[ Continue reading: ]

The Sacred Secrets of Saddam's Super Secret WMDs
Why do people still believe Saddam had WMDs? Because Jesus tells them so. Well, not Jesus, but his modern disciples. Rod Parsley, a rising star of charismatic fundamentalism who's had a heavy impact on national politics, features on his "Breakthrough" program tonight Dr. Perry Stone, an apocalypse scholar who claims top national security sources and Israelis assure him that inspectors discovered enough WMDs in Saddam's bunkers before the war to destroy the world three times over. Why didn't he? Because he wanted to give them to his mortal enemy of Iran, using special airplanes -- with the seats torn out to make room for more nukes! It'd be easy to dismiss this kookiness as just that were it not for Parsley's flock -- they're ordinary Ohioans. His megachurch is one of the most racially-integrated in the country. His followers aren't classic fundamentalists, but in large part people who might have been liberals once -- before Pastor Parsley delivered them the news.

[ Continue reading: ]

Reporters, Report
Reporters, report: The Fall/Winter 2006 edition of Christian Leader, a publication of Pat Robertson's Regent University, declares that 30 % of new school teachers nationwide receive their licenses through an "alternative route to licensure," according to the National Center for... [ Continue reading: ]

Goldilocks Colson
The man sometimes referred to as the Christian Right's "movement intellectual" -- Watergate felon Chuck Colson -- tested out a new meme for a pre-convention meeting of Southern Baptist leaders last night. Part one is the invocation of a familiar enemy for the Christian Right, "Islamofascism." But Colson's upping the ante: "Islam is a vicious, evil," he started to say, before remembering to qualify Islam with "fascism." When Franklin Graham called Islam evil several years ago, even most Christian Right leaders denounced him; will anybody notice when Colson, a more influential figure, declares a third of the world Christendom's enemy? There's more: Christian Right speakers used to pair "Islamofascism" as the threat abroad with "the homosexual agenda" as the threat within. Now, according to Colson, it's Islam and... "a virulent strain of atheism." To review: Islamofascists believe too much, and therefore must be eliminated; atheists don't believe enough, and therefore must be eliminated; but Chuck Colson believes just the right amount, and therefore gets his porridge.

[ Continue reading: ]

Faith Forum Farce
Sharlet: I'll be discussing last Monday's CNN/Sojourner faith forum for the top 3 Dem. contenders on the "Your Call" weekly media roundtable, KALW 91.7 FM, San Francisco, 10-11 am Pacific Time, Friday, June 8. Webcast here. Preview of my comments: What's YOUR biggest sin, Soledad?

[ Continue reading: ]

A Biologist's Book of Revelation
"Munir Virani is a biologist, the name of his field spawning from the Greek root word for life. And yet he and many others in his field have become the equivalent of hospice workers..." Revealer alumnus Meera Subramanian writes about the slow, sad apocalypse of biolgists who are "monitoring to extinction."

[ Continue reading: ]

The Mother of All Atheist Bestsellers
Britannica Blog, published by the Encyclopedia Britannica, speculates on the mother of all atheist bestsellers... The Da Vince Code! It's a provocative thesis, but we're not sure it holds up. The average Da Vinci fan didn't think of the book as an attack on religion, but as a thriller. Those who considered its "philosophy" at all would find it more in line with new age spirituality than atheism. But maybe there is a connection there -- how many Sam Harris/Richard Dawkins/Christopher Hitchens fans are really atheists, as opposed to "spiritual but not religious"? How many read their books not out of antagonism toward all religion, but toward particular manifestations -- militant Islam (Harris and Hitchens) or fundamentalist Christianity (Harris and Dawkins)?

[ Continue reading: ]

Forbidden Fruit Creates Many Jams
That's just one of the strangely ambivalent bits of wisdom in display in Doree Shafrir's illustrated essay on the history of church marquees.

[ Continue reading: ]

Don't Let the Flaps Hit You On the Way Out
The man who built the conservative big tent under which religious and business conservatives partied together is trying to save it from collapse by nudging Pat Robertson and Jim Dobson out into the rain. Grover Norquist speaks to Rolling Stone.... [ Continue reading: ]

No Jesus Jokes, Please
"What's He Doing Here?" That's the title of Nextbook.com's public conference on Jesus in Jewish culture, to be held here in NYC this Sunday, April 29. Some of The Revealer's favorite writers, Jewish and otherwise, will be participating: Ilan Stavans,... [ Continue reading: ]

Military Mythology
Private Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman's brother reject Pentagon mythmaking. The Veterans Administration accepts Wiccan mythology (and why that's good news for First Amendment types, but not good enough).... [ Continue reading: ]

Europe and Her Enemies
It's time for the West to recognize that it is engaged in a clash of civilizations. Europe, the source of all that is good in the West, is under attack by a dark-skinned race that speaks a language unrelated to... [ Continue reading: ]

Big Leagues
Former Revealer contributor(here, here, and here) and NYU journalism grad student Elizabeth Rich makes her Washington Post debut. It's not a religion story, but it's great urban reporting by one of The Revealer's own.... [ Continue reading: ]

Ira Glass, Televangelist
The New Yorker's TV critic, Nancy Franklin, thinks NPR's "This American Life" annoys her because host Ira Glass sticks to structure of a sermon -- anecdote, declaration of meaning. But it goes down smoother on TV, she writes, because "we've... [ Continue reading: ]

Rapture and Rose MacGowan
Sharlet: Bob Garfield and I discuss jihadi rhetoric, mole tactics, naked Rose MacGowan, and how it all relates to Ron Luce's BattleCry movement on NPR's On The Media. Also on the show: Jerry Jenkins, co-author of Left Behind, on the... [ Continue reading: ]

Time's Bad Religion
Sharlet: I disagree with blogger Bruce Wilson's assesment of David Van Biema's Time cover story on teaching Bible-as-literature in public schools, but Wilson is on to something when he puts Time's April 2 American edition next to its international editition.... [ Continue reading: ]

Ethiopia's Ghosts
There's a ghost of a religion story in The New York Times' report on a North Korean arms deal with Ethiopia. The Times rightly focuses on the fact that the U.S. is winking at the violations of its own sanctions... [ Continue reading: ]

"Blog Against Theocracy"
Talk 2 Action is joining with blogger Blue Gal to co-sponsor a "blogswarm" to "Blog Against Theocracy" over Easter weekend. And these lefties are doing more than just talking to one another: Talk 2 Action is claiming the scalp of... [ Continue reading: ]

Bible Time
David Van Biema's latest Time cover story, "The Case for Teaching the Bible," isn't so much a report as qualified advocacy. That makes it a better piece of work than an ostensibly neutral article. Van Biema takes the best efforts... [ Continue reading: ]

Thanks for Lying
Obama's powerhouse pastor, Jeremiah Wright, talks back to The New York Times' Jodi Kantor: "Thank you for engaging in one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years," opens Wright, and then he gets... [ Continue reading: ]

Hanging Ramadan
Patrick Cockburn in Kirkuk adds frightening context to the mainstream media reports on Tuesday's execution of Saddam's VP, Taha Yassin Ramadan, at the leftist website CounterPunch. We've been following Cockburn for awhile, and consider his reports essential for understanding Iraq.... [ Continue reading: ]

Dictatorship Is For Other People
In the Forward, Yossi Alpher says the U.S. must swallow hard, buck up, and install a puppet dictator in Iraq. Because that always turns out well. But Alpher, a former senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, is brave... [ Continue reading: ]

NYT: Lenin Gay? Wink, Wink
“When he thunders his dogma," wrote the cartoonist Robert Minor in 1918, "one sees the fighting Lenin. He is iron. He is political Calvin.” The New York Times reports that the Communist Party USA has just donated its massive archives... [ Continue reading: ]

Captain America, Murdered Mensch
WNYC's "On the Media" interviews Captain America's 93-year-old creator, Joe Simon, who's sitting shiva for the murdered hero. Which raises the question, Was Cap, born to Irish immigrants on the Lower East Side in 1917, secretly Jewish?... [ Continue reading: ]

Switching for Success
The press is portraying Mitt Romney as an opportunistic flip-flopper for his newly-minted anti-abortion views, and pundits wonder if such crass recalibration will end his political career. But The L.A. Times' Janet Hook notes that Romney is in fact part... [ Continue reading: ]

Follow the Golf Ball
If you can't follow the money, take a tour of the real estate. That's what Joe Feuerherd did when the Roman Catholic archiocese of Detroit stonewalled his requests for more information about the investors who made its new luxury hotel... [ Continue reading: ]

Religion As Race
Perhaps American anxieties over the possibility of a black president are being played out not through discussion of race, but religion. First there was the media myth that Obama was a Muslim because his father was, the "responsible" version of... [ Continue reading: ]

Does Obama Hate Yiddish?
Four questions about today's report on growing tensions over Obama's disinvitation of his pastor from his presidential announcement. 1. Why did Ben Wallace-Wells' superb and exciting description of said pastor in Rolling Stone freak out Obama's people, as reported by... [ Continue reading: ]

Whose Bones?
Jesus' bones? Whatever. Peter Manseau is talking about your bones and the mysteries of faith on the Long Island Expressway.... [ Continue reading: ]

Religious Literacy
It's a credit to our friend Steve Prothero's new book, Religious Literacy, an exploration of the subject and argument for religious studies education, that it wins a very positive review in The Washington Post Book World from Susan Jacoby, the... [ Continue reading: ]

Ah, Just Don't F*ck With Anybody
Harper's has just posted the first part of investigative reporter Ken Silverstein's March cover story, "Parties of God: The Bush Doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy." But the portion posted might as well have been titled, "Don't F*ck With... [ Continue reading: ]

"Don't f*ck with the Jews"
Sharlet: John Derbyshire, of The National Review, on lessons for young pundits: "Almost the first thing you hear from old hands when you go into opinion journalism in the U.S. is, to put it in the precise form I first... [ Continue reading: ]

Moral Piggy-Backing
At Talk2Action, an activist-oriented news site about the Christian Right, The Revealer's Kathryn Joyce examines the Christian Right's "moral piggy-backing" on the new William Wilberforce biopic, Amazing Grace.... [ Continue reading: ]

Tune In, Turn On
Sharlet: Maybe it's not money that corrupts, it's media. Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Paul Crouch and his Trinity Broadcasting Network, Ted Haggard, erstwhile media darling, and now Pastor Mike Kestler, the man behind the Calvary Satellite Network. There's something about... [ Continue reading: ]

Great Minds
Declassified! Henry Kissinger and Kirk Douglas discuss God and hot girls.... [ Continue reading: ]

Out, Out, Damned Christians
Out magazine didn't post their feature on queer evangelicals in last month's (February) issue, but it's worth finding the hard copy if you can. The subjects of this story aren't simply gay men who happen to be Christian, a rather... [ Continue reading: ]

Back Soon.
Back Soon.... [ Continue reading: ]

Sam and Pat and Mitt
Sharlet: Has God been talking trash about Senator Sam Brownback to Pat Robertson? A year ago, I published a profile of Brownback in Rolling Stone in which I noted that Robertson, when asked for early favorites for '08, had spoken... [ Continue reading: ]

Azzam the American
Holly Berman: The Revealer has long maintained that most reporters don't pay enough attention to the intellectual development of religious subjects, particularly those defined by their acceptance of and adherence to a creed. So Raffi Khatchadourian's New Yorker profile of... [ Continue reading: ]

What's the Matter With Somalia?
American empire is so 2006 that very few members of the public can even be bothered by a tidy little U.S.-backed invasion like that of Somalia by regional bully Ethiopia -- not to mention a bombing run on the newly... [ Continue reading: ]

The Name "Noam"
Noam Scheiber of The New Republic has written a smart, long profile of Senator Sam Brownback, the most conservative candidate for president. TNR has only posted part of the story online, but it's still worth a look, especially for Brownback's... [ Continue reading: ]

What's Up with Radio?
Greenfield: Christianity Today had an interesting idea to do a four-part series on the current and future state of Christian radio. In the first part, "What's Up with Radio?", Mark Geil provides an overview and asks (but doesn't really answer)... [ Continue reading: ]

Prophetic Preaching
Greenfield: Where have all the prophets gone? That's what Baptist preacher Marvin McMickle asks in his new book which encourages others to reclaim the tradition of prophetic preaching. Apparently he hasn't been listening to Pat Robertson.... [ Continue reading: ]

24 Hour Prayer People
Greenfield: CBN reports on the increasing popularity of the 24/7 prayer movement -- an international and interdenominational movement dedicated to non-stop prayer. The piece focuses on Mike Bikcle and his International House of Prayer, but unfortunately makes no mention of... [ Continue reading: ]

The Late Night Show
Nicole Greenfield: In an article in today's New York Times, Salman Masood writes about an eccentricity currently dominating Pakistani prime-time -- a cross-dressing, bisexual man who hosts a talk show as widow Begum Nawazish Ali. But because of bad reporting... [ Continue reading: ]

Read the Fine Print
The Boston Globe's Drake Bennett may be misstating the case when it describes the early Church of Latter Day Saints as a bastion of "left-wing radicalism," but he makes a compelling case that there are serious theo-political obstacles to Mitt... [ Continue reading: ]

Boomtown Blues
Paul Asay, religion reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette, teams up with colleague Dave Phillips to ponder the post-Haggard fate of the city sometimes called the evangelical Vatican. It's an excellent report. Megachurch light shows and Dobson fire-breathing acts are... [ Continue reading: ]

But What Does She Believe?
Holly Berman: The New York Times' David D. Kirkpatrick has been covering evangelicals and politics long enough that we can only guess his story in today's paper is such a useless mess because of a clumsy editor. A wan profile... [ Continue reading: ]

Savages
Sharlet: In Rwanda and Burundi, the American press saw "tribal warfare" -- ancient and savagely natural -- in massacres that were the result, in large part, of 20th-century colonial manipulations. That's how it is in Africa, according to the American... [ Continue reading: ]

On Faith
The Washington Post and Newsweek are collaborating on a new venture called On Faith, a "conversation on religion" which is actually more of a call and response. Every week or so a question ("Is America a Christian Nation?" "What should we tell children about God?") is posed to an impressive list of panelists, whose answers spark mostly civil debate in the comments section. This week's featured panelist is friend-of-the-Revealer Steve Prothero, who takes on the oft-repeated notion that we are all children of Abraham.

[ Continue reading: ]

He Just Wants to Dance
The line that really jumped out at us from the news of the New Jersey legislature's vote for civil unions was this: "But Assemblyman Ronald S. Dancer, a Republican from Ocean County, said that the bill was an affront to... [ Continue reading: ]

"Here and Now"
Sharlet: I was slated to discuss my latest Harper's piece, "Through A Glass, Darkly," on WBUR's "Here and Now," but the revelation of another megachurch pastor's secret gay life recast the conversation -- now it's about the centrality of the... [ Continue reading: ]

Out With the Old
Trouble ahead for the accelerating press narrative of a new "religious left": American Jews aren't just conservative on Israel anymore. The rightward shift of American Jewry has been an ongoing story for some time, but this report in the Forward... [ Continue reading: ]

Smells Like Military Spirit, Part 2
Sharlet: I'll be a guest on Air America's "Rachel Maddow Show" tonight briefly discussing the potential scandal of the Christian Embassy video featuring flag officers with a surprising sense of the chain of command.... [ Continue reading: ]

Dominos
The Ted Haggard domino effect.... [ Continue reading: ]

Free Thinking Penguins
Sharlet: What is it about penguins and God? Whatever the flightless, flippered birds do is taken as revelation of divine will. Mostly, this has been an ugly business, the forced conscription of some harmless birds to right-wing causes. I prefer... [ Continue reading: ]

Somalis in Maine
Greenfield: In this week's New Yorker, William Finnegan has an excellent piece on the Muslim Somali community in Lewiston, Maine. One thing did leave me unsatisfied, however -- there was only one photograph printed with the article. Thankfully, you can... [ Continue reading: ]

United States Artist
Sharlet: Revealer contributor Michael Lesy is one of the first 50 recipients of the $50,000 United States Artist Fellowships in recognition for his work in the visual arts. From the announcement: "For more than 30 years Michael Lesy (b. 1946,... [ Continue reading: ]

Bibilically Illiterate Bible Believers
Greenfield: Today at AlterNet: "The Christian Right Goes Back To Bible Boot Camp." Focus on the Family goes on the road to share the "truth" with biblically illiterate Bible-believing Chiristians.... [ Continue reading: ]

Dear Jim and Chuck
Greenfield: David Kuo tries to set the record straight in an open letter to James Dobson and Chuck Colson posted at The Huffington Post. Asking the men to stop their misrepresentations, Kuo gives a six-point summary of the arguments he... [ Continue reading: ]

Unknown Leaders
Greenfield: A new Barna Group poll has found that "Major Christian Leaders Are Widely Unknown, Even Among Christians." In alarming fashion, the evangelical Group's president, George Barna, interpreted the findings to mean "that Christianity is losing its grip on American... [ Continue reading: ]

Nicaragua's Ban on Abortion
Nicole Greenfield: In a Revealer piece posted yesterday, Nora Connor critiqued major U.S. papers for not reporting the religion part of Daniel Ortega's recent presidential campaign and (re)election. She specifically cited Ortega's push to pass a bill banning abortion in... [ Continue reading: ]

Velvet Revolution in Iran?
Greenfield: Martin Beck Matustik, a Czech-born professor of Philosophy at Purdue, makes a connection between pre-1989 dissidents in Prague and Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, who has become a leader in Iran's nonviolent, democratic movement. He argues that "The specter of... [ Continue reading: ]

