Now in bookstores! The Faith Between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of God, by Revealer contributing editor Scott Korb and Killing the Buddha contributor Peter Bebergal. [ Continue reading: ]

American Academy of Religion
Jeff Sharlet: Revealer contributing editor S. Brent Plate writes, "From stone tablets to scrolls, printing presses to the Internet, artists, journalists, and believers of all stripes have used the advanced technology of their age... [ Continue reading: ]

Letting Jesus and Buddha Dance Together: Eve and the Fire Horse
The image of Jesus and the Buddha dancing together in a living room is just one of several images that stick with the viewer of Eve and the Fire Horse, the first feature film by Canadian Julia Kwan. The film expresses all the imagination, all the wild and sometimes zany thoughts, and all the complex social interactions that stand at the heart of religious myths and rituals... [ Continue reading: ]

New York Times Declares Religious Right Dead. Again.
Jeff Sharlet: With "The Evangelical Crack-Up," New York Times conservative beat reporter David D. Kirkpatrick's nearly 8,000-word cover story in last Sunday's magazine, the paper of record has attempted to cement a new chunk of conventional wisdom: The religious right is dead. Again. [ Continue reading: ]

Evangelicals Want Power, and They Have It
Beliefnet's "Blogalogue" on "Evangelicals in Power" continues: Tthe language of sin and evil, anyway, which, depending on how it's used -- as a weapon of dissent -- may be evangelicalism's signal contribution to healthy democracy... [ Continue reading: ]

Upcoming Events
Sharlet: This Sunday, October 21, I'll be delivering "The Carl Lecture" at the United Methodist Church in one of my hometowns, Schenectady, New York. I'll be talking about how and why fundamentalism endures at in American politics regardless of who's in power. [ Continue reading: ]

Movements vs. Media Narratives
Sharlet: Laurie Goodstein's NYT Week in Review essay this past Sunday, "For a Trusty Voting Bloc, Faith Shaken," sums up the new media master narrative on Christian conservatives and politics. That's not a dig. The NYT Week in Review exists to forge conventional wisdom out of the oftentimes well-informed opinions of reporters who spend the rest of the week on the beat. Problems arise when those reporters pile their insights atop a pyramid of old cliches. That's what seems to have happened here: Noting that no GOP candidate has won the widespread support of Christian conservatives, Goodstein suggests that Christian conservatives have become for the Republican Party something like black voters are to the Democratic Party -- a necessary base that nonetheless doesn't drive the agenda. Such an argument rests on several media generalizations, useful to daily reporting but not really representative of reality... [ Continue reading: ]

A Mighty Beard
In "Onward Chrisian Scholars," (NYT Magazine, 9/30), Molly Worthen profiles New St. Andrew's College in Moscow, Idaho. It's everything the radical-right college could have asked for, but it's also all that I hoped from the author of The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost, an admirable intellectual biography of Worthen's Yale mentor, conservative Iran-Contra diplomat Charles Hill. When Worthen's tribute to her teacher, started under his tutelage, was published last year, The Boston Globe opened its review thusly: "if ever a book arrived begging to have its block knocked off, this is surely it." Then the reviewer went on to lavish praise on the book, despite what he saw as its subject's odious politics. "Onward Christian Scholars" shows that such a delicate balance -- essential, I think, to reporting on the religious right -- is Worthen's specialty... [ Continue reading: ]

A Box Labeled "Bomb"
On the anniversary of the Birmingham Church Bombing, Ashley Makar listens to the voice of the killer. [ Continue reading: ]

Help Wanted
In which The Revealer's summer absence is explained and its future presence pondered. [ Continue reading: ]

Hillary's Prayer
For 15 years, Hillary Clinton has been part of a secretive religious group that seeks to bring Jesus back to Capitol Hill. Is she triangulating—or living her faith? By Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet [ Continue reading: ]

Relics and Renovations
Peter Manseau goes behind the news of the recent Turkish elections on the newly-resurrected Killing the Buddha: "The New York Times' coverage of the outcome (“Turk With Islamic Ties Is Elected President”) is a good reminder of all the ways it’s easy to get fumbled up when talking about religion, secularism, and other words with meanings that are hard to pin down." [ Continue reading: ]

Unclean!
In a time when much of the media is writing the Christian Right's obituary for the umpteenth time, Christians United for Israel -- CUFI -- has emerged as one of the new powerhouses of the movement. Its leader, John Hagee, and its theology -- like that of Left Behind, but not as subtle -- is old-school, but its touchy-feely "We love Jews!" sensibility is in keeping with American fundamentalism's attempts to re-brand the faith as gentler and kinder, if just as orthodox underneath. It may be sneakier than that, as Max Blumenthal reveals in his Youtube report from a Washington CUFI powwow, where he broke away from the talking points of Joe Lieberman (he compares his pal Hagee, who blames anti-Semitism on Jewish "disobedience and rebellion," to Moses) and Tom DeLay to talk to actual believers. Theological warnings, security guards, and Christian Zionist interpretive dancing follow.

