree: Why not put forward a raft of other contenders -- Kali, Allah, Krishna, Jah, The Force, Cthulhu -- for the starring role of Intelligent Designer? Intelligent Design isn't just bad science, it's bad religion. [ Continue reading: ] An Ordinary, Reasonable Person An excerpt from Vows: The Story of A Priest, a Nun, and Their Son, a new book by Revealer contributor Peter Manseau.Vows is the best kind of religion journalism, drawing on multiple genres -- memoir, obviously, but also investigative reporting, history, theology, and the drama of a thriller. [ Continue reading: ] The Last Revival Michael Rose: Shepherds to a "new global religious vanguard," or members of a dying breed? The Washington Post gets revived. [ Continue reading: ] NYT Chuckles at Fundies, and Does Their Work For Them Jeff Sharlet: Are U.S. military chaplains promoting homophobia and discrimination against non-Christian women on taxpayer time? [ Continue reading: ] Media-Assisted Suicide Marissa Kantor: This is not a piece about Harriet Miers’ evangelical beliefs. This is not a piece about physician-assisted suicide. This is not a piece about federalism and states’ rights. This is a piece about how the media -- both the left and the right -- is plagued with inaccurate reporting about Gonzales v. Oregon, muddled with here-and-there references to Harriet Miers, because they are asking the wrong questions. This is, in the end, a piece about death and our societal inability to face it. [ Continue reading: ] Aryan Jihad and the Elephant in America's Living Room Meera Subramanian: Here’s a riddle for you: How can a small neo-Nazi march, organized to draw attention to the alleged persecution of white people by black people, and a counter-demonstration of approximately 600 blacks, take place in Ohio and not spur a single news report to directly address the question of race, except to deny its role in the events? [ Continue reading: ] Playing for Him Nicole Greenfield: Baseball is a religious sport, there's no doubt about it. During the course of a game, we see players mutter prayers before stepping into the batter’s box, point up to God after hitting one out of the park, or cross themselves after sliding safely into second. But for the Christian media, religiosity on the field is a major issue, if not the only one. [ Continue reading: ] In Rocky's Shoes S. Brent Plate: At the top of the great steps of Philadelphia's stately Museum of Art, one can find the footprints of Rocky. Tourists from all over the world make pilgrimages here to climb the enormous stairway leading to the museum and the footprints, a little hunk of bronze and cement, imprints of Rocky's Converse high tops. Jumping up and down with arms raised, these tourist-pilgrims have their picture taken, then go home and put that image in their scrapbooks and on their web pages to say, "Look, I stood where Rocky stood!" [ Continue reading: ] Bloody Redemption J.J. Helland: Reviewers of David Cronenberg’s new film, A History of Violence have made much of the movie’s bloodshed as an adroit social commentary on America’s complicated obsession with violence and its linkage to sexual energy. But they've overlooked the thorny spiritual quest of the film’s protagonists. [ Continue reading: ] Photography and the Occult Kate Hawley: Journalism about the occult usually files under "news of the weird." But the opening of a new exhibition of photographs at the Metropolitan Museum last week has faced the press with an unusual task: to grapple with the paranormal as a spiritual and cultural practice. [ Continue reading: ] We Are the Others Hally Hall-I Chu: In the most recent issue of The Journal of Religion and Society, social scientist Gregory Paul published a study on the correlation between religiosity and societal problems in developed countries of the world. Such studies are not uncommon, but Paul’s paper, "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look," caught the media’s attention. Shortly after the study was published, The Times Online reported the news with a provocatively- headlined article, "Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side.'" Factual contents aside, it is a study imbued with gross generalizations and questionable premises that mark a step backward for social science. [ Continue reading: ] Light for the Dark City? Elizabeth Rich: "This is indeed a dark city and we’re bringing the light. You know wherever soldiers go, there goes the word of God." Discussion of the National Guard’s clean-up and marshalling of law in New Orleans has included stories both uplifting and maddening: their late arrival on the scene, but also their subsequent heroics; their rooftop-rescues of stranded young children, as well as their