Gospel Explosion!
Greenfield: Gospel Information Explosion! A group of evangelical Christians want you to "help save Wal-Mart from the radical homosexual agenda" this Black Friday.... [ Continue reading: ]

Isn't It Ironic?
Greenfield: Rick Warren denies making politcal statements to the state-run Syrian media during a recent visit to the country. In a letter to his congregation, Warren wrote: "Of course, that's ridiculous, but it created a stir among bloggers who tend... [ Continue reading: ]

God Bless Canada
In today's NY Times: "Gay Marriage Galvanizes Canada's Religious Right." This is the latest in a growing file of stories about Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the movement that helped put him in power. Next to Harper, Bush is... [ Continue reading: ]

Al Jazeera English
Nicole Greenfield: Al Jazeera English made its on-air debut today with high hopes of becoming "the first non-Western source to challenge the global info-supremacy of CNN and the BBC." But don't expect to see it show up on your channel... [ Continue reading: ]

Inherently Disordered
U.S. bishops to gays: we welcome you, just as long as you don't have sex.... [ Continue reading: ]

War on Thanksgiving?
Greenfield: A war on Thanksgiving? Quoting Abe Lincoln, Eric Reed pleas for our "thankless society" to forget football and shopping and start contemplating "our blessings and their divine origin."... [ Continue reading: ]

The Aristocrat
Jeff Sharlet: John Wilson, writing from "one of the nerve centers of the evangelical conspiracy" -- he's the editor of Books and Culture, evangelicalism's New York Review of Books -- makes an admirable effort to debunk the secular liberal conception... [ Continue reading: ]

The Wandering Christian
Jesus Camp in exile... [ Continue reading: ]

The Haggard's Tale
Sharlet: The Ted Haggard confessions continue. Haggard, the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, now admits to having sought a "massage" and to having purchased meth, although he says he threw it away. His home church, the 14,000-strong... [ Continue reading: ]

God's Entourage
Christina Huh: An LA Times report on the latest spiritual development in Hollywood offers no trendy red bracelets, no silent births, and none of the “spiritual but not religious” fixings that celebrities are known for. Instead, "God’s Entourage" provides a... [ Continue reading: ]

Islamic Studies Study
Greenfield: A report published today that examined 55 higher education departments and centers in Britain that offer courses in Islamic Studies found that the "institutions are failing to meet the needs of a 21st-century multicultural society," adding that "some departments... [ Continue reading: ]

Jewcentricity
Greenfield: Adam Garfinkle, editor of The American Interest, on Jewcentricity, how it works in the media, and what it means not only for Jews, but for Muslims and Americans too.... [ Continue reading: ]

Relics For Sale
Greenfield: The Los Angeles-based International Crusade for Holy Relics (ICHR), an independent group of Christians, is calling for a boycott of eBay until it does more to stop the sale of bodily relics of deceased saints on its site. The... [ Continue reading: ]

Absolute Nonsense
Greenfield: The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, says the debate over whether Muslim women wearing veils has parallels with the hounding of Jews in Nazi Germany. Finally, somebody sees the "absolute nonsense" of it all.... [ Continue reading: ]

True Objectivity Is Biblical Objectivity?
Greenfield: Martin Olask, a journalism professor at the University of Texas, believes that "the only way to bring true objectivity to journalism is to be shaped by the worldview of the Bible." Huh?... [ Continue reading: ]

I Have To Confess...
Greenfield: "I have to confess, I was going through a nervous breakdown. I was taking pills — tranquilizers. I used to take them all the time. They affected my mind a little bit," admits Rev. Anthony Mercieca, the priest who... [ Continue reading: ]

Hot Topic
Greenfield: Islam continues to be a hot topic in England. Tony Blair backs Jack Straw in the "mark of separation" debate and culture minister David Lammy argues that Muslim extremists should be given a voice in the British press.... [ Continue reading: ]

A New Media Darling?
Greenfield: Mother Jones recently published an article on eccentric preacher K.A. Paul and his meeting with House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Paul claims that during the meeting God convinced Hastert to resign over the Foley scandal -- a claim that Hastert... [ Continue reading: ]

Manseau to Pope: Thanks for the Peg!
Give a listen to a little commentarial jujitsu as The Revealer's West Coast Editor Peter Manseau bends over backwards to turn the newly minted sainthood of a 19th century nun into a plug for his memoir, Vows. It's actually less... [ Continue reading: ]

Dawkins' Child Rearing Advice
Christina Huh: To Richard Dawkins, the most dangerous people are not fundamentalists, but religious moderates who raise children to believe in only one God. In a Salon interview with Steve Paulson, Dawkins says that “to teach children that it is... [ Continue reading: ]

Divine Intervention
Greenfield: Think Progress has a link to a new kind of political ad. Created by Stop 42, a Colorado group opposed to a initiative that would increase the minimum wage annually in that state, it features Moses begging for divine... [ Continue reading: ]

Apple Mecca
Greenfield: The Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in NYC is a "blatant insult to Islam," according to an unspecified Islamic web site.... [ Continue reading: ]

Dismiss The Subverters "El Pronto"
Greenfield: Max Blumenthal's most recent illuminating report in the Nation focuses on a conservative Christian solution to the Foley problem -- fire all gay Republican staffers. Don Wildmon, founder and chariman of the American Family Association, is convinced that a... [ Continue reading: ]

Jews Gone Wild
Greenfield: According to Jerusalem Post Op-Ed contributor and American Orthodox rabbi Shmuley Boteach, American yeshiva students in Israel for their year after high school are "behaving like out-of-control idiots -- either hanging out for hours on end, like so many... [ Continue reading: ]

Radio France
Ecoutez! Revealer's Jeff Sharlet in a radio documentary about creationism in America, on "France Culture," a program of Radio France, the French equivalent of NPR.... [ Continue reading: ]

The Gospel According to Stevie B.
Greenfield: Lauren Sandler, author of Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, has an excellent profile of the Gospel-preaching and dude-speaking Stephen Baldwin as the feature at Salon today. The piece is not only beautifully written, but it also sheds... [ Continue reading: ]

The Four Percent Doctrine
Greenfield: Alternet's Evan Derkacz had a unique response to yesterday's New York Times piece on evangelical pastors' fear "that if current trends continue, only 4 percent of teenagers will be 'Bible-believing Christians' as adults." Derkacz notes that James Dobson used... [ Continue reading: ]

Spirit and Power
Greenfield: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has published a report on Pentecostalism and other charismatic movements based on surveys conducted in ten countries where such brands of Christianity are prominent. The executive summary of the study states,... [ Continue reading: ]

The Gospel of Green
Greenfield: "For Americans, this has been the year the earth turned biblical. Pharaoh may have faced plagues and frogs and darkness; we got Katrina and Rita and Wilma. But this was also the year the environmental movement turned biblical --... [ Continue reading: ]

Pandering to Dobson
Greenfield: Max Blumenthal's account of this year's Value Voters Summit includes a red-faced George Allen, "The Four Horsemen," and a bunch of presidential hopefuls competeting for James Dobson's attention.... [ Continue reading: ]

"Scary" Evangelicals
Greenfield: Ted Haggard condemns Jesus Camp, saying it makes evangelicals look "scary" and that "the filmmakers take the charismatic, evangelical jargon too literally and portray the children's and Fischer's 'war talk' as violent and extremist, when it's just allegorical."... [ Continue reading: ]

A Christian Soldier Court-Martialed
Prediction: George Allen, Virgina Senator, Republican presidential hopeful, is toast. Why? Because he used a bit of French slang, "macaca," the equivalent of "nigger," for an Indian-American volunteer in his opponent's campaign? Because of new revelations from his old football... [ Continue reading: ]

Hilliary Clinton Worse Than The Devil
Greenfield: "I hope she's the candidate. Beacuse nothing will energize my [constituency] like Hillary Clinton...If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't." -- Jerry Falwell at the Values Voter Summit hosted by prominent conservative Christians this weekend. Apparently Falwell missed Hugo Chavez's recent... [ Continue reading: ]

Monopoly On Reason
In this week's Nation, two professors at the American University of Beirut question the potential for inter-religious dialogue when the Pope claims to have a monopoly on "reason."... [ Continue reading: ]

The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend
Greenfield: Many have reported on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's comment that referred to President Bush as the devil. Some have reported on Chavez's recently declared intention to pursue nuclear technology. Few, however, have made explicit the newly formed alliance between... [ Continue reading: ]

Whose Cross Is It?
Beliefnet's Paul O'Donnell tells the story behind Madonna's controversial mock-crucifixion.... [ Continue reading: ]

Front-Page Privilege
Greenfield: Apparently speed dating wasn't the only thing going on at this year's Islamic Society of North America convention. In a follow-up to yesterday's front-page story on matrimonial banquets at the convention, the NY Times decided to report the election... [ Continue reading: ]

Faith on Film on Radio
Sharlet: I'll be discussing FoxFaith's new evangelical film division live on BBC Four radio tonight, sometime between 5:30-6 tonight.... [ Continue reading: ]

Divining The Brain
"We may really need to develop a new kind of science -- or at least a new approach to science -- that would keep the strengths that science already has, but add a new layer to it that has to... [ Continue reading: ]

Speed Dating for Muslims
Greenfield: The New York Times explores the world of Muslim speed dating at the Islamic Society of North America’s annual convention in Chicago.... [ Continue reading: ]

FoxFaith
Greenfield: The LA Times reports that Fox has created a new division that will focus solely on producing Christian films. FoxFaith plans to release at least a dozen films per year, each based on a Christian bestseller and with a... [ Continue reading: ]

Blogging the Bible
Greenfield: Back in May, David Plotz at Slate.com took up the project of blogging the Bible. His goal: "to find out what happens when an ignorant person actually reads the book on which his religion is based." Well, he's still... [ Continue reading: ]

Camp Out
Greenfield: When Jesus Camp, a documentary which follows evangelical children to the Kids on Fire Summer Camp, opens this Friday in New York City, it's sure to receive even more press than it has already gotten. But there's another Bible... [ Continue reading: ]

Bringing Sex Out Of The Shadows
Southern preacher Joe Beam's message to married evangelical Christians: have hotter sex.... [ Continue reading: ]

The Master Plan
In case you missed it, Lawrence Wright had an excellent piece on Al Qaeda and the future of jihad in last week's New Yorker. You can read it here.... [ Continue reading: ]

The Pope and Islam
The UK-based Guardian Unlimited realizes that outrage over Pope Benedict XVI's comments about Islam is a big deal. They've put an update as the top story on their website today, they've included a transcript of the speech, they even have... [ Continue reading: ]

Hell House in New York City
"Hell House," the evangelical version of a haunted house which portrays the consequences for sins like abortion and homosexuality to scare visitors, is coming to New York City this fall in the form of a theatrical production. Keenan Roberts, senior... [ Continue reading: ]

Bush Declares Third Awakening
Speaking to a small group of conservative journalists on Tuesday, President Bush said that he senses a "Third Awakening" of Christian devotion currently happening in the United States. National Review's Rich Lowry and Kate O'Beirne were in the Oval Office... [ Continue reading: ]

Farrakhan and Parking Tickets
Yesterday's Washington Post ran a story on Keith Ellison, a Democrat running for an open House seat in Minnesota's largely Democratic 5th Congressional district. If elected, he'd be the first Muslim elected to Congress. The article tiptoes around the issues... [ Continue reading: ]

Spiritual Elements
The folks over at GetReligion have put out a call to help them track the "spiritual elements" in today's 9/11 anniversary coverage. Post a comment to send a URL link or just check out what they've uncovered so far. It'll... [ Continue reading: ]

Myth of the Liberal Press, Pt. 47,876
Neoliberal, meet neocon: Two fine specimens of the respective breeds are mated in this week's New York Times Book Review, as Christopher Caldwell (neocon) reviews a new book by Ian Buruma on the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and... [ Continue reading: ]

Maintaining Order
The AP reported today that a new Saudi proposal might ban women from praying at Mecca in order to "prevent overcrowding" and to "maintain order." Read the story here.... [ Continue reading: ]

The Architect
James Moore and Wayne Slater reveal two very interesting details in their just-released book, The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power. First, Karl Rove's father was gay and second, in 1998 Texas Governor Bush said that... [ Continue reading: ]

Canada Awakening
The recent vandalization of ancient petroglyphs in Northern Canada has shed some light on the neo-Pentecostal movement happening among Quebec's Inuit. But so far only Bartholemew's Notes on Religion has taken advantage of the opportunity to explore this revival. A... [ Continue reading: ]

Children Are the Future
"Let me explain the government to you. There’s God, then there’s the president and then there’s my father.” — Jack Roberts, 6-year-old son of Chief Justice John Roberts, overheard speaking to one of his young peers on the last day of summer camp.

[ Continue reading: ]

Scholastic Propaganda
There's a bad buzz around the upcoming ABC docudrama mini-series, Path to 9/11. Writers at the Democratic mega-site Daily Kos and former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke say the movie, produced by conservative activists and strongly supported by conservative organizations, is... [ Continue reading: ]

How To Tell If You're Intelligelical
Evangelicalism plus eggheadery equals, apparently, "intelligelicals," and so far as we can tell from this intelligelical anti-intelligical rant, they're making omelettes. What the hell are we talking about? We don't know, and this article probably won't help, but if you... [ Continue reading: ]

Fall Events
The fall line-up of events at our host institution, NYU's Center for Religion and Media. General interest journalists may be most interested in a panel discussion on "Gods Elect? Religion, Media and Elections in the Americas." We're looking forward to... [ Continue reading: ]

Arctic Idol
Iconoclash: "Christian zealots destroy ancient Arctic petroglyphs."... [ Continue reading: ]

Threatened With a Baseball Bat
In an effort to curb sexual temptation among the staff at Saddleback and other churches, Rick Warren has posted fifteen specific rules for upkeeping moral integrity at pastors.org. Although a preoccupation with this issue is widespread among evangelicals, Warren's "Thou... [ Continue reading: ]

Ralph Reed Gets Shaved
Religious Right-watcher Frederick Clarkson looks past liberal satisfaction over the electoral defeat of former Christian Coalition kingmaker Ralph Reed in Georgia's GOP primary for lt. governor. A loss for the Christian Right, as most of the press portrayed it? Not... [ Continue reading: ]

"The Killling Box"
More on Lebanon from Ken Silverstein: a short interview with Augustus Richard Norton, an anthropologist and retired U.S. Army colonel who served in Lebanon and has been studying the region for 25 years. Amidst all the punditry, startling clarity on... [ Continue reading: ]

Glory Bumps and Cartwheels
In a recent Washington Babylon post, Ken Silverstein draws our attention to an unconventional barometer of the worsening situation in the Mideast--the Rapture Ready message board, a forum for believers to share their excitement about what they feel is the... [ Continue reading: ]

This Is What Domestic Partnership Gets You
A diarist on the liberal blog Daily Kos reports on "What Domestic Partnership Gets You." Much of the press has lately been following the centrist line that queer activists pushed too hard in seeking marriage equality; implicit in this narrative... [ Continue reading: ]

The Next Taliban?
The good news, we guess, is that the old "domino theory" of the Cold War is really dead. The bad news is that as a result, the press is mostly ignoring the transformation of Somalia into a Taliban state. The... [ Continue reading: ]

Supporters of Hizbollah
Twice now, on CNN and, we think, NBC, we've heard all critics of Israel's actions in Lebanon lumped together as "supporters of Hizbollah." Media shorthand, sure; obscuring the real story, definitely.... [ Continue reading: ]

Conservatives Against Standards
The Weekly Standard says that the MPAA has given a PG rating to a movie based on its evangelism. Writer Anne Morse, of the evangelical Wilberforce Forum, is outraged... that parents are being informed about what their kids are watching.... [ Continue reading: ]

No Go Godot
A lefty is fed up with waiting for the religious left: "The fervent hope for the creation of a vigorous, cohesive religious left has amounted to a vigil for Godot -- the one who never arrives. And now I am... [ Continue reading: ]

Belief and Disbelief
Salon writer Steve Paulson talks belief with disbeliever Sam Harris, author of the bestselling book The End of Faith. Read the interview here.... [ Continue reading: ]

Innocent
"Hamza Walker Lindh has come to embody the challenge of Islam to America, and the challenge is simply this: In response to what America has done to him, Hamza has become more Islamic—-more himself, and a better Muslim. And in... [ Continue reading: ]

Updike Misses Jihad
"If only the novelist had spent more time dreaming himself into the paranoid and angry world of Qutb and his followers..." Jonathan Raban on the failure of John Updike to comprehend jihad.... [ Continue reading: ]

Fundamentalist Family Research Council Wants to Ring Your Bell
There's really no news value in alerting the world of the fact that the Family Research Council, a Washington-based Christian fundamentalist Sinn Fein to James Dobson's figurative IRA, loathes LGBT people. But every now and then the daily email newsletter... [ Continue reading: ]

Who's Kooky, Now?
Slate's Martin Edlund trots out what will likely soon be the reigning narrative for mainstream coverage of the "religious left," contrasting Rabbi Michael Lerner's obviously flaky confab (think concentric prayer circles) with Jim Wallis' upcoming conference, focused on electoral politics... [ Continue reading: ]

Loss for Words
Linda Wertheimer's NPR interview this morning with retiring Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson is surprisingly tough, openly skeptical of Gerson's evangelical eloquence as a responsible approach to reality. Challenged, Gerson loses hold of his rhetorical grace; when Wertheimer points out that... [ Continue reading: ]