[ Continue reading: ]

Preachers of Doom
Jeff SharletWhy are we so obsessed with the apocalypse? By "we", I don't mean those of us who actually believe in the imminent end of the world, as foretold by a literalist reading of the Bible (presumably a small share of this magazine's readers), but those of us who find apocalyptic believers -- especially American apocalyptic believers -- to be a source of sufficient anxiety that publishers churn out explanatory volumes such as Nicholas Guyatt's Have a Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans are Looking Forward to the End of the World... Evidently they do. Guyatt's breezy investigation is only the latest response to the success of books that skip the "why" and go directly to The End...

Keep reading at New Statesman [ Continue reading: ]

Fair Vanity
Sharlet: Revealer contributing editor S. Brent Plate sent in the following commentary on Vanity Fair's special July issue dedicated to Africa. I let my politics get the better of me and at first rejected Brent's commentary with a long rant about why. Brent graciously wrote back with his own thinking, and before we knew it we had what's called an "exchange." [ Continue reading: ]

Jim Webb's Never-Ending War
Sharlet: From my latest story in Rolling Stone: "As night settles between the two mountain ridges that rise on either side of Lebanon, Virginia, a rough little strip of a town in the state’s southwestern corner, Senator Jim Webb’s people assemble in the Russell County Courthouse... [ Continue reading: ]

Daniel in the Dino’s Den
Why it would be a sin not to include dinosaurs in illustrated children’s Bibles. By John D. Spalding [ Continue reading: ]

God Squads Face Off!
Sharlet: On NPR's "On the Media," I join the show's Brooke Gladstone and "Media Matter"'s Paul Waldmanto discuss his new study for the liberal media watchdog organization in which he argues that the news media inflates the importance of religious conservatives and ignores the strengths of religious progressives. It's a valuable study for the data it collects about the talking heads who talk the most, and its premise -- that the media's characterization of the right as religious and the left as secular is misleading -- is sound, but I can't follow Waldman further than his diagnosis. My problem? "Media Matters"' prescription, which seems to be to match the Right's talking heads with talking heads from a mythical land known as the "center." [ Continue reading: ]

The New Evangelical Style
Credit to the NYT's Michael Luo and Laurie Goodstein for looking beyond the new conventional wisdom on evangelicalism... [ Continue reading: ]

Forgetting Falwell
The media goes mellow for the culture war's fallen general, overlooking the casualties he left behind. By Diane Winston [ 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: ]

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: ]

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: ]

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: ]

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: ]

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: ]

Born Free?
Kathryn Joyce on Southern Baptist big Al Mohler's Brave New World... [ Continue reading: ]

We Don't Need No Education!
Jon Stewart talks to Boston University Religious Studies Chair Steve Prothero about religious literacy: Prothero apparently thinks it'd be a good idea for American students, and even American politicians. Doesn't this dude know we're living in the space age? How could understanding the difference between a Sunni and a Shia possibly effect our modern world? Watch the show to find out. Or, better yet, buy the book. [ Continue reading: ]

Faith-Based Democrats?
The Winter 2007 issue of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin is an especially good issue of a magazine that ranges between liberally pious, bland, and brilliant. This edition contains much that's in the third category, but only one short piece out of the three I'd planned to link to is online... [ Continue reading: ]

Say It Ain’t So! Harper San Francisco—Now a HO?
John D. Spalding Publishers Weekly reports that Harper San Francisco has changed its name to Harper One. The reason? [ Continue reading: ]

Bono For Sale
From Christianity Today, an evangelical magazine, we learn that Bono has a new book coming from the conservative W Publishing Group. It's 64 pages, Bono's snapshots of Africa ("Africa is sexy" he informs us) interspersed with the text of his 2006 address to the National Prayer Breakfast. From both lefty CounterPunch and not-so-lefty Advertising Age, meanwhile, we learn that Bono may be peddling bullshit... [ Continue reading: ]

Amongst White Clouds
Friday, March 9: The Center for Religion and Media presents a New York screening and discussion of Amongst White Clouds, a journey into the hidden tradition of China’s Buddhist hermit monks living in scattered retreats dotting China's Zhongnan Mountain range raises questions about their former marginalization, and current rediscovery, as religious practices revive in the People’s Republic. A discussion between filmmaker Edward Burger and anthropologist Angela Zito will follow the screening. Details... [ Continue reading: ]

Cannibals and Heretics
Global warming causes cannibalism in polar bears, say scientists. Things are heating up at the National Association of Evangelicals, too, and Christian conservatives are getting hungry for their own.The New York Times noted on Saturday, a mini-purge is being attempted in evangelicaldom, with prominati such as James Dobson, Gary Bauer, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, Vision America's Rick Scarborough, grand-schemist Paul Weyrich, and 20 other evangelicals influential in Christian broadcasting, lobbyist, and theological circles, urging the National Association of Evangelicals, still smarting from the Haggard scandal, to retire their V.P. of government affairs: the national poster-child for evangelical environmentalism -- aka "creation care" -- Rev. Richard Cizik. [ Continue reading: ]

Leave Ted Haggard Alone
Sharlet: The NYT reports today on more trouble for Ted Haggard's Colorado Springs New Life megachurch, forced to lay off staff following a decline in giving in response to Haggard's meth-fueled gay sex scandal. The Times' report is a weak little story, suggesting a straightfoward connection between the decline and Haggard's fall. That's no doubt part of it, but let's give credit where it's due... [ Continue reading: ]