attempts to intimidate the press and local officials on the ground. Last weekend, as the country awaited the arrival of Hurricane Rita and the possibility of deluged New Orleans besieged yet again, images from the Gulf Coast -- gridlocked traffic jams, the hunt for gas and failed evacuation attempts -- splashed across the screen. And a story from the San Francisco CBS affiliate about the National Guard in New Orleans surfaced on The Drudge Report... [ Continue reading: ] Experimental Religion, Pt. 1 Joe Tuzzo: In the records department beneath the New York Criminal Courthouse, Carmen Julia Porfido had a vision of forgiveness. There in the women’s restroom, in the exposed grout beneath a cracked floor tile, the Spanish interpreter saw something, a chance image that triggered inspiration... [ Continue reading: ] How The New Yorker Makes Rick Warren Safe for Secular Consumption J.J. Helland: Too often, the media views the subject of religion in America as a strictly sociological study. Faith is to be interpreted on economic, political and cultural terms -- anything other than as a significant set of religious beliefs that informs people’s lives. The most recent example of this approach is found in the September 12th issue of The New Yorker. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, a bestselling work of pop sociology on how people follow trends, profiles the evangelical pastor Rick Warren, founder of the hugely successful Saddleback megachurch and author The Purpose-Driven Life,a bestselling work of pop theology on why people should follow one particular trend. [ Continue reading: ] Xian Ed 101: How to Eat Spotted Owl When asked how they heard about Summit [Christian defense workshops for college students], several students can't remember. 'Everyone knows about Summit,' one of them says." Everyone. But if that doesn't include you... [ Continue reading: ] Play It Again, Sam Christian Right reactions to the latest Pledge of Allegiance news... [ Continue reading: ] Heavens Above! (Politics Below) Nick Street asks why Christian conservative media is so literally down to earth. [ Continue reading: ] Media Crit, The Next Generation A letter to the editor of The Revealer: "i'm 13 in 8th grade and your article gives no information at all! i need information on a paper i have to do and you have been no help at all! -- kecia pratt,13, sandy creek new york" [ Continue reading: ] Rock n' Roy (Moore, Moore, Moore!) "Like a lot of celebrities, the Rock is smaller than you expect it to be..." No, not the awesome wrestling star of Walking Tall and this summer's Will Rogers Institute pre-movie guilt trips. The Rock, dude, as in Judge Roy... [ Continue reading: ] "The Rest of the Goddamn Nation" Those aren't the words of a starving prisoner of the New Orleans Superdome, radicalized by the realization that he or she may well die for lack of a school bus. They're the words of Col. Terry Ebert, director of Homeland Security for New Orleans. FEMA's response -- or lack thereof -- he told The New York Times, has been "criminal." Also notably lacking in the response to this disaster are suggestions that Katrina is a punishment sent by God. When the tsunami struck Asia, such notions came from across the spectrum, but most pungently from Christian conservatives who noted that Aceh, an "exporter of radical Islam," as National Association of Evangelicals president Ted Haggard put it, had been hardest hit. Such neanderthal theology apparently does not apply to the U.S. Rather, the God invoked most often now is the distant, inscrutable deity responsible for other no-fault acts such as earthquakes and tornadoes. The "acts" of this God are not willful so much as "natural" -- hence the rise of the term "natural disaster" in the late 19th century. "The concept of an act of God implied that something was wrong," writes scholar Ted Steinberg in an important book called Acts of God: An Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America, "that people had sinned and must now pay for their errors. But the idea of natural disaster may have implicitly suggested the reverse, that something was right, that the prevailing system of social and economic relations was functioning just fine." Indeed. The cavalry -- or, in this case, the shock troops -- are on their way to protect those economic relations. Three hundred troops directly from Iraq have landed in the city, and "they have M-16s, and they're locked and loaded," blusters Louisiana Governor Blanco. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will." In addition to bullets, the rescuers are bringing Bibles. Crates of them reportedly await refugees in Houston, and FEMA has listed Pat Robertson's "Operation Blessing" as a suitable destination for donations. But if this is a religion story, it's not about an act of God or the banal use and abuse of the Bible as substitute aid for people dying of literal thirst; it's about sin. And no vague, blustery "pride of man" stories about ill-preparedness or mistakes by the Army Corps of Engineers will address the original sin of this event. We need theologically-charged, morally outraged, investigative historical reporting to tell us why and how the dead of New Orleans died, and when their killers -- not Katrina, but the developers and politicians and patricians who are now far from the city -- began the killing. It wasn't Monday, and it wasn't last week. We need journalists, not just historians, to look deeper into the American mythologies of race and money, "personal responsibility" and real responsibility. This isn't a religion story because God acted, but because people acted. It's not about what they didn't do, it's about what they did do, under the cover of civic development and urban renewal and faith-based initiatives that systematically eradicate the possibility of real, systemic response to a crisis that is more than a matter of individual souls. The root of the word "religion," "religare," tells us what kind of religion story can be reported from the Superdome. Religare means "ties that bind." Those should be bonds of community. But in New Orleans -- and in every other poverty-stricken city in America -- they're chains. --Jeff Sharlet [ Continue reading: ] Glick and Snip Hey fellas -- been circumcised lately? If so, Slate's Emily Bazelon wants you, for a survey on "optimal pleasure." (Was sex better before, or after?) What's the occasion? The publication of Marked In Your Flesh: Circumcision From Ancient Judea To... [ Continue reading: ] 49,999 Girls Gone Wild "Swazi females drop chastity tassels," reported CNN on August 22, describing a warm-up event to a ritual dance of 50,000 virgins who perform bare-breasted for Swaziland's King Mswati, who will pick one lucky girl to be his bride. CNN loves it -- and so do, one suspects, the Christian conservative activists who preach abstinence as the only solution to Africa's AIDS crisis... [ Continue reading: ] Obsessive-Compulsive Buddhism Emma Snyder on staying clean in a Buddhist monastery: "Over the years, it's gone through stages, this hand-washing: extreme obsession, mild obsession, personal quirk, obsession again, then just talent, sometimes funny story, sometimes obsession still. It's been a problem in... [ Continue reading: ] Spiritual, But Not Newsworthy Newsweek's spiritual hard-sell. [ Continue reading: ] The Only Jew For Miles Gordon Haber, an American Reform Jew kneels with Poles in search of the Black Madonna and finds only the blank spaces of a nation that has erased its past. [ Continue reading: ] High Lonesome Gospel Sharlet: Oxford American's annual Southern music issue is on the newsstands, complete with a CD of the old and the new, the heroes and the scoundrels and the unjustly forgotten. There's Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Notes for the Uninitiated," on Erykah Badu; Kevin Canty on Nat King Cole; J.T. LeRoy on his momma pole-stripping to Loretta Lynn; Paul Reyes on Zora Neale Hurston, previously not known for hoodoo and crow dancing; Carol Ann Fitzgerald on seduction and a spiritual by blueswoman Bessie Smith; and David Dark declaring that it's all God, even when it's not. The Revealer usually hates theme issues, but Oxford American A) encourages its writers to mix genres, to blend criticism and essay and reportage, to take the "theme" as a point of departure rather than a destination; and B) invited me to do just that, about the Reverend Al Green... [ Continue reading: ] Our Most Famous Christian The most boring argument about Christianity is that it is GOOD, or that it is BAD, terms that should be restricted to kindergarten use. Example: The 20th Century's Most Famous Christian loved studied the teachings of Jesus and especially loved the Golden Rule, "Love your neighbor as you would love yourself." He deplored “the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends," and warned against. He could be a little strict -- the Ten Commandments, he insisted, must be followed at all times -- but he recognized that different people understood God in different ways. Who was this broadminded fellow? Click here for a surprise!