Valedictorian Altar Call
Valedictorian Brittany McComb tried her luck at freedom of (graduation) speech outburst last week when she deviated from the school-edited version and began proclaiming her love for God, the Las Vegas Review Journal reports. Officials quickly pulled her mic, sparking... [ Continue reading: ]

Progressive Faith Blog Con
Announcing the first annual Progressive Faith Blog Con, a gathering by and for religious and/or progressive bloggers. The conference will take place from Friday, July 14 to Sunday, July 16 at Montclair State University In New Jersey. Registration is available... [ Continue reading: ]

Jew-Ish
New Yorkers: Tonight, Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet and Revealer contributor Laurel Snyder join novelist Katharine Weber at the "Novel Jews" reading series, produced by the Forward, to present three short, true stories about half-Jews from Laurel's new anthology, Half/Life: Jew-ish... [ Continue reading: ]

Better Kept A Secret
This morning's Guardian reports that a "secret high-level" study commissioned by London's Directorate of Professional Standards has been leaked. Why so secret? Because it concludes that Muslim police officers, as a result of their strong family and community ties and... [ Continue reading: ]

Zarqawi's Short and Violent Life
The Atlantic has just published an online article by Mary Anne Weaver, who traveled to Jordan just months ago in order to learn the story behind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the insurgent leader killed in Iraq yesterday. It is an excellent... [ Continue reading: ]

The Apocalypse is Always Now (But Especially on 6/6/06)
Rob Brendle, associate pastor of the New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs -- de facto HQ of the National Association of Evangelicals -- has a very frightening message to share on this special day. Elsewhere in the High Plains Messenger:... [ Continue reading: ]

Professor of Repression
Some of the best foreign affairs investigative reporting of the moment is to be found in "Washington Babylon," Ken Silverstein's online-only column for Harper's. A veteran of the LA Times and AP, Silverstein pays attention not only to the skullduggery... [ Continue reading: ]

Hell Froze...
And the devil put on his mittens: George F. Will, sanctimonious conservative pundit, demolishes an "aggressively annoying new phrase in America's political lexicon," "values voters," and subtly pays tribute to the great literary journalist James Agee.... [ Continue reading: ]

Muscle Car Minutemen
If you dig awesome 1970s muscle cars and fascist-tinged anti-immigrant activism, then you just gotta check out this red, white, and blue 1970 Mercury Cougar, dubbed the "Spirit of Allegiance," "Official Pace Car of the Minuteman Project Caravan to Washington,"... [ Continue reading: ]

The "Duh" in Fundamentalism
Our favorite Weekly Standard writer -- actually, the only one we really like -- Matt LaBash goes on tour with Christian metal-rap group the Junkyard Prophets, "saggy pants Elijahs." They're a cranky bunch -- not just anti-gay and anti-sex, but... [ Continue reading: ]

Christians and Immigrants
"The future growth of the Christian Right," writes Tanya Erzen, "depends on whether it can mobilize African-American and Latino conservative Christians around policy issues." Erzen reports on the Christian Right immigration conference that preceded Monday's massive immigration rights rallies.... [ Continue reading: ]

Salome
Margaret Atwood reimagines the story of Herodias's daughter -- the girl who called for John the Baptist's head -- as fodder for gossip among the Toronto PTA set in SoMA Review.... [ Continue reading: ]

Prayers for Oil
A small story that gets no press, because it's wacky and kind of pathetic: D.C. prayer rally at a gas station for lower gas prices. Thing is, such prayers are probably not so uncommon -- we'd like to know how... [ Continue reading: ]

Gimme A Medal
Sharlet: I'm a finalist in the national reporting category for the $10,000 Livingston Award for journalists under 35, for "Soldiers of Christ: Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch," in Harper's. I'm delighted to see that Matt Power is also a finalist... [ Continue reading: ]

Rolling Stone Revival
"Bush's faith-based conception of his mission, which stands above and beyond reasoned inquiry, jibes well with his administration's pro-business dogma on global warming and other urgent environmental issues..." -- Historian Sean Wilentz, in a cover story on "The Worst President... [ Continue reading: ]

Blackwell for Lord High Priest of Ohio
The press is paying attention to last night's Ohio gubenatorial GOP primary win of Ken Blackwell. If Blackwell wins in November -- and he looks like he might -- he'll be Ohio's first black governor. He'll also be perhaps the... [ Continue reading: ]

Workplace Gospel
The boundaries of religious expression in the workplace -- a cause defended by an over-broad coalition that links religious minorities who wish to wear required religious clothing or hairstyles with conservative Christians seeking to proselytize their co-workers -- become a... [ Continue reading: ]

Gnosticism
The end of gnosticism?... [ Continue reading: ]

"Reality" Religion
Spireality: "He and his buddies have lots of fun at the lumberyard... They laugh as they hammer the cross together, and Daniel has a real ball trying it out on the floor, joking around with the guys as he lies... [ Continue reading: ]

You Say Tomato, I Say Jewish
Alex Golub explores why the fact that Jews are like tomatoes doesn't matter in Hawaii, where he teaches cultural anthropology to students who never heard that a guy like Golub is supposed to be good with money.... [ Continue reading: ]

Revealer Radio
More Revealer-related radio: Revealer books editor Scott M. Korb talks about religious violence with NPR's Scott Simon; Revealer contributor Laurel Snyder does a half hour on Atlanta NPR's "Between the Lines," discussing her terrific new anthology, Half/Life: Jew-Ish Tales from... [ Continue reading: ]

Shunning the Bunny
"Resurrection Day" aftermath: We're a day late with this one, but that's no reason you shouldn't listen to "Shunning the Bunny," an NPR "Weekend Edition" report on Easter-hating Christians by Revealer comrade Fred Mogul.... [ Continue reading: ]

Bill Donohue, Lenny Bruce Salutes You
Jesus pooping on Bush and the flag on an episode of "South Park" doesn't really rate as "controversy," even if Christ did it to teach Cartman a valuable lesson about depicting the prophet Muhammad. No, that's all business as usual.... [ Continue reading: ]

Jew-ish Tales
More from Revealer contributor Laurel Snyder, discussing her new book Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes on NPR's "All Things Considered."... [ Continue reading: ]

Like a Prayer, but Not a Prayer
Anti-feminist It Girl Caitlin Flanagan has cobbled her New Yorker and Atlantic articles into a defense of "traditional motherhood" (the kind abetted by a rich husband, a nanny, and housekeepers) that turns heartbreaking when it becomes an attempt to ward... [ Continue reading: ]

Hitler Has Entered the Building
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz hosts Revealer pal Laurel Snyder for an online public discussion of her new book, Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes. Predictably, the conversation's getting hot, and Hitler has entered the fray.... [ Continue reading: ]

Passover Idol Smashing
"As Jews and Christians approach the festivals of Passover and Easter, there is an opportunity to read even our central stories in ways that can smash the idols currently governing religious belief in the U.S..." Revealer contributor Scott M. Korb... [ Continue reading: ]

Gut Pesach
"The tablecloth is white, and the chandelier casts its light like a gold cup inverted over our table. The silver gleams. A few days ago, my father died..." Margaret Schwartz' tale of four Passovers.... [ Continue reading: ]

Devil Went Down to Georgia
Ralph Reed loses his soul: The Nation's Bob Moser follows the Reed-Abramoff money trail through Georgia, down to the Delta states, even to China and back, to draw the outline of a scandal that reaches Teapot Dome -- or perhaps... [ Continue reading: ]

Off the Island
Tanya Erzen dissects Focus on the Family's nationally organized "grass roots" effort to make gay civil rights a matter for a yea or nay vote in the name of democracy -- you know, the kind where you get to vote... [ Continue reading: ]

America and Her Superfriend
Tony Judt, author of a useful new book on European politics since 1945 called Postwar, demolishes the so-called dean of Cold War studies, John Lewis Gaddis, and his new book, The Cold War: A New History. Gaddis, Judt notes, ignores... [ Continue reading: ]

Professor Evil
Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed debunks David Horowitz' new book on the evils of academe, The Professors, and proves Pat Robertson is a fool -- a task that's the journalistic equivalent of passing Rocks for Jocks. But somebody had... [ Continue reading: ]

Nazis Ahead
That the Jewish Forward pays more attention to what may be a neo-Nazi resurgence in Germany comes as no surprise. Mainstream media likes Nazi stories, too, but only as a sort of darker version of the perennial "Church of Elvis"... [ Continue reading: ]

They All Look the Same, Don't They?
WaPo's military correspondent Tom Ricks, according to George Will: "who, he wonders, will control the likes of Moqtada al-Sadr? Imagine, Ricks says, another cleric, the Rev. Al Sharpton, controlling the Bronx with a militia he can call into the streets... [ Continue reading: ]

Megachurch Nation, Colorado to Kiev
The best journalism on evangelicals in awhile comes not from a writer but from a French photographer named Johann Rousselot. Check out these photographs of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, and then go to Rousselot's main page to find... [ Continue reading: ]

The Nice Debate
What is there to say about "Ministers of Debate," Zev Chafets' amiable NYT Mag profile of the debate team at Jerry Falwell's Liberty U.? It's mildly amusing. It helps undermine the "evangelicals are stupid" myth. It clues us into an... [ Continue reading: ]

America Won't Be Happy!
"The War on Christians" conference is coming to D.C., featuring a modified-A-list of conservative heavyweights organized by Vision America, including Alan Keyes, Gary Bauer, Sen. John Cornyn, Phyllis Schlafly, Sen. Sam Brownback and Rep. Tom DeLay, as well as some... [ Continue reading: ]

Scientology Chef
Isaac Hayes, who's been the voice of South Park character Chef for nearly a decade, is the butt of newspaper punchlines this week, after he quit the show over a recent episode mocking Scientology, Hayes' religion. Show co-creator Matt Stone's... [ Continue reading: ]

What Jesus Meant
"Christ is not a Christian." Historian Garry Wills talks to WNYC's Brian Lehrer about his new book, What Jesus Meant.... [ Continue reading: ]

Gospel Recruiters
The Air Force Academy lawsuit continues, with plaintiff Michael Weinstein requesting an expansion of the suit to include the military branch's latest set of guidelines on the proper role of religion in cadet life -- which were edited down from... [ Continue reading: ]

Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose
Recently freed of the constraints of having to keep his job on the National Religious Broadcasters' board of directors, Pat Robertson is finally at liberty to speak his mind. And not one to let an opportunity like that go to... [ Continue reading: ]

Gay Adoption
After Pope Benedict called gay adoption "gravely immoral" and Massachusetts' Catholic bishops declared that Catholic adoption agencies, such as Catholic Charities, cannot be involved in arranging adoptions by gay couples, Boston's branch of Catholic Charities announced that it would no... [ Continue reading: ]

Equal Opportunity
The Center for Reason crunches government numbers and suggests (relying, somewhat inexactly, on local religious demographics) that Christians have as many abortions as the general population, and that Catholics have more. While this will probably come as no surprise to... [ Continue reading: ]

The Politically Expedient Word
On Tuesday, Quakers and (some) other Christian groups opposed to H.R. 4437 will join with immigrant rights advocates to protest the pending bill which, if passed, will criminalize any assistance given to illegal immigrants and will also facilitate the building... [ Continue reading: ]

Everything Is Not Permitted
Slavoj Žižek, a rockstar in the world of pop-culture theory and psychoanalysis, tallies the recent results of religious fundamentalism and finds that Dostoyevsky's moral equation -- if God is dead, then everything is permitted -- has been reversed, so it... [ Continue reading: ]

Belief in Belief
"People who believe in belief, he says, believe that civilization needs myths to live by, so we mustn't examine religious ones too closely. Belief in belief is the compromise formation of those who can't bring themselves to evince a naive... [ Continue reading: ]

Conservative Stall
The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which sets policy for Conservative Judaism, has postponed a long-awaited vote about rescinding their ban on gay rabbis and performing same-sex unions, sending four proposals concerning changes to current Conservative Jewish law back... [ Continue reading: ]

The Franklin Graham Show
With Franklin Graham taking his father's place at the head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the occasion's arrived for some cosmetic reimagining of who "God's Ambassador's" fiery, and occasionally mean-mouthed son, really is. In a long profile written by... [ Continue reading: ]

Penis Monologues
The Washington Post gives an interesting, if perhaps a bit credulous, report on campus conservatives who take an a la carte approach to defending "traditional values": picking a pet peeve, like the collegiate popularity of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues,"... [ Continue reading: ]

Pentacle Soldier
Alternet on the failure of the National Guard to honor the religious preferences of one of its fallen soldiers, Patrick Stewart, whose widow has been unable to get the Wicca pentacle engraved on her husband's memorial plaque because the Guard... [ Continue reading: ]

South Dakota Hearts Religious Virgins
The passage yesterday of South Dakota's sweeping abortion ban, deliberately designed to prompt a challenge to Roe v. Wade and which provides no exceptions save abortions necessary to save the life of the mother, has popularized this PBS video clip... [ Continue reading: ]

In the Details
It's not the devil in the details, it's God. God with a flair for design. The International Design Magazine examines holy architecture -- and holy clothing and multi-media -- in this month's issue, dedicated completely to the intersection of religion... [ Continue reading: ]

Abramoff Blight
The Abramoff scandal has one more fallout shower: turning off the so-called "September 12 Republicans" -- Jewish voters who change allegiances over the Bush administration's hawkishness on Israel and terrorism -- who now see Abramoff, a key part of Republican-outreach... [ Continue reading: ]

The Fighting Quebecois
Last week, a letter signed by 19 Catholic priests in Quebec, Canada, was published in the daily newspaper La Presse, denouncing the Vatican's position on homosexual issues, including the ordination of gay men and the Catholic Church's opposition to same-sex... [ Continue reading: ]

The Barbarians
A haunting and terrifying report from Craig S. Smith of The New York Times, who investigates the brutal murder of a young Jewish Parisian at the hands of a religiously- and ethnically-diverse, but equally poor and disaffected, band of the... [ Continue reading: ]

The NY Times Gets the (Social) Gospel
The NY Times Gets the (Social) Gospel: The editors of The New York Times bring attention to the Ash Wednesday sermon of Los Angeles Archdiocese Cardinal Roger Mahony, who urged his priests and lay Catholics to prepare for a massive... [ Continue reading: ]

Ethical Discrimination
A job advertisement for the University of Charleston in West Virginia that ran in The Chronicle of Higher Education this week stipulates that applicants for the Herchiel and Elizabeth Sims "In God We Trust" Chair in Ethics "must embrace a... [ Continue reading: ]

Ave Sharia
Ave Maria, Florida's own gated city of God which was well-profiled in The Boston Phoenix last summer, is running into interference from civil liberties groups who oppose Domino's Pizza tycoon Thomas S. Monaghan's plans to build a Catholic utopia that... [ Continue reading: ]

Embarrassing Peggy Noonan
Opinion Journal columnist, former Reagan speechwriter and manhandled -- or rather, butch-handled -- airline passenger Peggy Noonan declares that she's reclaiming feminine modesty as her Lenten gesture. The response to Noonan's column last week, which dismissed the debate over port... [ Continue reading: ]

Get It, Got It, Deny It
The New York Times reports on the thank you note sent by newly-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to Focus on the Family head James Dobson, expressing his gratitude to Dobson for mobilizing his millions of listeners to support the... [ Continue reading: ]

McKosher
McDonald's goes kosher in Tel Aviv, changing its trademark logo to assure Israeli consumers that the fast food restaurants prepare food in keeping with religious specifications, and urging its franchises to conform with Jewish law regarding the preparation of food... [ Continue reading: ]

Good Catholics
Alan Cooperman reports on the joint statement released yesterday by 55 Catholic Democratic House representatives, as part of a long-delayed reaction to the way John Kerry's Catholicism was questioned and dismissed as that of a "bad Catholic" due to his... [ Continue reading: ]

What Would Jesus Do About Unitarian Heresy?
England's Chester Cathedral has made waves with its recent refusal to let a Unitarian congregation hold a service in the Cathedral -- as the Unitarian Church has for the past three years -- declaring Unitarianism a "heretical" religion incompatible with... [ Continue reading: ]

Spanish Civil War Fallout
"''How is it possible that Spain, such a Catholic country, is experiencing this?'" John Ward Anderson of The Washington Post Foreign Service delivers a fascinating report on the growing Spanish schism between the new, socialist and culturally progressive government, and... [ Continue reading: ]

"Origins of Life" Dies in Utah
On Monday, the Utah House of Representatives defeated a bill (similar to one initially approved by the State Senate in January) that would have compelled high school science teachers to include anti-evolution caveats when teaching the subject in class. The... [ Continue reading: ]

The FDA's Plan B
The Washington Post reports that more than 60 bills concerning "Plan B" emergency contraception have been filed in state legislatures in 2006 alone, leading to a state-by-state divide that largely reflects predictable "red state/blue state" lines, with some of the... [ Continue reading: ]

Liberal Media v. Liberal Media
AP religion writer Richard N. Ostling continues to do his part to dismantle the secular/liberal-media myth by using his own elite pulpit to rail against the secular/liberal book publishing industry: comparing the reviews of two recent books by and about... [ Continue reading: ]

Moses and Awards Season
There are just six shipping days left before the Oscars to show Hollywood what you think of gay cowboys. Wow your Oscar party guests with this zinger T-shirt from Second Coming Clothing Co., "The Original 10 Commandments Broke Back on... [ Continue reading: ]