Jewish Encounters With the Christian Right
Sharlet: I'll be joining four other Jewish journalists for a panel discussion, "Jewish Encounters With the Christian Right," sponsored by Makor and the 92nd St. Y., on Wed., March 14, a 7 pm. [ Continue reading: ]

Blowing the Whistle on Wade Horn
A high-ranking cabinet official in charge of $47 billion in funds decides to toss a million bucks to an organization he started in his kitchen. Said organization espouses radically controversial views disputed by many scientists. Sound like a story? [ Continue reading: ]

A New Front in the Abortion Wars
Some journalists will look on "UNdoing Reproductive Freedom: Christian Right NGOs Target the United Nations" with skepticism for its provenance in an unabashedly liberal think tank. That's fine, but read the report, anyway -- this is a major underreported story. Why? Maybe because most reporters assume the internationalism of the United Nations mirrors standard issue liberal politics in the U.S. Maybe because the U.N. only makes the papers when there's an issue of war and peace at hand. Maybe because fifty years of right wing agitation have successfully produced a mainstream master narrative about the U.N. as irrelevant. Of course, all too often the U.N. is irrelevant; but not always, as these anti-abortion activists understand. [ Continue reading: ]

A Funny, Chilling, Serious, Even-Handed Look at Bush's Religion
Jeff Sharlet: This Friday, March 2, the Center for Religion and Media will present a free screening of With God on Our Side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right (David Van Taylor and Calvin Skaggs, 1996, 100 min.) at New York University's King Juan Carlos Center, 53 Washington Square South at 3 pm, followed by a discussion with filmmaker David Van Taylor which I'll be moderating. The Financial Times calls With God On Our Side "both chilling and funny." What do those Brits know? The Chicago Tribune says: "Required viewing! Serious, in-depth and even-handed... A compelling history of the evangelical movement's agenda and growing political strength over the last 40 years." [ Continue reading: ]

My Secret War
Jeff Sharlet: Alan Jacobs, a literature scholar at evangelical Wheaton College, did not like my recent Harper's essay, "Through a Glass, Darkly." In his online column for Books & Culture -- sort of a Christian New York Review of Books -- he accused me of being a member of a new "know-nothing party," "largely or wholly innocent of religious culture, religious language, and religious belief," waging "war on religion." I've been discovered.... [ Continue reading: ]

Revealer Plug Special
Upcoming events: Desecrations, screenings, nominations, new publications [ Continue reading: ]

Everybody Loves Jesus
Or, the unofficial lobbying fest known as the National Prayer Breakfast. By Jeff Sharlet. [ Continue reading: ]

Through a Glass, Darkly
What the Christian Right sees when it looks at American history. By Jeff Sharlet. Originally published in the December, 2006 issue of Harper's. [ Continue reading: ]

Workers of the World, Choose Your Venue
Sharlet: I've had occasion to speak in some handsome venues over the years, but I'll probably never find a more lovely forum than Manhattan's midtown General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen... [ Continue reading: ]

Consulting Jews?
Daniel S. Brenner: The marketing of the marketing of Judaism. [ Continue reading: ]

Inside Christian Embassy
Sharlet: An exclusive interview with the chief of staff of Christian Embassy, the behind-the-scenes ministry in the news for proselytizing in the Pentagon. [ Continue reading: ]

Something Other Than Saintliness
Sharlet: Matthew Teague's "The Aftermath," an account of the days following the October 2nd shooting of five Amish school girls and the funeral of Charlie Roberts, the man who shot them is, is as good a piece of magazine writing about religion as I've come across in awhile. The set-up is pure formula: inexplicable tragedy plus media frenzy plus reporter who reports on the reporting. But Teague steps off that well-trod path with his first portrait of a voyeur, a "freelance sociologist" named Jack, who turns out to be looking for confirmation of chaos theory in the aftermath. From there, this piece gets smarter at every turn: a succinct but thoughtful engagement with the Amish concern for martyrdom; an understated interview with the undertaker; a recognition of Amish as both human and ritual-bound, and their seemingly amazing act of forgiveness -- they mourned at the funeral for the killer -- as something other than saintliness. [ Continue reading: ]

Kristof's Big Hitch
Rhea Saran: Let me say, right off the bat, that I respect New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and that I generally applaud his efforts to force the less glamorous world issues onto breakfast tables in the West. So, it was particularly surprising to read his December 10th column “The Muslim Stereotype," and find that his argument fell more than a little flat. [ Continue reading: ]

Smells Like Military Spirit
Jeff Sharlet: The Washington Post's Alan Cooperman reports that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is requesting an inquiry over the propriety of flag officers appearing in a video on behalf of Christian Embassy, a deliberately low-key, behind-the-scenes Campus Crusade ministry for Washington government and military elites. Maybe the timing is coinicidence, but my Harper's cover story reporting for the first time on the video has been on the stands for a month, a fact Cooperman didn't find fit to mention. Oh, well. For what it's worth, here's my account in the Harper's story, not yet online... [ Continue reading: ]