< [ Continue reading: ] Slut for Faith A self-described "slut for faith" offers a tip for marital bliss: Don't fake it. That is, don't get married in a house of God unless you need his blessing to make it real. [ Continue reading: ] Incommunicado The Revealer is pleasantly incommunicado. We'll return July 25th. [ Continue reading: ] A Time Before the Word "Fuck" Bernard Goldberg became a hero of the right when he published Bias, his insider account of what he argues is CBS' liberal agenda. Now, he's back, with another hard-hitting expose: 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is #37). Very few conservatives make the list, but Goldberg says that's beside the point. What's the point? Well, as best as we can tell from Goldberg's appearence on Jon Stewart's Daily Show, it has something to do with a golden time in America when even "a drunk in a bar" wouldn't use the word "fuck." Ah, the golden age -- please, take us back to the Garden, Bernard! Stewart, meanwhile, has other ideas. [ Continue reading: ] Digital Fetishistic Hasidic Graffiti Artist Elliott Malkin writes The Revealer to inform us of his construction of a semacode eruv. One of these two words is Hebrew, one is digital. Visit Elliott's site to find out which is which! [ Continue reading: ] Spinning the Gospel Evangelical leader Rob Brendle debates media religion with The Revealer's Jeff Sharlet in the nation's only gay cowboy tabloid. [ Continue reading: ] Christianity Ha-Ha In about 36 hours, 1,000 pastors from around the country are coming to my megachurch, where I have worked for the last six years. They are coming for a pastors' conference to learn how to run their churches more effectively. My job is to make them laugh... [ Continue reading: ] The Shape of Journalism to Come Sharlet: This fall, I'll be teaching The Revealer as a text and as an assignment for a group of journalism graduate students here at New York University, as part of a seminar in magazine writing called "Journalism Faces Faith." As I finalize the syllabus, I'm hoping Revealer readers will help me select work with which to train the next generation of journalists... [ Continue reading: ] Night Train to Marrakech Reza Aslan on the clash of monotheisms as seen from the cramped quarters of a sleeper car. [ Continue reading: ] Bordello of Prayer Darcey Steinke: "Up until that year, my most developed internal incantations had to do with fantasizing about sex. Maybe because of this, my first attempts to pray resembled scenes from a Victorian bordello. My cloud was purple, like the purple smoke I’d once seen at a Prince concert, and I imagined myself lying in front of the swirling mass in a green velvet gown. I rested there on a warm blanket and was comforted by the idea that, though hidden in vapor, I was in the presence of God..." [ Continue reading: ] If You Were a TV Producer If you could produce a TV program about religion, what would it look like? Who would you interview? What questions would you ask? Think about it, and we'll pass on your suggestions to PBS producers looking for new ideas. What would make a good public programming about religion, any religion? [ Continue reading: ] Miracle Meter Former Revealer Kathryn Joyce calls our attention to this startling "miracle" news: Ethiopian lions with feminist tendencies rescue 12-year-old girl from patriarchal folkways! There's not really much to add to that, but we'll take the opportunity to announce a new Revealer project, Media Miracle Meter. The next time you read about a miracle, email us at the.revealer at nyu.edu. We'll keep count of the types of miracles the press loves to report most, and start developing a picture of the signs and wonders with which a rational press interprets an irrational world. [ Continue reading: ] You Get the Gods You Deserve Matt Taibbi as Jeremiah, with new Lamentations for the present moment: "America is dying. You could smell it at the Michael Jackson trial. Snapshot from the end of the case: It is early on a Tuesday morning on the last week of the proceedings. The verdict is days, perhaps hours, away. The courthouse compound is in an advanced zoolike state. The pro-Jackson crazies have descended en masse for the verdict, and they are fighting, in some cases with fists, to get places in front of the cameras. At the courthouse gates, a fat creep from Tennessee named BJ -- journalists have dubbed him 'Superfan' -- is pushing two Polish girls aside so that his weirdo buddies can dance, out of tune, to 'Black or White,' for the amusement of a row of mute European photographers. One of the shooters takes a place on the Tennessean's ladder, which he stands on every morning to cheer for Michael. 