Cartoon Controversies Lite
When the (cartoon) image is of Jesus, well, then it's not quite the same issue, there being no prohibition of images of Jesus as there is of Mohammad. But that doesn't stop the tempests in teapots, as Scott Jaschik of... [ Continue reading: ]

California Communion
On the Episcopal Diocese of California's short-list for bishop are two openly-gay priests, the Rev. Bonnie Perry of Chicago and the Very Rev. Robert Taylor of Seattle. If either of the two are selected, it would be in contradiction to... [ Continue reading: ]

Love Your Mother
Love your mother: Church of England Bishop of Bolton, the Rt. Rev. David Gillett, has called upon Christians to recognize the "motherhood" of God, and to de-masculinize the divine by remembering that a "mothering" God isn't a feminist heresy, but... [ Continue reading: ]

The Deathtoll
After the anti-Mohammad-cartoon riots in Nigeria turned into an ugly mob attack by Muslims on Christian communities and churches -- killing at least 25, torturing a bishop's family, and burning between 11 and 30 churches -- Christian mobs retaliated with... [ Continue reading: ]

The Spotless Mind of the Assassin
Religion-beat implosion. Robert Ferrigno, author of the newest in apoco-fiction, Prayers for the Assassin -- a novel depicting a dystopian future wherein the U.S. is under Islamic rule, and Superbowls are punctuated by calls to prayer -- talks to Henry... [ Continue reading: ]

Mothers, Don't Let Your Children Grow Up To Be Subgenii
On February 3, Rachel Bevilacqua, a member of the satirical religion/performance art group, The Church of the Subgenius, was stripped of custody of her son, Kohl Jary, after New York State Judge James P. Punch reviewed pictures of Bevilacqua at... [ Continue reading: ]

Biblical Objectivity
Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of the evangelical World Magazine and author of Prodigal Press: The Anti-Christian Bias of the American News Media, which argues that the media persecutes public Christians more than other public figures, revives his call for journalists on... [ Continue reading: ]

WWBD?
What would Buddha do about unflattering cartoons? Practice non-attachment? Hope that the cartoonist is sent to a special, Buddhahood-less hell? Or recognize that, with the news of a Buddhist-issued death threat, "Buddhism, like Islam," can easily become "another weapon in... [ Continue reading: ]

The Union Forever
"The haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor": Idealists of different stripes will tell you that the similarities between religious and labor-rights language should come as no surprise, despite the many attempts over the past... [ Continue reading: ]

Christian Iran
The Church of England Newspaper investigates reports of abuses of Iranian Christians, who have lately been subject to temporary arrests, seizures of their property, beatings by police and secret service members, and infringements on their religious freedoms, including barring open... [ Continue reading: ]

Season's Ratings
XXtreme Religion Reporting!! For anyone who thinks Christianity is most comprehensively represented by a Scottish Geraldo whimpering, "the pain, the pain," this is your Easter: Scottish journalist/persona, Dominik Diamond, is trolling for viewers by publicly weighing the question of whether... [ Continue reading: ]

Hollywood Houses of God
When is a house of God a by-the-books house of worship? A federal lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice against the city of Hollywood once again confirms that real estate is becoming one of the hot-button areas of... [ Continue reading: ]

33 11
"When they finally executed Gacy, I must admit to totally losing it for several weeks both before and after. I sent him a FedEx at Joliet reminding him of our encounter, and of my sign, and telling him I was... [ Continue reading: ]

Church of Scouting
An appellate court case in California is currently underway to determine whether the Boy Scouts of America is a religious organization and thus barred under federal law from leasing public property and facilities from the City of San Diego under... [ Continue reading: ]

Cal Thomas's Revelations
When it comes to evangelical activism about the environment, vastly syndicated columnist and Fox News host, Cal Thomas, counsels his fellow Christians to keep their politics in their pants -- err, their hearts -- and to not mind the mandates... [ Continue reading: ]

Air Force Friends
What's the proper balance between the two constitutional references to church-state relations? If you ask Ted Haggard, it's a 2:1 cocktail, heavy on the protection of majority religions. After intensive lobbying by the Air Force's "'evangelical friends,'" the military branch... [ Continue reading: ]

Old Time Evolution
As far as media coverage and attracting the invaluable ire of one's opponents is concerned, Evolution Sunday was a success, ranking national publicity and a deliciously-juvenile rebuttal from the staff of Intelligent Design headquarters, the Discovery Institute. In a statement... [ Continue reading: ]

Wall Street Shamans
The Washington Post's Laura Blumenfeld visits a New York CEO-turned Virgin Islands shaman and finds a crowd of "aging boomers and the urban spa class" who can't cry in the boardroom but can when their shaman cleanses their energies and... [ Continue reading: ]

EU Press Code
The E.U. commissioner for justice, freedom and security, Franco Frattini, yesterday announced plans for a media code of conduct when reporting on Islam and other religions in attempt to find a balance between "'two fundamental freedoms, the freedom of expression... [ Continue reading: ]

Disowning Fred Phelps
As military families and those seeking to curry their favor gear up to fight the attention-starved activists from the "God Hates Fags" Westboro Baptist Church, with bills pending in 14 states that would outlaw the sort of funeral protests Westboro... [ Continue reading: ]

Universists on Cartoons
Universists on cartoons.... [ Continue reading: ]

The World is Mine
"I've got a Mercedes, my wife has a Mercedes, my daughter has a Mercedes. It all belongs to God and he's letting me use it." Bartholomew's Notes on Religion reports that Charisma magazine has announced its dog in the race... [ Continue reading: ]

Culture Cringe
The BBC's otherwise invaluable digest on Religion and Ethics has been accused of having an "evident cultural cringe," when it came to explaining Islam. The site's page on Islam, charged a former executive, reads like it was written by a... [ Continue reading: ]

NAE Service: Whether You Want It or Not
Who's the National Association of Evangelicals going to save, if not the environment? When it's not busy finding excuses not to join the centrist evangelical coalition that's taking on global warming, the NAE is directing its salvation energies closer to... [ Continue reading: ]

Death Squad Morality
The New York Times' Benedict Carey reports on the innate human capacity for "moral disengagement," an adaptable "moral compass" that allows people to act in contradiction to the personal convictions and code of ethics, whether in the commission of their... [ Continue reading: ]

Free Blasphemy
Just days after the British parliament dealt a blow to the "Racial and Religious Hatred Bill," long contested by an unlikely coalition of free speech advocates and conservative religious groups claiming that the bill would criminalize their faith and arguing... [ Continue reading: ]

Caterpillar Divestment
The Church of England's general synod, backed by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has voted to disinvest from the U.S. Caterpillar company as part of its decision to disinvest from corporations that profit off Israel's occupation of Palestine. The Church... [ Continue reading: ]

Megachurches Today
A new report written by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, Leadership Network, "Megachurches Today 2005," has tallied the number of U.S. megachurches at 1,210: double the number of churches with 2,000 or more congregants that existed five years ago,... [ Continue reading: ]

Political Cartoon
Juan Cole takes a sober look at the Mohammad cartoon crisis, which led this weekend to the burning of Danish and Norwegian embassies, and attacks on Iraqi and Turkish Christian churches, and sees more politics than pure religion in the... [ Continue reading: ]

Proselytize, Evangelize
Attorneys defending the Air Force against charges of religious discrimination at the Colorado Springs Air Force Academy have asked the judge presiding over the lawsuit to dismiss the case on the grounds that plaintiff Michael Weinstein and his co-plaintiffs haven't... [ Continue reading: ]

In Defense of Relativism
Austin Dacey, in one half of a pair of New York Times op-ed responses to Pope Benedict XVI's new God-is-Love encyclical (the second written by Father Lorenzo Albacete), takes up an idea missing from "Deus Caritas Est": Benedict's pre-papal statements... [ Continue reading: ]

JPIICC
Joe Feuerherd of the National Catholic Reporter, always astute at following the money trail, investigates the John Paul II Cultural Center: a $75 million white elephant in Washington, D.C., intended to be a "presidential library of sorts," that's been largely... [ Continue reading: ]

The Revolution That Wasn't
A short year and a half after the first hopeful buzz surrounded the National Association of Evangelical's "revolutionary" new manifesto, "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," which promised a shift in evangelical priorities from... [ Continue reading: ]

Evolution Sunday
Superbowl Sunday, Justice Sunday -- when o when will the evolutionist Christians have a Sunday of their own? Next week, as it turns out. February 12, which also marks the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin, more than 400 churches will... [ Continue reading: ]

David v. Goliath: the Study
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's National Religious Leadership Roundtable has released a new report this week, taking inventory of all LGBT-friendly churches and religious groups, in hopes that the gay community can find ways to mobilize these progressive... [ Continue reading: ]

Middle God
The Washington Post's Peter Slevin profiles John Danforth, Episcopal priest, former senator, and current naysayer to the Christian right. Danforth's recent and vocal criticisms of his fellow Republicans for falling too much under the influence of conservative evangelicaldom has focused... [ Continue reading: ]

Banning Contempt
Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper which prompted world-wide Muslim protests after publishing cartoons criticized as blasphemous, in which the Prophet Mohammed was depicted wearing a bomb-shaped turban or telling suicide bombers he'd "run out of virgins" with which to reward them,... [ Continue reading: ]

Religion-Free Alito
David Waters of The Scripps Howard News Service defends blind, religion-free reporting when it comes to the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito, taking the trepidation of the Senate Judiciary Committee to ask Alito about his religious beliefs as proof that... [ Continue reading: ]

U.K. Religious Hatred Bill Fails
Britain's "religious hatred bill," which has been criticized for over a year by an unlikely coalition of Christian and Muslim groups, civil libertarians, atheists and comics, suffered a major defeat yesterday as absenteeism and abstentions on the part of Labour... [ Continue reading: ]

Waiting for John Frum
The Washington Post's Peter Carlson previews the Smithsonian's report on John Frum Day, the high holy day of one of the last so-called "cargo cults" -- religious movements formed during the WWII era among South Pacific islanders reacting against the... [ Continue reading: ]

Religious Freedom in Romania
Forum 18 reports that a controversial Romanian religion bill set for debate tomorrow has minority religious groups (including evangelicals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists, Baptists and other Protestants, Greek Catholics and Baha'is) worried about the religious liberty that will be afforded to... [ Continue reading: ]

Evangelical Branches
The Los Angeles Times recycles an old, and never very fresh story-line -- evangelicals are "branching out" to include issues of poverty and environmentalism in their agenda -- just in time for the State of the Union address. The semblance... [ Continue reading: ]

How to Read the Bible
Marc Zvi Brettler, Brandeis University professor of biblical literature and author of How to Read the Bible, speaks with NPR's Terry Gross about reading the Bible with "the historical-critical approach," and viewing it as an anthology that "speaks in multiple... [ Continue reading: ]

The AIDS Aid Money Trail
Nearly a quarter of President Bush's $15 billion HIV/AIDS program is earmarked for faith-based groups, with $200 million specifically set aside for groups without experience working with government grants. As could be expected, many groups that promote abstinence only, rather... [ Continue reading: ]

Refusal Legislation
Rob Stein, of The Washington Post, tallies the number of "conscience clause" bills under consideration in more than a dozen state congresses that would codify the right of health care workers to refuse to provide treatment or care that conflicts... [ Continue reading: ]

Polite Sharia
For liberal Palestinians fearful that the newly-elected Hamas party intends to enforce Islamic law on the country's citizens, senior Hamas leaders say, take heart: yes, Sharia will be used as a guide for legislation, but only in a "polite way"... [ Continue reading: ]

"More Jewish" Gentiles
Orthodox Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, a veteran of efforts to bring evangelicals and Jews together over Israeli issues, continued his work this Sunday, when he spoke to the congregation of New Life Church in Colorado Springs at the invitation of National... [ Continue reading: ]

Wingspread Declaration
Scott Jaschik from Inside Higher Ed reports on "The Wingspread Declaration on Religion and Public Life: Engaging Higher Education," a manifesto-in-progress concerning the role of religion on college campuses. The declaration, written by the Society for Values in Higher Education,... [ Continue reading: ]

One-Love
Senator Sam Brownback's democracy: "'This, [he says,] being senator, running for president, waving the flag of a Christian nation -- 'is about serving one constituent.' He raises a hand and points above." The Revealer's Jeff Sharlet meets "God's Senator," in... [ Continue reading: ]

R-Rated Religion
The ultra-conservative (but not actually secretive) Catholic group, Opus Dei is calling for the film adaptation of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, which will open the Cannes film festival this May, to be given an adult rating to prevent... [ Continue reading: ]

Wayward Evangelical Soldiers
Religion professor and author of The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today, Charles Marsh, reprimands his fellow evangelical believers for "recasting Christian doctrine" in order to follow their "wayward" brother in Christ,... [ Continue reading: ]

The Heartwarming Business
Jacques Steinberg of The New York Times investigates the fate of a reality TV show that was scheduled to appear last summer on ABC, but instead was shelved indefinitely, possibly due to an ideological conflict of interests between the heartwarming... [ Continue reading: ]

Salt Lake Evolution
The Utah Senate initially approved a bill last Friday that would make public school teachers include anti-evolution caveats when teaching the about the origins of life: a position the ACLU, which opposes the bill, has likened to the textbook stickers... [ Continue reading: ]

He Died on Good Friday...
"But it is relevant to his theme to note that thanks to Booth's derringer ball, the Lincoln who had let Jesus go became the Lincoln who resembled Jesus. Quickly Lincoln the icon pushed Washington upstairs: The self-made rail-splitter became the... [ Continue reading: ]

"God is Dead"
When Nietzche vandalizes.... [ Continue reading: ]

Black Jesus
Jesus as Steve Biko (well, if Biko spoke Xhosa), this week in Utah, when the South African film portraying Jesus as a modern-day African revolutionary, Son of Man, premieres at Sundance.... [ Continue reading: ]

The Unholy Alliance Fights Back
World Harvest Church Pastor Rod Parsley, whose products you can read about here, along with his fellow megachurch "patriot pastor," Rev. Russell Johnson, has come under sharp criticism from a group of 30 liberal-moderate ministers. The critics' group, hosted by... [ Continue reading: ]

God Sez
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin joins the swollen ranks of bumbling politicians and clerics made to apologize to the public after declaring that some instance of God's wrath is punishment for a wayward citizenry. During a Martin Luther King Day... [ Continue reading: ]

Libel and Blood Libel
Nearly a month after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made his Christmas Eve address to his nation, which included his debated comment that, "'minorities, the descendants of those who crucified Christ, have taken over the riches of the world,'" the conservative... [ Continue reading: ]

Faith-Based Lawsuit Approved
From the 7th Circuit U.S. Appeals Court in Chicago, an important ruling in the case Freedom From Religion Foundation v. Elaine Chao, et al. will allow taxpayers to challenge executive-directed programs -- in this case, namely Bush's Faith-Based Initiative --... [ Continue reading: ]

God's Kinder, Gentler Army
Fetal funerals, ultrasound machines, and baby bonnets for women who want abortions. John Leland of The New York Times reports on the kinder, gentler side of the anti-abortion movement, one that advances its aims through innocuous-sounding Bible studies, church-run pregnancy... [ Continue reading: ]

My God! Abramoff.
"'After reading the e-mail, it became pretty obvious he was putting money before God. We are righteously casting him out.'" Hard times are here for Ralph Reed, candidate for lieutenant governor of Georgia, as the Georgia Christian Coalition -- a... [ Continue reading: ]

The World is Never Lacking for
Holy jackasses.... [ Continue reading: ]

Actual Episcopalians
In response to the irreverent and over-hyped new NBC sitcom, The Book of Daniel, the Episcopal Diocese of Washington -- part of the Episcopal Church that serves as fictional premise for the show -- is playing the good sport, having... [ Continue reading: ]

Natural Christian Poetry
Ever had the irresistible urge to see the culture wars put to tortured verse? To understand anew the debates surrounding abortion, evolution, and the fires awaiting a "post-Christian" Europe through the medium of Christian poetry? Well, then! Here you go:... [ Continue reading: ]

The Messy, Cosmic Landscape
"'I have no need for this hypothesis.'" Through its annual education supplement, The Village Voice investigates another kind of Intelligent Design critic: string theoritician Leonard Susskind, the physicist author of the recent book, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the... [ Continue reading: ]

Shiavo/Sharon
Shiavo/Sharon? The AP predicts that Ariel Sharon's response after doctors bring him out of his artificial, drug-induced coma -- either regaining consciousness, or requiring life support -- could spark serious Jewish debate on the halachically correct approach to rejecting life-prolonging... [ Continue reading: ]

Antagonistas
News from the front: Planned Parenthood antagonizes the American Life League with a series of pro-condom key chains that riff on the religious (spinning off of Michelangelo's depiction of God and Adam) and the patriotic (Uncle Sam posters, American flag... [ Continue reading: ]

Pat's Sorry
Pat Robertson is sorry.... [ Continue reading: ]

Forgiving Eye for the "Part of God's Plan" Guy
The Times Online reports on a proposed campaign among Vatican officials to perform an extreme makeover on one of the Bible's worst baddies: the ultimate betrayer, Judas Iscariot. Under the proposal, Judas would be redeemed through a "re-reading" of his... [ Continue reading: ]

"Letter of 500" Fascism Continues in Russia
After eight Russian Jews were stabbed during a Wednesday night attack on a Moscow synagogue, and after a year of growing anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic sentiments among Russian nationalists, and several recent attacks on African immigrants and gypsies, the Federation... [ Continue reading: ]