Salvation in Uncertainty
Evie Nagy: This week in the BBC News Magazine, former Anglican priest Mark Vernon writes about the need for passionate agnosticism in a world dominated by antagonistic religious debate. [ Continue reading: ]

Mitt Romney's Underwear
Daniel Sorrell: In 1994 Bill Clinton was asked on MTV if he wore boxers or briefs. At the time, the introduction of undergarment choice into political discourse probably had more to do with the touted hipness of our first baby boomer president and a touchy-feely intimacy that was part of his public persona. The ensuing Bush years have been refreshingly free of probing questions about undergarments and their attendant political meanings. With the upcoming 2008 presidential election, the specter of underwear talk looms in the distance, but for completely different reasons. [ Continue reading: ]

Don't Ask, Don't Talmud
Josh Francis: According to the Los Angeles Times, an international rabbinical council may reconsider its bans on gay rabbis and same-sex commitment ceremonies, sparking unease among some in the Jewish community. Ordaining gay clergy has been an ongoing debate in Christianity for some time, and now it seems the big dilemma is facing Conservative Judaism, a movement which includes both traditionalist and liberal strains. [ Continue reading: ]

Senator No? President, Yes! (Well, Maybe)
Jeff Sharlet: Sam "Swedish Fruit" Brownback is one step closer to the White House he'll never visit as anything but a guest of his bi-partisan triangulation buddy Barack Obama... [ Continue reading: ]

Atari Apocalypse
Clifford Helm: Based on the bestselling Left Behind series, the new video game company Left Behind Games released its first game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces, for PC in late October. The game has been subject to heavy criticism from secular and Christian outlets since it was first announced. Left Behind Games' website describes Eternal Forces as an exciting real-time strategy (RTS) game based on the novels. Players join in the ultimate fight between Good and Evil, either on the side of the Tribulation Forces (Christian) or the Global Community Peacekeepers (secular). [ Continue reading: ]

Thinking Outside the Brain
Cameron Bird: For every individual engaged in the age-old struggle to reconcile naturalism and supernaturalism, struggle no more. Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace has a third way out of the circularity of philosophical quandaries, as he shares in a recent sit-down with Salon. The former Buddhist monk, who gave up a meditative life at the monastery for a Ph.D. from Stanford and a leadership position at the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, tells interviewer Steve Paulson of his dissatisfaction with the absolutism of both traditional religious followers and materialistic scientists. [ Continue reading: ]

A Merge of Civilizations?
Christina Huh: Pope Benedict XVI seems an unlikely candidate to bridge the gap between Catholics and Muslims. He is the fellow who, quoting a medieval text, said that the Prophet Muhammad brought “things only evil and inhuman." However, John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, believes Pope Benedict could be the “unlikely soul mate” to Muslims. [ Continue reading: ]

A Variation on Old Themes
Nora Connor: The midterm elections in the U.S. weren't the only ones loaded with the rhetoric of faith, but if you've been reading the newspaper, you could be forgiven for thinking that Nicaragua's presidential election, which took place on November 5, was all about the Cold War. [ Continue reading: ]

Red State Revealer Radio
Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet will be discussing his December Harper's essay "Through a Glass, Darkly: How the Christian Right is Reimagining American History" with Texans and Utahns on Monday, November 27th. Both shows are online. Texas: "Think" with Krys Boyd, on KERA, noon Dallas time (1 p.m., EST); Utah: "RadioActive", on KRCL, "Radio Free Utah," at noon, Salt Lake City time (2 p.m., EST). The article won't be online until the magazine is off the newsstand, but blogger Prairie Weather has posted a good chunk of it. [ Continue reading: ]

Madonna on the Cross, Again
S. Brent Plate: Madonna is on the cross again. Though if you were one of the millions with nothing better to do on the eve of Thanksgiving than tune into NBC, you missed it. [ Continue reading: ]

Parsing the Veil
Christina Huh:In the midst of the battle over Muslim head coverings – most recently, the Dutch government’s proposed ban on the burqa – a variety of Muslim views have begun to appear in the press. [ Continue reading: ]

Reporting Canada's Christian Right
Rawan Jabaji highlights the shortcomings of a recent New York Times piece and asks the questions its reporter didn't. [ Continue reading: ]

Forgetting the Religion
Nicole Greenfield: The Washington Post completely missed the religion part of a religion story published in today's paper. [ Continue reading: ]

Steve Earle's Brother Knew Ted Haggard Was Gay
Jeff Sharlet: Revealer radio: First up, West Coast Revealer editor Peter Manseau on tonight's (Sunday, Nov. 19) "All Things Considered" with a commentary titled "Life as a Monk is a Constant Temptation." Peter's not trying to tell us something personal -- he's a happily married dad, but as the son of a Catholic priest, he knows a thing or two about celibacy and its discontents, in the news due to the Vatican's shocking re-affirmation of no-naughy for the priesthood. Tomorrow (Mon., Nov. 20): me, on Air America's "Rachel Maddow Show," discussing "Through a Glass, Darkly: How the Christian Right is Reimagining U.S. History," in the December issue of Harper's Last and -- let's be honest -- least, the "KGB Bar Radio Hour", hosted by Mark Jacobson and Miki the MILF, with special guests 70s porn star Jamie Gillis, two Houdini biographers, me -- and surprise guest Steve Earle, one of my musical heroes and of special interest to Revealer readers for his 2002 song, "John Walker Blues." How did I earn a spot in such company? By not knowing that Ted Haggard was gay. But Steve Earle's brother, who works at the Colorado Springs airport, did. [ Continue reading: ]