'Watch the fucking ladder!' BJ shouts... This is a deathbed scene." [ Continue reading: ] Eat God Now Our favorite kind of religion is the kind you can eat. "And then God revealed to me how to barbecue,how to cook it, how to make the spices and everything," Pastor Clevester Williams tells BBQ devotee Patrick Hirsh. Hirsh declares L.A.'s finest that of Williams' "barbecue church" -- Prayer Assembly Church Of God In Christ -- a house of worship built on BBQ. On Weekend America (scroll down and listen). [ Continue reading: ] The Sun Shines on Eternity The New York Sun, Seth Lipsky's young conservative daily, has yet to make the dent in The New York Times conservatives hoped it would; for better and worse, it's not another Washington Times. But like Lipsky's last effort, his revival of the old Yiddish Forverts as an English-language weekly, The Sun shines brightest at its most eccentric. Today's paper, for instance, features an op-ed on the nature of eternity by the conservative Jewish writer Hillel Halkin. But what makes it really weird is that Halkin states the case for the ancient pedigree of the conservative bete noire of "postmodernism," "moral relativism." [ Continue reading: ] The Yenta What Schooled Her Sharlet: In a few weeks I head up to Boston to answer a few questions for WGBH, one of the flagship PBS affiliates. "What should the American people know about religion?" "What do they want to know about religion?" "What do you think would make an interesting program?" Well, I have lots of answers, but given that I'm responsible for helping to steer the course of public television -- the fate of the nation! -- I keep it broad, so to speak. My answer to all three queries: Food. What we eat is what we believe. Which is why I find the timing of my comrades at Killing the Buddha (at which I've been downgraded to "editor-at-large," because I am, in fact, large, and because I'm too busy Revealing to kill many Buddhas) so perfectly apt. They've finally published the recipe for "Jewish-style Mulligatawny Soup" I've been waiting for, courtesy of Abigail Pickus, who makes it tasty with a tale of the yenta what schooled her: "She was not fat exactly, but zaftig: a token of too many helpings of brisket and kugel..." [ Continue reading: ] Making Torture Beautiful Will the Right cry sacrilege now that the artist who gave us "Piss Christ" has made U.S. foreign policy appear equally seductive? [ Continue reading: ] Jesus is Snippy Saturday Night Live veteran Julia Sweeney joined a Bible study to get right with God. But the Old Testament, she discovered, was not an antidote to moral relativism; it was moral relativism. She held out hope for the New Testament. "I could hardly wait to meet Jesus again. But, oh, dear. Well, First off, Jesus is much angrier than I expected him to be. I didn't know that he was so angry, so much of the time. And very impatient." And snippy, too. Hear, on last week's This American Life, "Godless America." Sweeney also writes a blog where she complains about God. And -- get this, culture warriors! -- she's a writer on Desperate Housewives. [ Continue reading: ] Sermons Most Peculiar The Revealer's been sluggish of late, but we've a revival in the works. This fall, The Revealer will be going bi-coastal, drawing the on the combined powers of NYU's and USC's graduate journalism programs. In the meantime, summer updates will be slightly less frequent, but we'll be publishing some original work by young religion journalists that bears reading and consideration. First, though, we've some catching up to do. Following are several chunks of religion journalism we've been pondering lately. "Religion"? "Journalism"? The terms are vague, which is why The Revealer continues to define them by way of collage, a great big clash of stories and genres and opinions and facts. The stuff of sermons, you might say, only lots more exciting. 1. In his new book, Led Zeppelin IV, techgnostic Erik Davis goes talmudic on the band of our youth. Davis, writes Revealer colleague Mark Dery, "follows the hyperlinks of his sprawling erudition and far-flung interests wherever they lead him, riffing on rock history, fan consciousness, a 632-page crackpot exegesis by a Zep fan-turned-born-again-Christian ('without a doubt the most exhaustive occult reading of Zep yet attempted'), the disembodiment of music in the age of mechanical reproduction, the creepily necromantic nature of dead voices resurrected by the phonograph needle, the 19th century occultist Austin Osman Spare (whose concept of the sigil unlocks the deeper meanings of those inscrutable Zoso glyphs), and the terrifying true nature (now it can be told!) of the 'five seconds of pulsating electronic spooge' that opens 'Black Dog.'" If you dig terrifying true natures as much as we do, enter the sprawling erudition of Davis and Dery in conversation. 2. Speaking of terrifying true natures, few can compete with that of Dr. W. David Hager, a Bush health appointee, as revealed by Ayelish McGarvey in a recent edition of The Nation. What's so scary? "For... seven years Hager sodomized [his wife] without her consent while she slept roughly once a month until their divorce in 2002, she claims. 