Stop the War on Easter Now!
Do you feel more or less persecuted than last year? Georgia Republican state representatives play to their constituencies, with some after-the-fact Christmas- (and possibly Easter) saving legislation, on behalf of "persecuted Christians."... [ Continue reading: ]

The Only Good Muslims
Christian apocalypticist and host of the recently cancelled Trinity Broadcast Network show, "International Intelligence Briefing," Hal Lindsey takes his case to Fox's "Hannity & Colmes," defending himself against TBN's publicized concerns that Lindsey's views were offensive to their Middle Eastern... [ Continue reading: ]

Philosophy of Design
Intelligent Design gets set for another trial, with a group of California parents suing a rural high school which introduced the evolution alternative as a philosophy elective. The new case, if it holds up, could force a more nuanced discussion... [ Continue reading: ]

Acid Devils
While 2.5 million Muslim pilgrims making hajj stone the devil (under heavy police supervision to prevent stampedes), NPR raises him right back up with an examination of "Backmasking" in acid rock songs and other music, as part of a special... [ Continue reading: ]

Constitutional Abstention
In a lawsuit filed last month in Georgia, a 10th grade student, Jessica Bradley, and her father are suing a private Christian high school, Covenant Christian Academy, for expelling Bradley for "sexual immorality" after the teenage girl kissed another girl... [ Continue reading: ]

Worldly Retribution
Lo and behold, Pat Robertson has managed to louse up his own plans this time, if a euphemism like "louse up" can still be used when talking about a $50 million tourism partnership lost. After Robertson's ill-conceived announcement that God... [ Continue reading: ]

Klingenschmitt Fast
Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt, the Navy chaplain who began hunger striking outside the White House eighteen days ago over alleged prohibitions on praying in the name of Jesus, has declared his campaign a success, to the apparent bafflement of the... [ Continue reading: ]

Thoughts for the Day
"Thought for the Day," a three-minute BBC segment that, for 36 years, has been allotted for religious perspectives on topical issues, may soon be opened up to secular contributors after years of lobbying by the British National Secular Society. While... [ Continue reading: ]

We Will Bury You
A Justice Sunday III bulletin from the Rev. Herbert H. Lusk II, the pastor of the Greater Exodus Baptist Church, the inner-city Philadelphia church where conservative Christians have convened to rally for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Preached Lusk, who... [ Continue reading: ]

Pray for Rain
Religion of the Ages: Amid severe, drought-fueled wildfires, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who made headlines last year for his much-publicized "covenant marriage" ceremony with his long-time wife, has issued an official proclamation directing citizens of the state to pray for... [ Continue reading: ]

Jew Love
"'I feel jealous sometimes. This term that keeps coming up in the Old Book -- the Chosen, the Chosen.'" The Washington Post's Alan Cooperman delivers another thoughtful report, about the evangelical-Jewish alliance, using the pastorship of the Jew-loving, Southern Baptist... [ Continue reading: ]

Voodoo Fest
How do you do the voodoo? The BBC features a reader forum on whether voodoo is good or evil, on the eve of the annual voodoo festival in Benin, where 60% of the population practices the religion. Not an empirical... [ Continue reading: ]

Holy Wars Are Still Now
A funny little article from Charles Haynes, the First Amendment Center representative and talking head of choice for all things litigio-cultural. Even as Haynes predicts little respite from religious controversies in 2006, he affects fatigue with the culture wars he's... [ Continue reading: ]

Holy Oiling the Machine
Via Salon, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday on the clandestine consecration of the hearing room where the questioning of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito is taking place today. The consecration -- which included blessing the doors to the room,... [ Continue reading: ]

Straight Religion
Knight Chair of Media and Religion at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, and our colleague here at The Revealer, Diane Winston, deconstructs the "Book of Daniel" debacle, suggesting that the real story isn't the... [ Continue reading: ]

Men of God and Abramoff
Salon.com's Joe Conason tallies the number of religious figures and moralizing laymen involved in the Jack Abramoff scandals (such as Ralph Reed and Tom DeLay), saving his best bile for Rabbi Daniel Lapin, an apologist for Christian conservatives whose fake... [ Continue reading: ]

"Giving Voice" to MLK
Max Blumenthal has a smart take-down of the conservative revisionist history that's enabled Christian activists such as Tony Perkins, Chuck Colson and Jerry Falwell to posture as the rightful heirs of the civil rights legacy -- going so far as... [ Continue reading: ]

Hear God's Voice; Dream God's Dreams
Quadruple your ability to hear God's voice: "'[it takes] a lot of the guess work out.'" One of the better press releases we've seen in a while.... [ Continue reading: ]

The Book of Pat
From the land of absent internal censors: Pat Robertson wonders aloud whether the sudden stroke suffered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whom Robertson nonetheless considers "a very likable person," was divine retribution for organizing the Gaza withdrawal last year.... [ Continue reading: ]

Doing Little for God or Conservatism
The surprisingly successful campaign of Chilean Socialist, agnostic presidential candidate, Michelle Bachelet, has been making global news for over a month, at The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and the BBC, all of which make note of her lack... [ Continue reading: ]

How the Other Half Worships
"In the little church, everybody is sort of a king." Urban blight photographer, Camilo Jose Vergara, releases a new book, How the Other Half Worships, about the world of storefront churches: make-do houses of worship contained within the shells of... [ Continue reading: ]

The Late, Great Hal Lindsey Report
An inside scandal (of limited proportions) at Trinity Broadcast Network, which reportedly just cancelled Hal Lindsey's weekly television program, "International Intelligence Briefing," over concerns that the famous Christian Zionist and author of The Late, Great Planet Earth was offending Arabs... [ Continue reading: ]

Bill O'Reilly v. Liberal Jews
"Are U.S. Jews really worried the Christian right is trying to control the country?" That's the thoroughly disingenuous question Bill O'Reilly proposes for his "The O'Reilly Factor" show tonight, upon which he'll interview Reform Rabbi James Rudin, a long-time adviser... [ Continue reading: ]

American Visitation
The National Catholic Reporter's John L. Allen, Jr., looks into the ongoing apostolic visitation of American seminaries, a Vatican order that coincides with its recent ruling against gay priests, and finds that most host seminaries found the one-week visits to... [ Continue reading: ]

Holy Land: Holy Land
A coalition of U.S. evangelical groups, led by none other than Pat Robertson, is negotiating with the Israeli government to lease 125 acres of land in Galilee -- possibly at no charge from Israel's ministry of tourism -- in order... [ Continue reading: ]

Pashkevil-joy
Joel Greenberg of The Chicago Tribune, surveys the admonitory posters, or pashkevils, which cover the walls of ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem, warning the haredim against movie-watching, "media of all kinds," and tight clothes, even as much of secular Israel begins... [ Continue reading: ]

Historical Jesus Goes to Trial
It's like Miracle on 34th Street, the Scopes trial, and The Greatest Story Ever Told all wrapped up in one; a story-line made in TV mini-series heaven. Christianity itself -- or at least one of its humble servants, Italian priest... [ Continue reading: ]

Saint More
The Guardian re-names Thomas More the patron saint of "liars and bullies," on the occasion of two plays opening about the theologian in London.... [ Continue reading: ]

Jesus TV: Milking the Culture War
Time magazine gives a preview of "The Book of Daniel," an NBC sitcom premiering this Friday, which already has all its liberal-moderate Christian street creds in order, having managed to piss off the American Family Association with screeners that the... [ Continue reading: ]

Reporting Faith Based Initiatives
Frank James of The Chicago Tribune runs through the laundry list of lawsuits pending against faith-based groups accused of proselytizing while they provide the community services they're funded for. A number of the cases are familiar: Silver Ring Thing's high-budget... [ Continue reading: ]

Megachurch Turnover
Robert Schuller, among the inventors of the modern megachurch, turns the Crystal Cathedral's pulpit over to his son. The LA Times reports that "unlike televangelists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the elder Schuller stayed out of politics." Yes... [ Continue reading: ]

Great Stuff
New recruit, on her way to Iraq: "You can just hope God is on your side and move through the tour and all that other great stuff." (NYT)... [ Continue reading: ]

ID News
Unexpected allies for the Intelligent Design movement: Orthodox Jews.... [ Continue reading: ]

Making Good Islam
There's something to be said for being forthright. The Opinion Journal, The Wall Street Journal's conservative op-ed pages, has long approached the "Muslim problem" by implying a distinction between "good" and "bad" Islam. Today's contributing commentator, Abdurrahman Wahid, the former... [ Continue reading: ]

Christian Economics
Better marriages, better savings, better tithing to build God's kingdom. Oh, yeah, and less debt too. The News Leader, in Virginia, reports on the growing field of Christian debt-management, and obtains a few vague quotes about biblical mentions of money... [ Continue reading: ]

Gullah Gospel
The LA Times reports on yet another folk Bible translation, somewhat in the vein of "hip hop Bibles," but this time dated back, rather than updated to appeal to "modern youth." The "Gullah Gospel," or officially, "De Nyew Testament," was... [ Continue reading: ]

"2 starships passing on opposite ends of the universe "
Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, vs. Mikey Weinstein, the Air Force Academy alumn and father who's taken the lead in the fight against evangelical proselytizing at the academy. An uncensored correspondence... [ Continue reading: ]

Limbo'ed
Ian Fisher of The New York Times News Service, undertakes a thoughtful investigation of the Vatican's plans to remove the theory of limbo from Catholic doctrine -- a question that was discussed at this month's meeting of 30 Catholic theologians... [ Continue reading: ]

Two Courts
From Malaysia comes a case of conflict between civilian and Shariah courts, which tangled this week over a Hindu widow's wishes to bury her husband according to her -- and, she claimed, her late husband's -- Hindu traditions. The widow,... [ Continue reading: ]

Condom Virgin
The Catholics get all the good outrage. After the Piss Christ and the supermodels' Last Supper, comes artist Steve Rosenthal's condom-wrapped Virgin Mary statuette, with the cup at the end of Mary's "delicate veil of latex" arranged to replace the... [ Continue reading: ]

The Post's Create-A-Crisis
In response to an inflammatory report published Monday by The New York Post, which alleged that the U.S. embassy in Cairo was under investigation by the State Department for discriminating against thousands of Coptic Christian Egyptians who applied for visas,... [ Continue reading: ]

Ad Nauseum
Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI; Terri Schiavo and faith-based helping after Katrina; the exploding number of church schisms over homosexuality; Intelligent Design, the Ten Commandments, Harriet Miers, the Vatican's gay ban, and Billy Graham's visit to heathen New... [ Continue reading: ]

Focus at the Movies
The New York Times' John Leland moves beyond the neverending Narnia/Passion stories to find another trend among conservative Christian moviegoers: they're reviewing films they once would have protested or mentioned only to condemn, such as Brokeback Mountain, with one eye... [ Continue reading: ]

Bush's Jesus
"So, as I read on and on about Jesus demanding that his disciples forgo any thoughts of family or wealth, plus endless examples of behavior which surely must seem wimpy to Bush if he took them literally, I realized that... [ Continue reading: ]

The Zeal of the Re-Convert
There's an elephant-sized religion story behind this short news item from The Times of India, which reports the re-conversion of 16 Christians in the Indian state of Orissa, who returned to their original Hinduism -- by far the predominant religion... [ Continue reading: ]

King James in Odessa
The Ector County Independent School Board of Odessa, Texas, has approved the teaching of the King James version of the Bible as an elective course for high school students, picking the KJV over another curriculum option, The Bible and its... [ Continue reading: ]

Islamageddon
Bartholomew's Notes on Religion uncovers the next big thing in apoco-tainment: Robert Ferrigno's Prayers for the Assassin, a new doomsday fiction for the conservative end-days crowd, that posits a divided America of 2040, cut down the middle between the Islamic... [ Continue reading: ]

Stockade Life, Aceh
A Sharia judge in the Indonesian province of Aceh has ordered the punishment of women who are caught not wearing headscarves, reasoning that, since the "'Koran says that if women are good, then a country is good,'" that the tsunami... [ Continue reading: ]

Another Kind of Hunger Strike
Navy Lt. Gordon Klingenschmitt, an evangelical Episcopal chaplain who claims that he "may be fired next month" for refusing to comply with new sensitivity guidelines about praying to Jesus during official military ceremonies, has begun a hunger strike outside the... [ Continue reading: ]

Six Catholics, or Half a Dozen Communists?
ACLU publishes a PDF of a recent FBI report on a Catholic Worker group in California. It reads like an old '60s Jesus freak satire: One arrestee reveals that Catholics "advocate peace and love thru [sic] prayer." The author of... [ Continue reading: ]

Follow the Money
The incomparable Joe Feuerherd of the National Catholic Reporter follows the money and proves that medical billing is a religion story.... [ Continue reading: ]

Intelligent Design Ruling
U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III has just ruled that teaching Intelligent Design in biology classes, as an alternative to evolution, is unconstitutional, violating the ban on teaching religion in public schools. In a 139-page opinion, Jones declared that... [ Continue reading: ]

Back at the Camp
Meanwhile, Pat Robertson is still stuck on last year's contradictory argument: deriding the beliefs of scientists as "religious" -- or "cultishly religious," in Robertson's words -- and therefore not things to be taken seriously, while simultaneously demanding respect for the... [ Continue reading: ]

Nostalgia Without End
"'It is kind of heartening, I think, for Christians to see this, all this outrage, all this fear at Christmastime.'" Conservative MSNBC host Tucker Carlson lauds the ability of Christianity to "'still give people the creeps'" -- his words --... [ Continue reading: ]

Dorothy Day, Terrorist
Turns out progressive Catholicism is alive and well. Evidence of liberal theology's efficacy comes from, of all places, the FBI, which as part of its duties in the WOT, reports The NYT, has been monitoring the Catholic Worker movement made... [ Continue reading: ]

How Far is Heaven?
Barbara Walters doesn't want her afterlife special, "Heaven: Where Is It? How Do We Get There?" which airs tomorrow night, to come across like "Comp. Religion 101," but all the same, she's covered all her spiritualism-beat bases: Catholic Cardinals and... [ Continue reading: ]

Tsunami Water Metaphors
The Telegraph (UK) assesses the sea changes in Nam Khem, the Thai town hit hardest by last December's tsunami, almost a full year after the fact. In that time, the number of churches in the immediate area has risen from... [ Continue reading: ]

More Deaths
The Washington Post reports on a possible Republican-sponsored bill, which passed the House on Friday, which would criminalize giving assistance to illegal immigrants. If the bill becomes law, it would affect a number of non-profit and religious organizations such as... [ Continue reading: ]

Woo-Woo Christmas
House passes resolution in favor of Moms and puppies. Puppy-hating Jews dissent.... [ Continue reading: ]

Megachurch Liberty
Megachurch pastors are apparently hurt over the mocking they've been taking in the media after coverage of the fact that many of the largest churches will be closing for Sunday, Christmas day, to allow parishioners and church volunteers to spend... [ Continue reading: ]

Vatican Open Letter
Approximately 80 Italian gay clergy members have issued an open letter (translated text here) to the Vatican, protesting that their orientation has not precluded their being good priests, but rather served as their "'wealth, because it helps [them] to share... [ Continue reading: ]

In the Beginning, There Were These Books
"I think that Christians who see the Bible as authoritative have to make a decision about what it is they see as authoritative. Is it the original text as it was originally written? If so, that's a problem, because we... [ Continue reading: ]

Permanent Interests
Orthodox scholar and anthropologist Levi Sokolic delivers a diatribe against liberal Jews and the secular left -- whom he calls the "real anti-Semites" of our time -- in The Jewish Press, no doubt in response to the recent public statements... [ Continue reading: ]

Letters to God
Yesterday, Israeli mailmen performed their semi-annual delivery of letters to God, which, like U.S. letters to Santa, are deemed too precious too discard, and in Israel, are instead placed unopened between the stones of the Western Wall.... [ Continue reading: ]

Sister Dorothy Stang
Rayfran Sales and Clodoaldo Batista, the two Brazilian men convicted of killing American nun, Sister Dorothy Stang, under orders from a group of ranchers angry about Sister Dorothy's work advocating the rights of peasant farmers, began long prison sentences (27... [ Continue reading: ]

Co-Ed Convent
The Times Online reports on the one-year anniversary of a group of young Franciscan nuns and monks who are living together in a mixed convent-monastery in Rome, the Franciscan Fraternity of Bethany. The liberal community, which prays, eats, performs household... [ Continue reading: ]

Emergent S3K
The news of a January conference of Emergent Christians and their Jewish counterparts at Synagogue 3000 (S3K), who intend to meet to discuss ways the two groups can work together on social justice and poverty issues, sparked a blogo-battle over... [ Continue reading: ]

Classics for Christians
With yesterday's hearing on the motion to dismiss a case brought by Calvary Chapel Christian Schools against the University of California, over the university's refusal to accredit several of the Christian high school's courses, Mike Weiss of The San Francisco... [ Continue reading: ]

Polygamy Parade
"'We're coming. We are next. There's no doubt about it.'" The Washington Times takes a page from Rick Santorum's "man-on-dog" book, and then some. In a front-page Sunday story, the paper took on the pressing national issue of the "coming... [ Continue reading: ]

UW Bible Study
Today, the Wisconsin legislature will meet for an informational session regarding the "Bible-studies ban" controversy at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where a resident assistant was recently forbidden from hosting Bible studies in his dorm room, in accordance with a... [ Continue reading: ]