NYT, Speaking in Tongues
Jacqueline Schneider: For those who know little about science but love being the expert on everything, The New York Times’ “Science Section” provides empirical data in bite-sized packages. The palatable narratives usually simplify highly nuanced studies and offer entry into the field’s most recent and exciting developments. Perfect for the latest study that shows wine is bad for you, or how some Peruvian rodent’s nest provides us with carbon dating information. But that every facet of human life can be measured by this data is as insular a form of analysis as applying biblical minutia to prove Harry Potter is the anti-Christ... [ Continue reading: ]

The Perceived Threat
Blaire Molitor:It appears there is no greater transgression in America than atheism. In his article for U.S. News & World Report, Jay Tolson makes little attempt to hide his distaste for atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. The piece, initially presented as an examination of the current popularity of books with atheist themes, ultimately attempts to undermine every issue atheists explore. [ Continue reading: ]

The Gallery of Fallen Leaders
Nicole Greenfield: In an attempt to bring some kind of normalcy to Ted Haggard's fall, Beliefnet has put together a "Gallery of Fallen Religious Leaders" -- photos and profiles of twelve others who have "engaged in behavior contradictory to their teachings." [ Continue reading: ]

A New Atheism?
Cliff Helm:A recent package of articles from Wired explores the philosophy of the intellectual movement known as New Atheism. With “Battle of the New Atheism,” contributing editor Gary Wolf delves into the principles and possibilities of what is sometimes called the “fundamental atheism.” Trying to understand the reason and logic of the movement, Wolf assumes the role of “spiritual” journeyman, and discovers that New Atheism comes with its own set of absurdities. [ Continue reading: ]

Ellen Willis, 1941-2006: Sex and Hope and Rock and Roll
Ellen Willis, one of The Revealer's favorite journalists, died today of lung cancer, at age 65... [ Continue reading: ]

There's Something About Muslims
Bridget Purcell: "There must be something about the Jews; they upset me physically." This is how Sartre summarized the anti-Semite's position in his 1946 indictment of anti-Semitism, Reflexion sur la Question Juive. This argument, which he encountered "thousands of times" in mid-20th century Europe, cites feelings of discomfort with Jewish culture as evidence that there is something objectively alien and suspicious about it. Sixty years later, a similar logic runs through the debate over the place of Muslims in European culture. [ Continue reading: ]

The Harder They Fall
Jonathan Ebel and Anthea Butler, historians of American religion, review the week in God, XXX edition (starring Rush Limbaugh and Ted Haggard).< [ Continue reading: ]

The Bimo Records
Join Center for Religion and Media co-director Angela Zito this Saturday, November 11, at the American Museum of Natural History where she will introduce Chinese director Yang Rui's film and lead the Q and A discussion with Rui after the screening. The film is called "The Bimo Records" and will be screened at 12:45 pm as part of the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival at the Museum. It is a "beautiful documentary film about the lives and communities of three shaman's in China's southwest: the good-magic shaman, the revenge-magic shaman and the Communist cadre shaman." This event is sure to engage, educate, and inspire. You don't want to miss it. For more information and details, click on the link above. [ Continue reading: ]

The Trials and Tribulations of Ted Haggard
Christie Rizk traces the narrative arc of Ted Haggard's downfall and wonders if the media will ever see the bigger story. [ Continue reading: ]

Foreigner’s Gifts to Afghanistan*
Abubakar Siddique: Five years after the October 7, 2001 US-led military coalition attack on the Taliban and the al-Qaida army they hosted in the parts of Afghanistan they ruled, Afghans are the fodder of endless wars in this Central Asian highland. [ Continue reading: ]

The Times Misses Again
Rhea Saran: In the midst of heated debate about whether practicing Muslim women should be allowed to wear full veils in Britain – and what that means for integration – came an article in the New York Times, titled “Islamic Schools Test Ideal of Integration in Britain” (October 15th). It seemed a natural branch out from the central issue of integration, except that, after reading the piece, one felt that a more apt headline would have been: "Fear and Resentment put Islamic School Funding in Jeopardy" -- if only the writer had acknowledged that as being the main issue surrounding the debate. [ Continue reading: ]

An Eruv Runs Through It
Joshua Francis: The construction of an eruv is stirring some controversy in several West Los Angeles beach communities, according to the Los Angeles Times. An eruv in Jewish tradition is a “living barrier” that creates an area in which Orthodox Jews can perform certain acts on the Sabbath. Yet the report is a bit unclear as to the purpose of the eruv, and fails to provide background on the religious reasoning behind it. [ Continue reading: ]

Haggard's Downfall
Jeff Sharlet: I was relaxing this afternoon, watching an episode of Big Love, the HBO series starring Bill Paxton as a Mormon hiding his polygamous life, when I heard from from "The Peter Boyles Show" in Denver: "Your buddy Ted Haggard's in a shit storm." [ Continue reading: ]