'My sense is that he saw [my narcolepsy] as an opportunity.'" Yeah, that's scary. But why is it a religion story? Because Hager was and is a prominent Christian conservative speaker and, charges McGarvey, is also a Christian activist in what should be a realm of science -- the FDA's Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs. McGarvey should know -- she's a theologically conservative Christian herself, not to mention one of the most thorough journalists of religion around. This story leaves Hager nowhere to hide -- except for the mainstream press, which barely grazed the story, one of the most disturbing portraits of religious hypocrisy to come out of this administration. 3. Still not scared? Then how about... Satan! Only, it turns out that there's nothing less scary than Satanists in Manhattan. Jim Knipfel of Slackjaw fame celebrates the publication of a new edition of the Satanic Bible by visiting with a disconsolate member of the Church of Satan, recently relocated to Hell's Kitchen, in Manhattan. What seems to be the problem? New York isn't naughty anymore. Ok, agreed; Times Square has become the geographic equivalent of a handi-wipe, sterilizing our sin-natures in anti-septic oceans of advertising. But what's really interesting here is how blandly transparent Satanists turn out to be, lamenting the good old days just like Edith Bunker. This would not strike as unusual were it not for the fact that The Revealer receives at least one email a week accusing us of New York Citified, blue-state, hedonistic elitism. To which our most effective reply is: If this is as carnal as we can be, we've got nothing on Topeka. 4. Onto Lowell, MA, for "Nana Dharma": "Of his grandmother -- who hails from Jack Kerouac's hometown, Lowell, Massachusetts -- Mark DeCarteret says, "She knew 'beat' when it meant working in a mill at sixteen, the thundering of the factory obliterating any attempts at reflection. Her observations are Old World practicality cut with a near Zen detachment. But mostly they're just the words of an elderly woman who can't help thinking that no matter where you stand in this world, it always seems to be on fire..." 5. Also out of Lowell, a new radio show from Christopher Lydon, formerly of The Connection and David Miller: Open Source, one of the first episodes of which features Jeff Sharlet, Real Live Preacher, and Sarah Dylan Breuer, talking about God and godlessness online. Open Source may soon be fully national, but right now it reaches an oddly select audience, airing on public radio stations in Boston, Seattle, and Salt Lake City. Clearly, God has a mission for Jeff Sharlet in Salt Lake City: The very next day, he joined Nick Burns on Radio Free Utah's Radioactive to discuss his most recent Harper's story, "Soldiers of Christ" -- amped up on KRCL's website it should be noted, with the addition of "armed," "fundamentalist," and "extremist," which is, perhaps, a bit extreme, too. [ Continue reading: ] The God That Takes Sufjan Stevens: All the glory that the Lord has made / And the complications when I see His face / In the morning in the window / All the glory when He took our place / But He took my shoulders, and He shook my face / And He takes and He takes and He takes [ Continue reading: ] The End of the World For Dummies A call from a radio producer friend about a week-long "End of the World" special his show is planning (all scenarios discussed) reminded me of an odd and entertaining little book I've had on my desk for some time now, Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse: The Official Field Manual of the End of the World, by Jason Boyett. Doomsayers, religion writers, and religion snickerers alike will benefit from Boyett's "Apocalyptionary," which is an A-Z, slightly snarky glossary of the language with which we know our cosmic comeuppance. [ Continue reading: ] Now Krusty Is A Man Top 10 TV b'nai mitzvahs of all time! But they're all out of order. How can Diff'rent Stroke's Arnold's almost bar mitzvah -- #5 -- rank over Krusty the Klown's adult bar mitzvah on The Simpsons -- perversely ranked at #10? [ Continue reading: ] Love God, Or Love Your Ass "If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might, in fact, have sex with it." -- anti-abortion activist Neal Horsley on the dangers of godless moral relativism and his former passion for his mule, on the Alan Colmes Show. Hear more. (HT: God & Consequences) [ Continue reading: ] The Way Christ Was A Man Eula Biss: "The concept of Christ is considerably older than the concept of zero. Both are problematic, but the problem of zero troubles me more than the problem of Christ." [ Continue readin