Suburb v. Suburb
The Washington Post travels to Cobb County, Georgia, the Atlanta suburb with a remarkable proclivity for passing resolutions, filing lawsuits, and getting sued in the name of religious and social culture war issues du jour. This year, no surprise, it's... [ Continue reading: ]

Secular Centennial
Today marks the centennial of France's legislation separating church and state: the framework for its concept of laïcité, and the act that made France the only European country to declare itself a secular entity in its constitution. The 1905 law... [ Continue reading: ]

"The Reason for the Season"
Two takes on the news that at least eight major megachurches have cancelled their Sunday services for Christmas day. Laurie Goodstein, of The New York Times, has the more thorough report, both for the snicker-worthy substitutes offered for worship --... [ Continue reading: ]

Muslim Renaissance
The meeting of leaders from 57 Muslim countries in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, for an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference ended with what some are calling a "Muslim renaissance," with attendees declaring that terrorism amounted to a "crisis"... [ Continue reading: ]

Qur'anic Oaths
A North Carolina judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of North Carolina and the Greensboro Muslim Syidah Mateen which asked the judge to clarify the legality of using non-Christian texts, such as the Qur'an, for oath-taking in court... [ Continue reading: ]

Dorothy Day Day
For the 25th anniversary of the death of Dorothy Day, here are two tributes. One in writing, from the editors of The New York Times, who praise Day's "pacifism and cranky independence" as traits which survive her in the loosely-organized,... [ Continue reading: ]

Mirecki Resignation
Disturbing news from Kansas: Paul Mirecki, the University of Kansas professor who became a topic of State Congress discussion and vehement media attacks after sending an email in which he described Intelligent Design as a myth and its proponents as... [ Continue reading: ]

Faith-Based Rehab
A Catholic man in Detroit who pled guilty to possession of marijuana and chose to attend a Pentecostal-run rehabilitation program rather than go to prison has become an example of the downfalls of faith-based programs partnering too closely with the... [ Continue reading: ]

A Happy Holidays Kind of Guy
"'Bush is pulling a Clinton. I expected more from this guy.'" The Catholic League's Bill Donohue sputters over the "Happy Holidays" greeting card that the Bush family is sending out this year.... [ Continue reading: ]

Return of the "Conscience Clause"
Return of the conscience clauses: an appeals court has ruled against a gay California woman suing two doctors at a fertility clinic who refused to artificially inseminate her in 1999, citing a conflict with their religious beliefs because the woman... [ Continue reading: ]

Declaration of Christmas War
Beyond Belief Media, under the leadership of "atheist Christian" blogger/director Brian Flemming, has announced that it will fill the much-publicized role of the anti-Christmas Grinch, dispatching guerilla "street teams" to public Christmas-themed events -- from nativity scenes to pageants --... [ Continue reading: ]

Red Crystal
Red Cross, Red Crescent, Red Star of David, Red Crystal? Diplomats from 192 countries are meeting to discuss a third symbol (the Red Star of David is not officially recognized) that could be used by the International Red Cross as... [ Continue reading: ]

Where's Jesus? (His n' Hers Edition)
For all that religion journalism actually has improved lately, with major publications taking a genuine and intelligent interest in the role of religion in world affairs, there's still a genre of religion writing that's reliably lousy, wherein reporters approach religion... [ Continue reading: ]

Kansas Chill
Although University of Kansas religion professor Paul Mirecki's controversial course, "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design and Creationism," has been cancelled at the professor's own request, Republican Kansas State Representative Brenda Landwehr is unsatisfied. The course, originally named to identify... [ Continue reading: ]

The Bible Game
Preetom Bhattacharya: The Washington Post's Tech Gift Guide 2005 features "The Bible Game," the first major Christian videogame for the Playstation 2 and Xbox. John Gaudiosi, who wrote the review, does not judge the game for its content and acknowledges... [ Continue reading: ]

To Kill a Megachurch?
An intriguing story from The Guardian about an mission-minded evangelical megachurch from Nigeria settling among the "whitest people" of Floyd, Texas -- until recently, an enclave of the Ku Klux Klan -- to build their church headquarters, complete with a... [ Continue reading: ]

Return of the New York Jews
Julia Duin of The Washington Times mounts the barricades in defense of the conservative Christian-conservative Jew alliance, using news of a private conference of Jewish leaders meeting in New York today to discuss the Christian right, as opportunity to highlight... [ Continue reading: ]

Son of Unitarian Preacher Man
A wholly religion-and-the-media story comes from The Guardian, where readers' editor Ian Mayes fends off the accusations that his paper is disparaging to and contemptuous of religion, and simultaneously, that it has lately turned from a secular paper to "the... [ Continue reading: ]

Your Black Muslim Bakery v. Booze
Chip Johnson, of The San Francisco Chronicle, reports on last week's vigilante attacks on two Oakland liquor stores by a group of black, bow-tied men -- not the Nation of Islam, which condemned the attacks in a news conference --... [ Continue reading: ]

Air Force Revisions
Perhaps it's to be expected that Stars & Stripes, the official publication of the U.S. military, isn't eager to point out the flaws in their own official message about the controversial interim religion guidelines currently directing the prayers of Air... [ Continue reading: ]

The Buddha Boy and the Old Stone Bridge
Nick Street: The American press hasn’t shown much interest in the Buddha Boy. A ring of commerce and debris has sprung up around the boy, whose mother claims he has spent the past six months in a meditative pose beneath... [ Continue reading: ]

Forget Happy Holidays
Sarah Price Brown: Everyone knows "happy holidays" means Merry Christmas and that the company "holiday party" is really a Christmas bash. So, why do we use these euphemisms? And why does the press go along with it, using phrases like... [ Continue reading: ]

Limbo Babies
The second-hottest story to come out of the Vatican this week concerns the eternal souls of babies -- unchristened and still full of original sin -- righteous pre-Christians, and the classical sages. The Guardian reports that 30 leading Catholic theologians... [ Continue reading: ]

Saddamites?
Rob Kall, of OpEdNews, sees coded talk in President Bush's identification of the enemy, in this morning's address, as "rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists." It's not such a long leap, notes Kall, from Saddamist to sodomist...... [ Continue reading: ]

The First Amendment Center and Its Influence
Alan Elsner of the San Diego Union-Tribune misses at least one culture-warring beat in his report on The Bible and Its Influence: a new, 387-page glossy edition of the King James Old and New Testaments that aims to reestablish the... [ Continue reading: ]

Culture Without the Culture Wars
Erica Ogg: In his "800 Words" column in The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Dan Neil, on location in Patagonia, tosses off a comparison of the evolution debate in the United States and the lack of one in Puerto Natales, Chile,... [ Continue reading: ]

Unraveling the Israel Alliance
"Jews in America aren't endangered, but the power of the religious right has clearly reached a point where a great many feel exceedingly nervous. The fear is not of pogroms or outright discrimination; rather, it's of the disappearance of the... [ Continue reading: ]

USAID, Christ and Liberty
William Fisher, who has worked on economic programs in developing nations for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), wonders at the message being sent by one of President Bush's latest appointments, dean of academic... [ Continue reading: ]

ID Roundup
Intelligent Design advocates' tactic of painting their opponents' pro-evolution arguments as another belief-set or religion -- a tactic well-honed by conservative pundits over the past year -- graduates from PR-stunt to litigation claim this week, as a California couple sues... [ Continue reading: ]

Demystify
National Catholic Reporter journalist John Allen talks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about his new book, Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church, right now. Listen.... [ Continue reading: ]

Greek Life
Zain Shauk: We salute Jenny Jarvie of The Los Angeles Times, who dug up a story about the first Muslim sorority and delivered a great representation of the way young Muslim women are struggling to balance their Islamic beliefs with... [ Continue reading: ]

It's All Right Ma, They're Only Mormons
A story that has been brewing in the pages of Rocky Mountain papers for weeks hits The Washington Times today, with Stephen Dinan's report on a religious exemption provision to anti-immigration laws proposed by Utah Republican Senator Robert F. Bennett,... [ Continue reading: ]

Five Questions
Zain Shauk: In a recent Los Angeles Times Op-Ed, radio host Dennis Prager posed five questions that he said non-Muslims would like to have answered. They included questions about why so many atrocities are committed in the name of Islam... [ Continue reading: ]

Symbolic Gestures for China
Jason Carter: Amid the tensions of Bush’s visit to the world’s fastest growing economy, the president emphasized China’s repression of religious and social freedoms by attending "one of the few state-approved and state-monitored congregations in the country," The New York... [ Continue reading: ]

The War on Christmas Is Always Now
The ACLU didn't steal Christmas, but don't think that's about to stop Jerry Falwell in his remarkably unoriginal new drive, "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign," which will enlist 8,000 members of the Christian Educators Association International to monitor public schools... [ Continue reading: ]

The Universe is Expanding!
"It’s been more than 200 years since the founders established the separation of church and state. The assault on that principle now under way promises to alter not only our form of government but our concept of religion as well."... [ Continue reading: ]

Assimilation Nation
"'What's happening now in the Islamic community is very similar to what was happening in the 1920s and '30s...with the Jewish community.'" No, not persecution. Cultural assimilation, via the Boy Scouts of America, the requirements of which -- an adherence... [ Continue reading: ]

Return to Psychedelics
"Over the past decade, I have engaged in an intellectual and spiritual odyssey that began when I was in my late twenties, in the depths of an existential crisis...I was brought up as an atheist in a countercultural milieu --... [ Continue reading: ]

Under Attack
According to a survey commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League, "American Attitudes Toward Religion in the Public Square," nearly two-thirds of American citizens believe that religion is under siege, presumably threatened by the remaining third of citizens who, though vastly outnumbered,... [ Continue reading: ]

Calvaryism
The New York Times' Carolyn Marshall does an admirable job of refereeing in her latest story, about a pending lawsuit between parents from the Calvary Chapel Christian School, in Murrieta, California, and the University of California, over a set of... [ Continue reading: ]

Muzzle Men
A petition organized by Jay Sekulow, of the conservative action group American Center for Law and Justice, which is signed by more than 80,000 people and supported by dozens of congressmen, aims to get President Bush to issue an executive... [ Continue reading: ]

This Week in Gay Church Schisms
A day after an open letter to Archbishop Rowan Williams of the Church of England was posted on the website of the "Global South Primates" under the names of 17 conservative Anglican bishops, criticizing him and challenging his authority over... [ Continue reading: ]

Pagan Filters
The Wildhunt Blog reads between the lines of this Herald Tribune story describing a forum on religion in public schools held in Sarasota, Florida. Superintendent Gary Norris was a panelist at the event, hosted by Americans United for Separation of... [ Continue reading: ]

Universism In a Nutshell
Stephanie Simon of The Los Angeles Times profiles the non-prophet founder of a new, doubt-filled religion -- Universism -- Ford Vox (who also runs the online forum for the 8,000-member faith, Universist Forum: History in the Making). In a piece... [ Continue reading: ]

The Unusual Plan B
A USA Today editorial makes the case that religion is the prime mover at the Food and Drug Administration, and is shocked (shocked...) to think of one group imposing its values upon another in "a nation founded on religious freedom... [ Continue reading: ]

Say Little Prayers
News of the Silly: England's General Register Office has revised rules that banned all religious references from civil marriage ceremonies to now allow the incidentally religious references to God, prayer, or grace that tend to appear in popular wedding songs... [ Continue reading: ]

God Still Doesn't Like Commies
In the breath before the rush to denounce former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, for his courtroom statements that a) God will forgive him for his murderous excesses; and b) that God moved his hand while he merely suffers for deeds... [ Continue reading: ]

SoMA Family Values
The true confessions of a Catholic priest's Madonna/Whore "backstreet girl"; the memory of religious exclusion from a gay married couple; a review of Revealer contributor Peter Manseau's new book, Vows; and pioneering Catholic theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann's dynamic charges against the... [ Continue reading: ]

It's a Celebration
"Finally, a day in which we can come together and celebrate God's eternal moral law." Mark your calendars for February 5, 2006 (or February 4th, for those Saturday-Sabbath observers), when one of this year's most tedious religio-political controversies could be... [ Continue reading: ]

"Thank you, Father"
A week after the State Department's annual listing of countries "blacklisted" for their lack of religious freedom, comes horrible new testimony and details from North Korean refugees, charging incidents, in 2003 and before, of violent persecution of North Korean Christians... [ Continue reading: ]

A Spirituality of One's Own
American Jesus author Stephen Prothero considers the growing SBNR ("spiritual but not religious") movement, as the crowd of independent minds gains a chronicler in Leigh Eric Schmidt, author of the recent history of spirituality, Restless Souls. While Schmidt counters the... [ Continue reading: ]

Kansas: The Truth Is Out There
Nearly ten months after the Kansas State Board of Education proposed altering the definition of "science" for statewide standards, removing the phrase, "Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us,"... [ Continue reading: ]

Australian Design
All this past year, Australian culture wars have been following the U.S. playbook faithfully, erupting over gay marriage, public religiosity, and prison salvations just as, or just after, did America. Intelligent Design is apparently no different, and Australia's Campus Crusade... [ Continue reading: ]

Newdow Files Again
Michael Newdow files again, this time taking aim at the "In God We Trust" motto on U.S. currency. Newdow announced on Sunday his plans to file a federal lawsuit asking for the removal of the motto on the grounds that... [ Continue reading: ]

Know Your Audience (If Not the Story)
In the wake of the U.S. State Department's report on worldwide religious freedom, which once again condemned Saudi Arabia as a severe violator of religious liberty that only allowed citizens to follow the state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam, comes the... [ Continue reading: ]

All, All, All
"Jesus did not say, 'If I be lifted up I will draw some.' Jesus said, 'If I be lifted up I will draw all, all, all, all, all.'" Desmond Tutu, speaking in California, called upon the Anglican Church to embrace... [ Continue reading: ]

Catholic Gays and the Coming Era of the Spirit
"'As I see it, the whole trajectory of the church is toward the era of the Spirit, when each will know the truth in his heart and there will be no need for extrinsic authority...By being rejected by church leadership,... [ Continue reading: ]

Pat Will Survive
Pat Robertson warns Dover voters not to be surprised -- nor to ask for divine help -- if God comes a'smiting after they booted eight pro-Intelligent Design school board members from office in last week's election. In the event of... [ Continue reading: ]

The Atheist-Pagan-Nazi-Wahhabi Alliance v. Motherland
After a group of Russian atheists called for the Constitutional Court to remove a reference to God from the national anthem, the Union of Orthodox Citizens charged that such a deletion would lead to rioting and civil unrest in Russia... [ Continue reading: ]

And Tennessee Associations Embarrass Dover
It was the bad p.r. that did it for voters in Dover, Pennsylvania, who this week voted to oust all eight school board members who were up for re-election after they had supported the teaching of Intelligent Design in public... [ Continue reading: ]

White Knights Embarass Texas
A handful of representatives of the "White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" and the World Church of the Creator rallied in Austin this past weekend in support of Proposition 2, a ballot initiative altering the Texas Constitution to ban... [ Continue reading: ]

U.S. "particularly unconcerned" with Uzbekistan
Jason Carter: Declining a recommendation by the Commission on International Religious Freedom, the State Department did not include Uzbekistan on its annual list of countries guilty of severe religious oppression. A Reuters article in The New York Times outlined... [ Continue reading: ]

Evergreen Like a Pine-Tree Air Freshener
For how long of a period can one group -- say environmentalists -- be described as in the process of "gaining a new ally" -- call 'em evangelicals? If it was a small-town local rag looking for filler stories, the... [ Continue reading: ]

Robinson v. Ratzinger
Gene Robinson, the openly-gay Episcopal bishop whose 2003 ordination was one provocation for the current church divide that threatens to split the Anglican Communion, has called for his Church to confront the Roman Catholic Church over its attitudes towards homosexuals... [ Continue reading: ]

Partisan Peace
Last fall, when church-state watchdog groups warned politically-active churches that overt campaigning for one candidate or another might cost them their tax-exempt status, conservative talking heads such as Jay Sekulow cried persecution at the hands of "left-wing thugs" selectively targeting... [ Continue reading: ]

Liberal Media
More of that ol' time liberal media: "America's freedoms were created by founders who believed in the sanctity of human life but also that man was a fallen creature," writes education reporter Ann Work, of the Wichita Falls (Tx) Times... [ Continue reading: ]

Religion and Exclusion in Paris
"When the sun sets, the violence begins. Burning cars, balaclava-clad youth battling police (sometimes with real bullets), and an increasing sense of hopelessness cover neighborhoods long afflicted with high unemployment. It could be the West Bank, but this time the... [ Continue reading: ]

Mamas, Don't Let Your Sons Grow Up to Be Evil Biblical Kings
After receiving numerous inquiries from Jewish parents fearful of misnaming their children, a group of Israeli rabbis has compiled a list of bad names that shouldn't be given to Jewish children, including the first names of both the prime minister,... [ Continue reading: ]

Subjective Fluff and the BBC
When the God-Beat-beat goes parliamentary, do the same standards of criticism apply? Do the same subjective questions religion-beat critics use to evaluate religion coverage -- questions about the selection or reporting of religion stories, about the reporter's tone and level... [ Continue reading: ]

What's In a Name?
Sarah Price Brown: Health activists and "social conservatives" are fighting over the new cervical cancer vaccine, writes Rob Stein in The Washington Post. Stein presents both sides of the conflict while managing to leave out one relevant piece in the... [ Continue reading: ]

Birthdays, Etc.
Happy Birthday Jesus? Not to mention, Happy Wicca New Year and a Happy Bonded Dead Souls Temporarily Revived In the Shape of an Animal Day to you!... [ Continue reading: ]