Election Polemics
Markus Dressler on Congressman Peter King's Sufi connection to anti-Islamic bigotry. [ Continue reading: ]

Faithful Politics
Lilly Fowler: In Salon this week, Michael Scherer has a piece on a Democrat’s run in the state of Tennessee. According to Scherer, Harold Ford Jr. “hopes to become the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction by appealing to religious voters.” [ Continue reading: ]

Last Season's Fashions
Lamar Clarkson: Church services are full of refrains. So are commercials. Another institution given to chanting is the New York Times, which can’t stop testifying to the high-powered advertising team that God’s people have formed with Mammon. [ Continue reading: ]

Dawkins in the Hot Seat
Cameron Bird: Writing in this week's New York Times Book Review, Jim Holt takes on Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion. His analysis is both respectful and critical, calling the Oxford evolutionary biologist the leader in his field, but arguing that he bypasses "the intellectual hard work" in attempting to debunk arguments for the existence of God. Holt joins a growing list of journalists who have come armed with challenging questions for Dawkins on his book tour. [ Continue reading: ]

A Dangerous Precedent
Rabia Mughal: A news story in the British paper Daily Mail last week revealed that teaching assistant Ayesha Azmi worships at the same mosque as Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the July 7th suicide bombers. Azmi recently made headlines when she was suspended from the Headfield Church of England Junior School for refusing to take off her veil at work, lost a discrimination case, and received 1100 pounds for victimization. Even though the Daily Mail has a right-wing stance, and has been accused of racism by some critics, there is still something disturbing about the construction of this story. [ Continue reading: ]

Torture, Photography, and the Limits of the Secular
Photos from Abu Ghraib raise questions about the limits of a secular cultural relativism in the face of torture. Given the religious terms that increasingly shape such violence, are there frameworks beyond secularism to oppose coercion of every kind, including sexual? Judith Butler will address this question and more on Thursday, October 26, at New York University. It's an event that shouldn't be missed. Click here for details. [ Continue reading: ]

Reporting the Bigger Factor
Rhea Saran: The half-hour PBS Religion & Ethics Newsweekly program that airs on Saturday morning was fairly predictable in its contents on October 7th. First was an update on the Amish school shootings. And then, of course, was the Mark Foley scandal. The question is: why is a political sex scandal so high in the line-up for a religion and ethics program? [ Continue reading: ]

Y-Love Supreme
Jacob Dorman: They threw the third annual Jewzapalooza Sunday, September 17 at the scratch of grass where 72nd Street meets Riverside Park. When I arrived, around three, it was mainly parents with small children and the grandparent class. There were only a few hundred people there, lollygagging on a grass field that was mainly dirt and sitting on cement bleachers or underneath trees in the back, near the kosher food vendors. Kippot and tsitsis were in effect. [ Continue reading: ]

Selling Coke to Muslims
Blaire Molitor:A recent Fox News report attempts to convince readers that Muslim-themed products mimicing icons of American popular culture are a growing trend in the Islamic world, but the reporter, Catherine Donaldson-Evans, fails to consider one relevant opinion -- that of the Muslims to whom these products are being sold. [ Continue reading: ]

Mabrouk to the Times
Bridget Purcell: Mabrouk to the New York Times, which ran two pieces yesterday providing a rare glimpse of an apolitical Islam. [ Continue reading: ]

For Sale Sign Saint
Christine Hasircoglu: According to a recent Nightline internet broadcast, Saint Joseph is no longer just the foster father of Jesus, he’s also the patron saint of realtors. With the real estate market suffering in Massachusetts, home sellers are looking for divine intervention in the form of six-inch plastic statuettes of the Virgin Mary’s husband. [ Continue reading: ]

All Eyes On Dobson
Nicole Greenfield: In the wake of the Foley scandal, all eyes -- both liberal and conservative -- turned to James Dobson for the evangelical position. At first, Dobson briefly admitted that Foley did wrong, but was quick to lay the ultimate blame on some of his favorite scapegoats. [ Continue reading: ]

Unveiling His Feelings
Bridget Purcell: The hijab makes Jack Straw, a senior British Cabinet member, uncomfortable. In his weekly Lancashire Telegraph column, he writes that he requests Muslim women to remove face coverings during interviews, preferring to see their expressions and meet them "face-to-face." Straw's tone throughout the piece is amiable, for he is simply telling us "how he feels." [ Continue reading: ]

Emulate Thy Enemy
Bridget Purcell: Becky Fischer, the founder of the fundamentalist Christian children's summer program in the new documentary Jesus Camp, finds inspiration in unexpected places. "Where should we [as Christians] be putting our focus? I'll tell you where our [Muslim] enemies are putting it. They're putting it on the kids." Fischer isn't denouncing this strategy; she's marveling at its boldness: "you go into Palestine, and they're taking their kids to camps like we take our kids to Bible camps, and they're putting hand grenades in their hands." [ Continue reading: ]

Jesus Withdrawal
Lilly Fowler: Last Thursday’s Los Angeles Times fronts a clever if tad dismissive piece on “an ‘ATM for Jesus.’” Richard Fausset reports, “Pastor Marty Baker preaches that the Bible is the eternal and inviolate word of God. On other church matters, he’s willing to change with the times.” A group of Protestant churches, most of them in the South, have opted to install ATM machines in order to gather donations from members of the congregation. [ Continue reading: ]

The Idomeneo Ordeal
Bridget Purcell: Once again, the Muslims are raining on everyone’s parade. Yesterday’s New York Times reported that a German theater cancelled a production of “Idomeneo” after receiving an anonymous threat from an incensed Muslim. [ Continue reading: ]

Reasoned Dialogue
Nicole Greenfield: Media Matters for America has done a good job of keeping track of Pat Robertson's reactions to the controversy over the Pope's remarks about Islam. [ Continue reading: ]

Ring of Fire
Sharlet: Mike Papantonio, co-host with Robert F. Kennedy of Air America's "Ring of Fire" had me on the show this week to talk about my old gang The Family. Mike presents the liberal Christian counterpoint to fundamentalism in the new movie Jesus Camp. I might argue some points with him, but it's refreshing to hear a liberal Christian voice that speaks with as much force and conviction as that of the right. He's worth listening to. And he's put together a great program -- this week's guests also included Tim Dickinson, a Rolling Stone colleague who has put together one of the most thorough timelines to date on the lies that led the U.S. to war in Iraq for Mother Jones , William Greider, one of the grand old men of political journalism, and Laurie David on global warming. [ Continue reading: ]

Paranormal America
Melanie Brooks: The recent study released by Baylor University titled "American Piety in the 21st Century: New Insights to the Depth and Complexity of Religion in the US" was the topic of news articles across the country in the last few weeks. While most of them had a common thread, a few dug through the findings to report on less prominent findings. [ Continue reading: ]

Sharlet in the Pulpit
Jeff Sharlet: More like the church basement, I imagine. This Sunday, September 24th, I'll be speaking at Grace Church (802 Broadway at 11th, in New York City) at 10:00 am as part of the church's "Varieties of Evangelicalism" series. I'll be giving a preview of a Harper's piece I've forthcoming... [ Continue reading: ]

Don't Mess With Texas Bible Classes
Blaire Molitor: It’s no surprise that Texans love their Bible as much as their country music, which is why Lisa Sandberg’s piece on the sectarian nature of Bible courses taught in Texas public high schools is anything but unexpected. What no one seems to mention, however, is if are any other religion courses are being offered. [ Continue reading: ]

Unasked Questions for a Not-Quite Apology
Lilly Fowler: Coverage of Pope Benedict XVI’s incendiary speech last Tuesday began almost immediately and refuses to fade away. By Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times’ Tracy Wilkinson had written an article covering the event with the headline, "Pope, Citing Islam, Criticizes Holy Wars and Fanaticism." Within a few days, the Holy Father had issued an apology, of sorts, and Reuters distributed "Pope Expresses Regret for Remarks." By Sunday, the pontiff, in a rare occurrence, had decided to impart a personal and public apology. Yet despite countless articles on the subject, the question of whether or not journalists have done their job is yet to be resolved. [ Continue reading: ]

And When I Mention Religion...
Brent Plate: Noted last week by CNN, NBC, NPR, and multiple newspapers, Baylor University's "Institute for Studies of Religion" has just released the findings of a major survey on religious beliefs in the United States. The full title of the report is "American Piety in the 21st Century: New Insights to the Depth and Complexity of Religion in the US." The introduction begins in a defensive mode... [ Continue reading: ]

God Bless The "Others"
Ibrahim N. Abusharif: I flipped through that Baylor study on American religion, which you cited on your website, and was very disappointed to see that the Muslim presence in America was reduced to anonymity, some nondescript part of the "other" in a pie chart. [ Continue reading: ]

Pills Profit Protest
Don't miss a screening of Pills Profit Protest: Chronicle of the Global AIDS Movement, a film by Center for Religion and Media Fellow Shanti Avigran, with Anne-christine d'Adesky and Ann T. Rossetti, at the CUNY Gradute Center this Wednesday, September 20, from 6:30 to 8:00 pm. [ Continue reading: ]

Orianna Fallaci: She Hated, But She Was Hot
Consider the words of a "provocative" woman, so-called by obituaries around the world: "Jews breed like rats." [ Continue reading: ]

Getting To Know Iran
Nicole Greenfield: In the current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, Bill Berkeley encourages us to really get to know Iran -- not through the American media, but rather through a new group of books by Persian-speaking journalists and scholars which "shed valuable light on a country that has long been prone to journalistic caricature." [ Continue reading: ]

Blind Faith and Gods Elect?
NYU's Center for Religion and Media begins its fall schedule this week with two great events. [ Continue reading: ]

The Not-So-Secret Path to "The Path to 9-11"
Diane Winston: Here’s a tip: Before filing a story, check the archives. Maybe someone else’s reporting will provide context for your own. Sounds like Journalism 101, much too basic for old hands at the nation’s top newspapers. Yet reporters and critics covering the brouhaha over “The Path to 9/11,” the ABC miniseries on the World Trade Center attacks, might have benefited from a June 26, 2005 New York Times article, “The Right Side of the Theatre.” [ Continue reading: ]