Cast the First Vote
A Christian think tank in Bangor, Maine is mobilizing to oppose a November ballot question that could reverse the state's new gay non-discrimination law, which protects gays' rights to equal opportunity in employment, housing, education and public accomodations, with the... [ Continue reading: ]

Upstate Enlightenment
Amherst, New York, home of Free Inquiry, the skeptics' periodical of choice, and its parent organization, the Council for Secular Humanism, this weekend hosts its 10th Annual World Congress, "Toward a New Enlightenment," as a response to religious encroachments on... [ Continue reading: ]

Eagles for Christ
A Delaware state principal has apologized after allowing a Christian-themed assembly, featuring two pro-football players from the Philadelphia Eagles -- one of whom is the founder of the evangelical group, Athletes United for Christ -- to occur at a public... [ Continue reading: ]

Air Force Prayer
A letter to President Bush, signed by 70 lawmakers, has requested a presidential order guaranteeing the free speech of military chaplains in the face of new sensitivity guidelines proposed after this year's evangelizing Air Force controversy. The letter, dated October... [ Continue reading: ]

Rice Hosts Assorted Epithets
A somewhat baffling news story, about Condeleeza Rice's recent hosting of Muslim community leaders for a fast-breaking Iftaar dinner at the State Department building, appears on the website of the Kuwait News Agency -- an entity which might be expected... [ Continue reading: ]

Lite-Nite
'Tis the season for embarrassing hysterics over occultism and the cruel, intimidating tactics of devil-worshipping trick-or-treaters. In the spirit of that season, the Church of England's Bishop of Bolton, the Right Rev. David Gillett, proposes rescuing Halloween from its own... [ Continue reading: ]

Argentina Re-Jewvenation
Daniel Helft of Bloomberg News reports on the progress of Argentine Jews who, 60 to 70 years after a secret 1938 order banning Jewish immigrants from entering the country forced many Jews to conceal their religion (and to "pass" by... [ Continue reading: ]

Wrath, Etc.
Generally speaking, U.S. politicians' and religio-rock stars' explanations for God's periodic, environmental fits of wrath are predictable: gay sex, casual sex, unwed sex, unusual sex, and oh, occasionally a political misstep. Turns out such divining is just as tedious in... [ Continue reading: ]

Atheist Lobbyist
Atheists get a lobbyist too, in the form of Lori Lipman Brown, former Nevada state senator and the new congressional lobbyist and spokeswoman for The Secular Coalition for America who will be in charge of educating the public on misconceptions... [ Continue reading: ]

Black Metal Malaysia
A parlimentarian in Kuala Lampur today asked the government to investigate "Black Metal," a so-called "anti-religion cult" practiced by some Malay Muslim teenagers -- "confessed 'satan's children,'" in the words of the parlimentarian, who burn and step on the Qur'an... [ Continue reading: ]

Steele Hates Westboro
Republican Indiana State Senator Brent Steele said he intends to propose legislation in response to the antics of the Westboro Baptist "God Hates Fags" traveling prayer protesters, making disorderly conduct at the funerals of fallen U.S. soldiers a felony offense.... [ Continue reading: ]

Gods of San Francisco
"Like pouring dirty water on the Vatican." The New York Times' Randal C. Archibold reports on the lawsuit brought by 13 Native American tribes in the Flagstaff, Arizona area, over the proposal of a ski resort located on the San... [ Continue reading: ]

Special Rapport
An independent expert has issued a new report to the United Nations, urging the assembly to protect the religious freedom of all prisoners, drawing particular attention to the "growing number" of allegations of religious abuse of detainees and prisoners. The... [ Continue reading: ]

The Day After the Episcopal Bomb
Leaked minutes from a meeting of liberal Episcopalian para-church laity have found their into the hands of The Washington Times' Julia Duin, who dutifully characterizes the notes as a deliberate plot to "oust" and "disenfranchise" conservative Episcopal bishops who have... [ Continue reading: ]

No Compromise
Intelligent Design earns another foe, this time from a less-obvious place. Fr. George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory and astronomical research and educational division of the Church, has dismissed Intelligent Design for dismissing God -- for trying so hard... [ Continue reading: ]

God Women
Yogmata Japaki, A Buddhist Japanese god woman has buried herself alive in an underground pit to achieve "Samadhi," or state of complete meditation, in a prayer for world peace and the restoration of natural order in the face of immense... [ Continue reading: ]

Arbishop of York
Dr. John Sentamu, the new Archbishop of York, the second-highest official in the Church of England, and the Church's first black Archbishop, announced his receipt of racist threat letters, some smeared with feces, after his election earlier this year.... [ Continue reading: ]

J-Post, Christian Edition
Chris McGreal of The Guardian reports on the plans of Israeli's oldest English-language paper, The Jerusalem Post, to launch a new Christian edition, assembled in connection with the International Christian Embassy (which is campaigning agains Israeli divestment plans being discussed... [ Continue reading: ]

Conservatism, Born Again
Can conservatism -- or at least Bush's variety of it -- be born again? Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal columnist and former Bush, Sr. speech writer, counsels the president to model his "mid-presidency crisis" after his earlier mid-life dilemna, and... [ Continue reading: ]

Radically Other
"Who is this 'God' in whose name so many diverse and troubling things take place? Why is it assumed to be good to affirm one's faith in such an entity? Why is it thought to be wicked to deny its... [ Continue reading: ]

Separation of Church and War
Jason Carter: Objecting voices were raised in China, both Koreas and even Japan when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited a Shinto shrine honoring Ally-convicted war criminals. While China fears Koizumi’s homage to an imperial past will strain diplomacy over... [ Continue reading: ]

It's Media
Rick Warren on a coffee cup.... [ Continue reading: ]

Bork You
"There is a great deal more to constitutional law than hostility to Roe." Zing! Says who? Robert Bork, the guy who didn't get the job Harriet Miers is about to not get, back during that other right-wing revolution. All bitterness... [ Continue reading: ]

Deep Space Salvation
Catchy headlines, catchier content: Ruth Gledhill reports that The Catholic Truth Society's new Explanations series contains the work of a papal astonomer who asserts that extra-terrestrial life, if found, will have already found Christ. Or at least, presumably, have been... [ Continue reading: ]

Rabbi for Krakow
Yesterday, Rabbi Avraham Flaks became the first full-time rabbi to serve Krakow since the Holocaust, taking with his position a mission to revive Jewish life and help community members rediscover their heritage in the city where Jewish culture was almost... [ Continue reading: ]

Miers Saved from Idol-Worshipping Cult
Harriet Miers either "found Christ" in 1989, or else she lost her faith in that same year, and she is either definitely going to hell, or she isn't, depending on where you're coming from. Maybe not the sort of thing... [ Continue reading: ]

Prop 2
Cidney Dutton: On Nov. 8, Texans will be voting on Proposition 2, a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Two editorials in a local paper, the Waco Tribune, give distinct justifications for the superfluity of this referendum. An October 17... [ Continue reading: ]

Chant Wars: Make It Roman
Good news for a capella crusaders. Benjamin Bagby talks to Leonard Lopate of WNYC about the seamy backstory of Gregorian Chant: more to do with Charlemagne than Pope Gregory -- who, according to legend, was supposed to have received the... [ Continue reading: ]

The H-Word
Interfaith offense was given this week in Virginia's gubernatorial race, after Republican nominee, Jerry W. Kilgore, launched a new ad-campaign attacking Democrat candidate Timothy M. Kaine's opposition to the death penalty as a position that would let "even Hitler" off... [ Continue reading: ]

Overturning Roe
What did James Dobson know about Harriet Miers, and when did he know it? John Fund of the Wall Street Journal answers those questions with notes obtained from an Oct. 3 conference call involving 13 religious right leaders and two... [ Continue reading: ]

Oh My GodBlogCon
Marissa Kantor: At the first God Blog Convention, which kicked off yesterday and runs through October 15, Christian God-bloggers have come together at Biola University to discuss how to spread the Word through the holy blogosphere. The registrants, to be... [ Continue reading: ]

Bush Said God Said
Al Kamen, Washington Post columnist, runs through the history of Bush's near-misses with claims of divine guidance, from his Amish Country slip that "God speaks through [him]," to the more recent, and varied, accounts of what Bush said God said... [ Continue reading: ]

Jump Up
Newt Gingrich is back, saying some vague stuff about religion being the cornerstone of America's identity and the key to reigning victorious over Islamic terrorists, all in preparation for...a presidential campaign. There's hope though -- it's even Gingrich's own professed... [ Continue reading: ]

Christian Crusader Tony Perkins Bites Own Ass
The Christian Coalition may unraveling at the seams (see below), but at least it was all for a bad cause (self-enrichment, bullyboy politics, career-launching, aka "Ralph Reed"). Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, one of the ascendant powers of... [ Continue reading: ]

Burkha Ban
An anti-immigrant minister in the Netherlands has proposed a ban on the burkha in certain public places and transportation facilities, citing safety concerns. Muslim groups have objected to the move as an "irritant," arguing that very few women wear the... [ Continue reading: ]

Last Supper Swap Meet
The Vatican has proposed a swap with the Israeli government, trading an historic synagogue in Spain (which is currently a Catholic church) for control of the Upper Room in Jerusalem -- the room where the Last Supper is said to... [ Continue reading: ]

Coalition Demolition
Sad times are here for the once king-making Christian Coalition. As The Washington Times' Julia Duin chronicles the dwindling attendance at Coalition "Road to Victory" rallies, as well as the group's looming financial problems, which have left a "trail of... [ Continue reading: ]

No Tribes for You
Somewhere amid their moving crates in Venezuela's Apure state, a group of Florida "New Tribesmen" are saying, "Thanks a lot, Pat." Yesterday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced to a group of Venezuelan indigenous people that he was ashamed of the... [ Continue reading: ]

Vows
Revealer contributor and Buddha killer Peter Manseau makes his national TV debut this morning at 8:18 eastern time on "Today," talking with Matt Lauer about his new book, Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son. Read... [ Continue reading: ]

Pitbull Press
Sharlet: 10 minutes after I write a Revealer item wondering why the press failed to notice the white supremacist, Christian conspiracy link on the site of Harriet Miers' church (it's not what you think), liberal site Daily Kos brings news... [ Continue reading: ]

New Virgins
Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet responds to Jeremy Lott about the importance of chastity to the Christian conservative movement, on Beliefnet.... [ Continue reading: ]

Not a Cheap Commodity
Bush tries to save his Miers project from implosion by 'fessing up that his advisors had promoted the nominee to conservative groups by discussing her religious beliefs and background, but it may be too little frankness, too late. Last Friday,... [ Continue reading: ]

On HPV Message
Sarah Price Brown: When The Los Angeles Times reported Friday on a breakthrough vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, the newspaper raised a cause for concern. "Vaccinating children against a sexually transmitted disease could inadvertently be perceived as endorsing promiscuity," Thomas... [ Continue reading: ]

Attempting to Dissuade Believers
Kaitlyn Burch: Time columnist Leon Jaroff predicts the end of homeopathic medicine, after reading a study from British medical journal The Lancet, proving the inefficacy of homeopathic medicine. Though Jaroff begins his piece by repeating the Royal Family's endorsement of... [ Continue reading: ]

Key Dobson
The Boston Globe launches a three-part series on "key evangelical leaders" with a solid report on James Dobson of Focus on the Family. "Other key figures," writes Brian MacQuarrie, "range from Richard Land, the politically connected Washington lobbyist of the... [ Continue reading: ]

The Chronicle of Higher Education, Radical Feminazi Stealth Rag
Christian Right leader Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council takes a swipe at my former Chronicle of Higher Education colleague Peter Schmidt in the latest edition of his email newsletter. Peter's sin? Reporting that Harriet Miers helped establish a... [ Continue reading: ]

Ideas in Effigy
If evolutionism is a religion, does this become hate speech? Two Dover, PA, school board members praised the burning of a former student's mural depicting of the evolution of man.... [ Continue reading: ]

Pulp Religion
A reassigned Catholic priest on a crusade of sexual moralizing, who was found to have child pornography on his computer when police searched his home on the day before he hung himself; an exhuberant, ultra-conservative preacher who embarrassed half of... [ Continue reading: ]

Bad Magic and the Secularist of the Year
Ah, the secular backlash against the rising tide of extremist religion -- numbered, as always, in the "scores." The petite force will meet this week in London, rallying its dozens with a new "Secularist of the Year" awards ceremony, the... [ Continue reading: ]

Miers Post
From Christianity Today Weblog, an exhaustive compilation of links regarding the religious and personal beliefs of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers -- from Opus Dei to abortion to euthanasia to Mormonism -- as well as the reactions of the professionally... [ Continue reading: ]

Supernatural George
"'If Bush really wants to obey God during his time as president he should start with what is blindingly obvious from the Bible rather than perceived supernatural messages.'" British reserve, specifically the Christian Socialist version of this reserve, responds to... [ Continue reading: ]

Air Force Suit
Mikey Weinstein, the Jewish father of two Air Force Academy cadets and an academy graduate himself, today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force and its acting secretary over the charges of religious intolerance that have surrounded the school... [ Continue reading: ]

Young Women In Love
Zain Shauk: Are teenage girls who have sex 12 times more likely to kill themselves, and do CAT scans of their brains, when they're in love, really resemble those of drug users, brimming with addictive stimulation? Maybe, maybe not. But... [ Continue reading: ]

Touring 1984
Todd Smilovitz: It’s nice that North Korea is allowing a Buddhist temple to be restored, but Los Angeles Times reporter Barbara Demick plays right into Kim Jong Il’s hands in her story on it. As pointed out in Rogue Regime,... [ Continue reading: ]

Heart-Shaped Box
Franklin Graham steps lively on CNN, refusing to blame New Orleans's Mardi Gras hedonism for Katrina, and instead merely offering the destruction of the city as a prime opportunity for revival and redemption in a city of sin. More interesting... [ Continue reading: ]

Undercover at the Movies
Erica Ogg: In Jason Anderson’s "Undercover of the right...and left" in the Canadian magazine Eye Weekly, he warns of the "cagey tactics" studios employ to promote films with ideological agendas that "are getting harder to spot." Anderson, a professed "part-time... [ Continue reading: ]

Design Schism
Jason Carter: Although the irony is difficult to miss, The Los Angeles Times' Josh Getlin dutifully points out that the trial between Dover residents and the city's school board looks oddly like a rerun of Scopes, only this time with... [ Continue reading: ]

Partners in Life
Cidney Dutton: As reported by the Associated Press, nearly 200 Justices of the Peace of Connecticut gathered for a crash course on "civil unions," which will become legal in the state on October 1st. At the conference, attendees were advised... [ Continue reading: ]

GOD TV
"'It is God’s sovereign time for the East Coast of America. He has planned such a radical move of The Holy Spirit from here, it will impact the Americas and the world, and in less than a decade, the East... [ Continue reading: ]

Narrative Gerrymandering
Tony Perkins of the Christian conservative Family Research Council targets NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- usually of little concern to the Christian Right -- for his opposition to John Roberts' confirmation. But Perkins has bigger game in his sites --... [ Continue reading: ]

Other New Orleans
New Orleans may be a city "where old-time religion and voodoo converge," as the NYT's Michael Brick puts it, but so far the Katrina coverage -- heavy on prayers and spiritual healing -- has been weighted to the first side... [ Continue reading: ]

Boston Globe Draws Battle Lines Over Blurry Terrain
Sarah Price Brown observes: When Michael Paulson wrote in The Boston Globe a few days ago about a Vatican investigation into homosexuality in seminaries, he framed the issue plainly. The effort, he claimed “is alarming gay rights advocates but is... [ Continue reading: ]

Lights Out
New Orleans: Let there be light! Or not.... [ Continue reading: ]

No Dating, No Context
Zain Shauk writes: In describing a Muslim father’s concerns about his daughters' virtue, Robert King of the Indianapolis Star writes, “the Abdur-Rahmans have not hesitated to apply some of the more restrictive aspects of Muslim life to their kids: No... [ Continue reading: ]

Onward, Penguin Soldiers
Sharlet: On the one hand, there's something thuggish about attempts by some religious conservative media bigs to press penguins into service for the cause, as reported by Jonathan Miller in yesterday's Times. There is, after all, nothing conservative about the... [ Continue reading: ]

Teaching a Disaster
The Revealer has very rarely received as much mail as we did in response to Anthea Butler's response to Katrina, "As Sheep Without a Shepherd." Some it angry about Anthea's anger -- "unAmerican," writes Ann Meili -- but most of... [ Continue reading: ]

His Dark Widow's Peak
Moktada al-Sadr's "beard reaches up his cheeks and a dark widow's peak points down from beneath his own black turban. He glowers, projecting mistrust, even when he briefly smiles." That's an interesting description, appropriately wicked and uncommonly revealing for an... [ Continue reading: ]

Holy Hurting
The religious art of a junkie named Mike, as seen by photographer Jessica Dimmock. Theologian Ariel Glucklich on sacred pain.... [ Continue reading: ]

Mormons Drink Christian Baby Blood, Don't They?
Amy Sullivan of Washington Monthly on why The Atlantic, the Weekly Standard, and the National Review are wrong about Mitt Romney, the conservative Massachusetts governor who wants to be America's first Mormon president: "The first time I ever heard about... [ Continue reading: ]

Church-Instead-Of-State
The Family Research Council -- heir to the Christian Coalition as Washington's most effective Christian Right political organization -- doesn't often stray far from the Republican line. But its sacrificing political loyalty in the aftermath of Katrina to score points... [ Continue reading: ]