Saturday Morning Values
Nicole Greenfield: Conservative media activist Brent Bozell III's diatribe at Townhall.com yesterday is the latest installment in the ongoing argument over censorship and religious content in television and film. His concern now is over VeggieTales, a straight-to-video Christian children's series in which computer animated vegetables act out Bible lessons that will become part of NBC's Saturday morning lineup this fall -- minus the explicit religious references.
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Terrorist Plot Foiled. Media Yawns.
Jeff Sharlet: Seventeen soldiers in the armed forces of a Western European nation conspire to "destablize" the government that gave them their military training. They're crazed with the conviction that Jews are responsible for all their people's troubles. They make no distinction between Israel and the Zionist secret agents they believe run the rest of the non-Muslim world. Fortunately, police foil the sleeper cell with a dramatic raid on the army barracks the conspirators had infiltrated. Unfortunately, they discover that the group had a massive weapons stockpile and plans to use it... Sounds like a story, right? [ Continue reading: ]

Survey Says
By Cliff Helm: According to an LA Times report, the results of a few new surveys on Americans' religious identity say little that is unexpected. The surveys themselves, however, are a cause for concern. The surveys asked 2,003 adults such burning questions as "which should have more influence over the law of the country: the will of the people, or the Bible?" [ Continue reading: ]

Access Holywood
Lilly Fowler: The New York Times’ report on the work done by the Monastery of the Angels in Hollywood is an attention grabber. Despite recent efforts to target Christian audiences with its films, Hollywood retains its image as a place incongruent with the quiet, religious life. Yet while readers might turn to “For 56 Years, Battling Evils of Hollywood with Prayer” because they are curious about the place of religion in a supposedly godless town, it is the glaringly insincere tone of the article they will remember.... [ Continue reading: ]

Jelly Finger Fundamentalism
"Leviticus meets Girls Gone Wild." [ Continue reading: ]

Radio Provocation
The folks at Provoke Radio, a left Catholic program out of Baltimore, asked The Revealer for a link. We were skeptical. But the show is good! Regular Revealer readers know that we're skeptical of the "religious left" -- not its goals, but its potential, usually undermined by flakiness and lousy production values. Provoke--an excellent name--sounds to us like a model for small-scale progressive broadcasting. The mission statement gets mushy--what are the "principles we all share"?--but the program, hosted by Fr. Stephen Spahn, a young Jesuit priest with a great radio voice, is specific, tough, and intelligent. Part of what makes it good is its recognition that religious questions are also often economic questions, and that problems ranging from genocide in Sudan to the abandonment of a generation in underfunded schools demand more than faith and good intentions. [ Continue reading: ]

Hard-To-Get Christians
Liberal bloggers will no doubt embrace the news that conservative Christians are losing faith in the Republican Party... [ Continue reading: ]

The New Christian Zionism
Nicole Greenfield: Max Blumenthal comments on David Brog as Washington's first full-time lobbyist for Christian Zionists--specifically for John Hagee's Christians United for Israel--in a web-only piece for The Nation. [ Continue reading: ]

The Cross and the Sword
Nicole Greenfield: In repsonse to "Fundamentalism's Power Principle," Mark I. Pinsky of The Orlando Sentinel wrote to The Revealer with his interpretation of what might currently be going on within the evangelical movement. He argues, "It is less confrontational and less fixated on abortion and gay marriage, and more amenable to coalitions in support of environmentalism ("creation care")and help for the poor," and provided the example of the Rev. Joel Hunter, leader of a Florida megachurch and author of a new book entitled Right Wing, Wrong Bird: Why the Tactics of the Religious Right Won't Fly With Most Conservative Christians. [ Continue reading: ]

The Facts According to Fundamentalism
Jeff Sharlet: The New York Times is filled with ups-and-downs for Christian conservatives today -- Ralph Reed has lost his primary race for lt. governor of Georgia, Bush vetoed stem cell research, and the Kaczynski twins, darlings of American Christian Right activists (though you wouldn't know it from the Times' coverage) are twisting Poland's crank rightward. But the Times seems most fascinated -- and confused -- by the Christian activists' imperviousness to research undertaken on its own behalf... [ Continue reading: ]

Bidding Once, Bidding Twice...
The New York Times reports on the G.O.P's "faltering" efforts towoo black voters (and wow easily impressed white "moderates") but so thoroughly disregards the role of religion in that strategy that former congressman J.C. Watts, a deeply conservative black Republican buried deep in the story, can sound like the voice of reason... [ Continue reading: ]

Fundamentalism's Power Principle
Writing in The Boston Globe, the eminent historian of religion Harvey Cox sees the "new" evangelical powers such as Rick Warren as much like the old, and he thinks that's a good thing. In Cox' reading, Billy Graham was a nice fella, Falwell isn't, but now American evangelicalism is reasonable again. Well, that's the official story, anyway... [ Continue reading: ]

Sequins and Solidarity Forever
Jeff Sharlet: I received a call the other day from a CBS news producer looking for help on a segment about the new religious left, said by pundits to be in the offing. The man had done his research and understood the complexities of the subject, but still — he needed a talking head, and wondered whom I’d recommend. [ Continue reading: ]

A Different Set of Questions
Diane Winston