Loot This
Billy Sothern: "I hope that in the event that my house is still standing and above water, someone has the good sense to loot it; there are 20 gallons of bottled water in the kitchen, some food in the cupboard... [ Continue reading: ]

The Religious-People-Are-Crazy Landmine
Jason Carter: “Strategizing a Christian Coup d’Etat” by The L.A. Times’ Jenny Jarvie sheds light on an ambitious movement undertaken by a group called Christian Exodus to gain enough seats in the South Carolina legislature to regain conservative ground on... [ Continue reading: ]

Oh, My Godcast!
The NYT offers up as evidence that consumer hi-tech is the most awesome force in, like, history the new trend of church sermons by podcast -- excuse me, "Godcast"! There are, of course, interesting questions to ask about how podcasting... [ Continue reading: ]

Sermonasaurs!
Everybody likes giant, roadside dinosaurs -- even folks who believe that dinosaurs disprove evolution. Whatever -- a T-Rex by the gas pump? Neat-o. Which is why, no doubt, this story on attempts by creationists to use such icons as kitsch... [ Continue reading: ]

Religion Reporting Without Religion
The NYT's Gardiner Harris manages to report an entire religion story without one reference to religion. And we're not so sure that's a bad thing. The story is the latest maneuver in the ongoing FDA struggle over the "morning-after pill,"... [ Continue reading: ]

High Impact Black Conservatism
Says Bishop Harry Jackson, the most visible African American religious leader aligned with the conservative movement: "High impact African-American churches are creating high impact leaders who are developing high impact congregations that are changing their [highly impacted, presumably] communities." Sounds... [ Continue reading: ]

Take That, Kansas!
Pastafarianism.... [ Continue reading: ]

No Free Lunch
A free lunch in Washington? The Center for Christian Statesmanship provides just such a sweet deal for hundreds of congressmen and congressional staffers. The best part is this lunch's name: "Politics and Principle." All it costs is your ears: the... [ Continue reading: ]

Tonight At 11
Jeff Sharlet: I was so completely wrong about the mainstream media ignoring Pat Robertson's Big Idea (assassinate Hugo Chavez) that CNN Headline News asked me to talk about said Idea on TV. Apparently, it was on at 7; but it'll... [ Continue reading: ]

The Robertson Doctrine
Even USA Today -- via AP -- can report on Pat Robertson's announcement that "the time has come" for the U.S. assassinate the democratically-elected Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez without worrying about being accused of picking on poor persecuted Pat. They... [ Continue reading: ]

Forest for the Trees
NYT, Aug 17: "It was Mr. [Ed] Meese, said C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel to the first President Bush and a leading judicial strategist, who pressed Republicans to force the recent Senate fight over use of the filibuster. In... [ Continue reading: ]

Intelligent Design: Yes! No!
Today, 9 am eastern time: C-Span's "Washington Journal" debates "Intelligent Design." For: some activist. Against: some other activist. Our point: Why do advocates of ID -- who insist that ID is good science -- put forth activists as spokespeople rather... [ Continue reading: ]

Dumb Monkey Nation
Bush has "roiled" the evolution debate with his comments that "both sides" of the question should be taught in public schools. The NYT dutifully follows suit by presenting "both sides" of opinion on the matter, quote machines Rev. Barry Lynn... [ Continue reading: ]

NYT's Not-Subtle Snark Doesn't Do the Job
Conservative NYT-watchers will rightly charge that an article in today's paper on a public school Bible curriculum is slanted against the creators of the curriculum, a North Carolina-based outfit with deep Christian Right ties called the The National Council for... [ Continue reading: ]

Incommunicado
The Revealer is pleasantly incommunicado. We'll return July 25th.... [ Continue reading: ]

Taking It the Liberal Way
Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, knows what gay sex is all about -- "man-on-dog." Now he announces that he knows how liberals are "taking it," too -- the "wrong way," of course. And that, says the Senate's sage of... [ Continue reading: ]

Pop Goes the Times
Press critic Michael Massing turns his eye on The New York Times' pop culture coverage in the latest Columbia Journalism Review. Only, he's not very critical. Sure, the piece poses as a hard-hitting analysis of the Times' failure to take... [ Continue reading: ]

Middle Ground Blahs
The NYT's Laurie Goodstein turns in an entirely servicable piece on the growing number of evangelical chaplains in the Air Force. Numbers; anecdotes; academic talking heads -- everything is there, except the life of the story. As a perfectly-excuted piece... [ Continue reading: ]

Some People Say... Something
Press critics routinely decry labels such as "conservative" and "liberal," but this useless story in the conservative The Washington Times is evidence of the need for some degree of labeling. Summary: One group has changed its policy on sexual abstinence... [ Continue reading: ]

NYT: This is What Religion Should Look Like
Noah Feldman's carefully-reasoned essay on the church/state dilemma of American politics, excerpted from his new book, Divided by God: America's Church-State Problem -- and What We Should Do About It, in today's New York Times Magazine reveals a distillation of the Times' sensibility when it comes to religious conflict. That attitude is not, as conservatives would have us believe, high church and haughty, but rather plaintive: "Can't we all get along?"

That the answer might truly be "No" never seems to occur to the Times... [ Continue reading: ]

Ted Haggard's Big Israeli Adventure
Confusing news from the Jewish Forward: the National Association of Evangelicals is set to announce a new, more pro-Palestinian policy on Israel. Why? Because it wants to counter liberal churches that are putting economic pressure on Israel to make concessions... [ Continue reading: ]

Losing Moses
Chris Hedges discusses Losing Moses on the Freeway, his new book of real life stories of the Ten Commandments in America, on WNYC's "Leonard Lopate Show."... [ Continue reading: ]

Not Another "Beliefs" Column
Diane Winston's occasional column on the gods of Los Angeles in The L.A. Times continues to be subtly subversive in the best fashion, offering quiet, compelling stories of lived religion around the city that reveal rather than declare the complexities... [ Continue reading: ]

This Is Not My Christian Nation
Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of conservative American evangelicalism,editorializes "the obvious": George W. Bush is not Lord, and "God Bless America" is not the Doxology. So far, so simple; but CT goes further, rebuking Christian Right oupost (their words) Family... [ Continue reading: ]

The Young and the Sexless
"What if the true face of the Christian right in America is not that of Dr. James Dobson or Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson; not that of an aging, comb-over preacher orange with pancake makeup, smiling orca rows of ungodly... [ Continue reading: ]

If George Washington Was Alive Today, He'd Be a Yankees Fan
The blogger responsible for the Ratzinger Fan Club -- a name he claimed before the object of his affection became Pope Benedict XVI -- presents a short investigation of the Catholic idea of "preferential option for the poor," from a... [ Continue reading: ]

Fantastic Iraq
1,001 Nights in Iraq: Fantasy space stations and the "Book of Dragons" and Magic playing cards, amazing underwater military bases and "Resident Evil," and a dead geek from Iowa named John Wayne, who used to crawl under the covers at... [ Continue reading: ]

Daddy Dearest
What do the evangelical Promise Keepers (born yet again and coming to a city near you), Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March," Boston's recent Catholic Men's Conference (at which Passion star Jim Cavaziel and a Bush officials discussed their headships), and... [ Continue reading: ]

Democrats and Gothics
In a forthright 16-year-old girl from Queens, writes the NYT's Nina Bernstein, the FBI "met unsettling opinions and teenage defiance." Only one thing to do, of course -- kidnap the kid, refuse to tell her parents where she is for... [ Continue reading: ]

Hunting Bubba
"'I got sick of preachers telling me how great Reagan was,'" Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, a man on a mission to win back rural voters, tells The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash. "'Jesus don't give endorsements,' Mudcat thunders. 'He don't give a... [ Continue reading: ]

I'm Ok, The Pope's Ok
Ann Rodgers, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's smart religion reporter, wrote yesterday that Pope Benedict XVI is proving less conservative than expected. But the main evidence, as we read it, is that the new pope, famed for his reserve, is patting little... [ Continue reading: ]

The Kids Are Not Alright
What's most interesting about Geraldine Sealey's damning Rolling Stone report on the Bush administration's failure to live up to its promises to fund the fight against AIDS is not the information she presents -- most of it old news to... [ Continue reading: ]

Boycott Fundamentalism
There's just no good term for the cultural movement and political force variously referred to as the "Christian Right," or "fundamentalists." "Christian conservatives," the term The Revealer uses most often, has the advantage of inoffensiveness, which means it's also bland... [ Continue reading: ]

What's That You Say?
Blogger Slacktivist takes one sentence from Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals -- "They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for." -- and runs it through the wringer of actual scripture and... [ Continue reading: ]

Who Will Cry for a Witch?
Lilith Saintcrow of God and Consequences reveals, with the help of the Indianapolis Star, an excellent religion story -- a judge forbidding Wiccan parents from teaching their kids their religion because it's not "mainstream" -- and Jason Pitzl-Waters of Wildhunt... [ Continue reading: ]

Well, Isn't That Nice?
Blogger Too Beautiful catches an important omission in a Fort Worth Star-Telegram profile of controversial Bush judicial nominee Priscilla Owen. In what appears to be an attempt to humanize the widely-feared nominee, reporter Dave Montgomery notes Owens' involvement in her... [ Continue reading: ]

Don't Be Weird
Michael Roberts of Denver's Westword picks up on some of the media aftermath of my Harper's feature on New Life Church in Colorado. But "aftermath" isn't quite the right word -- despite Pastor Ted Haggard's disavowals of his importance, he's... [ Continue reading: ]

Making It In America
We received an unusual artifact of religious media in the mail today -- a stealth Christian campaign for the new Russell Crowe movie, Cinderella Man. The movie, as far as we know, is not a "Christian" movie; but Grace Hill... [ Continue reading: ]

Santorum for Choice
Media Matters says The New York Times left out not only context for Sen. Rick Santorum's ahistorical American history, but a key fact from his own history: Santorum was pro-choice before he got into power. Unfortunately, Media Matters doesn't offer... [ Continue reading: ]

The Truth About "Jim Wallis"
What does the NYTimes' Elisabeth Bumiller do when presented with a story that reveals cracks in the Christian right? Why, she calls Jim Wallis, of course. Wallis, who possesses the power to channel the thoughts of several million non-Republican evangelicals,... [ Continue reading: ]

Episcopal Smackdown!
Is Lauren Winner's new book on Real Sex (spoiler: only hetero, married whoopee) actually creeping fundamentalism? Astrid Storm thinks so. Storm, an Episcopal priest, takes on Winner, an Episcopal priest-to-be and one of the bright young stars of intellectual Christian... [ Continue reading: ]

Six-Pointed Star
Sol Star of HBO's Deadwood "may not be the first Jewish character to appear in a Western," writes Stephen Vider, "but his bold, matter-of-fact portrayal, played neither for laughs nor morality lessons, is pioneering."... [ Continue reading: ]

The Valuable Value of Values
A fine example of the uncritical approach the mainstream press takes to most religion stories can be found in today's Denver Post, in a report on a Christian academy that's been forced to look for a new home by its... [ Continue reading: ]

Put a C-Note on Fred
Terry Gross's Fresh Air NPR progam is taking a Crossfire approach to the question of Christian conservative power by inviting onto today's show Dr. James Kennedy, from the right, and Frederick Clarkson, from the left. Of course, they'll be separated,... [ Continue reading: ]

Silver Ring Thing Bling
The ACLU is suing the Department of Health over its financial support for the Silver Ring Thing, a conservative evangelical teen abstinence program which requires graduates to sign a virginity covenant "before God Almighty." Question: Is there any interpretation of... [ Continue reading: ]

We're Not Quitting
The Revealer is taking a blogging break (back next week), and we won't be Pew-fueled in the future -- but we're not quitting. I didn't mean to imply as much in my post below; apologies to all who've written with... [ Continue reading: ]

Announcements
Jeff Sharlet: The Revealer will be taking a short break from blogging for a few weeks, but we'll continue to publish longer features above. With the end of the school year, we're winding down the original grant the Pew Charitable... [ Continue reading: ]

Naughty Talk
John Tierney throws some red meat to the mythical red states in his (relatively) new NYT column. Today's is titled "Laura Bush Talks Naughty," and man, is it bold -- Tierney fearlessly reports that Republicans tell off-color jokes! Woh! See,... [ Continue reading: ]

Bible Studies
Bartholomew reads Agape Press so you don't have to, and returns to the world with news of the weird writ large: The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools has installed its curriculum in around 300 public school districts... [ Continue reading: ]

Join the Rebellion
Are you unhappy with traditional religion, but feel a desire for spiritual adventure, full of danger, intrigue and untamed faith? And do you really like Star Wars? Well -- who'd have guessed? -- there's an evangelical group just for you,... [ Continue reading: ]

Christianizing History
The UPI reports on the statuary surrounding the Belgorod, Russia site of the 1943 Battle of Kursk, where 600,000 German and Soviet soldiers died in a 50-day battle that left the Nazi tank army destroyed, and finds that, though the... [ Continue reading: ]

The Way of the Cross and Abu Ghraib
St. Paul's Episcopal Church in East Norwalk, Connecticut, has installed controversial new Stations of the Cross that include paintings depicting the war in Iraq and the abuses at Abu Ghraib alongside traditional Christian images in a contemporary exploration of crucifixion... [ Continue reading: ]

Brother Mario
"The second challenge is to reassess the alterable rules made for us by the male descendants of Peter who were and are humanly frail, as he was, and to readjust those rules to better serve the purpose of helping modern... [ Continue reading: ]

Alaska Christian
Doug Lederman of Inside Higher Ed reports on the lawsuit brought by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation against the U.S. Secretary of Education over its awarding $430,000 in federal funds this year (and over $1 million in the past... [ Continue reading: ]

Human Capital
What's been missing from the Social Security debate? A good scapegoat (the AARP won't do anymore; sorry USA Next), and the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society has found one in deadbeat procreators: those workers with small families or... [ Continue reading: ]

It's Not What It Looks Like...
Speaking at an American Studies conference about "Politics and Religion in USA" at an Islamabad university, Deputy Chief of Mission for the United States Embassy Patricia A. Butenis felt compelled to explain that, despite all appearances, the U.S. really is... [ Continue reading: ]

Jews for Christians
Religion & Society points to FrontPageMag.com for a story on the new group, "Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation" (JAACD), which has formed "to combat anti-Christian prejudice in Hollywood, the news media, academia, politics and the courts," and to generally support Christians... [ Continue reading: ]

Beitar Illit Athletic Foundation
More Jack Abramoff fallout: The Republican "superlobbyist" who keeps popping up in unfortunate poses ever since Tom DeLay's fundraising activities came to light takes another blow with the revelations in a Newsweek report that he'd redirected donations made by Native... [ Continue reading: ]

Trinity Students Return
Minority students at Trinity International University in Illinois returned to classes on Monday, a week after 43 of the evangelical college's black and Latino students were evacuated to a hotel in response to threatening racist letters sent through the campus... [ Continue reading: ]

Everybody Plays the Fool
Could it be, Hillary Clinton, not meaning what she said? Attempting to crassly manipulate voters with lukewarm appeals to both sides of an issue in the hopes she won't be held to promises made to either one? We've been cheated... [ Continue reading: ]

ADL
A new nationwide survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League has found that 14% of adult Americans hold hard-core anti-Semitic beliefs, especially on the old standby topics: Jews' loyalty to the country, the death of Jesus, and power. The new poll... [ Continue reading: ]

Radio On
Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet discusses his cover story from the May issue of Harper's, "Soldiers of Christ: Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch," tonight at 9:22 pm est with Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder on Air America's "The Majority Report."... [ Continue reading: ]

The Iwo Jima Option
While Bill Frist's video appearance on yesterday's "Justice Sunday" telecast is earning him rebukes aplenty, he does have one solid friend in Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who writes a plaintiff op-ed for The Courier-Journal, wondering why Democrats are allowed to... [ Continue reading: ]

Passover Gorillas
Gorillas in Israel kept kosher this Passover: with zookeepers and handlers unable to handle leavened bread, the gorillas and other animals also ate matzo instead of their normal morning meal of bread with cream cheese. "'We call this environmental enrichment,'"... [ Continue reading: ]

Pledge of Wishful Thinking
Is "under God" Christian? Don't listen to the Supreme Court arguments; listen to Colorado Christians. A Colorado middle school counselor, Margo Lucero, has angered local Christian parents with her ecumenical delivery of the Pledge of Allegiance one morning last week,... [ Continue reading: ]

Who You Callin' Christian?
Mainline Protestants fight back: NYT "conservative beat" reporter David D. Kirkpatrick, with Sheryl Gay Stolberg, bring us signs of a liberal Christianity gearing up for battle, as representatives challenge Senator Bill Frist for his planned participation in an upcoming Christian... [ Continue reading: ]

Wars On Faiths
Jewish leaders from the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and B'nai B'rith International have all bristled at the conservative message -- promoted in recent events like... [ Continue reading: ]

This Is Our Chapel, These Are Our Guns
In the town vying for the title of America's holy warringest city, there's also an Air Force Academy, and lately, the differences -- and overlaps -- between Colorado Springs' young soldiers and its civilian brigades of evangelical spiritual warriors have... [ Continue reading: ]

Sick of It All
A bit belatedly, John Kerry chastises Republicans for their God politics: for politicizing religion, having an "'orthodoxy of view,'" and suggesting they understand Judeo-Christianity better than liberal believers; and for "using God" to justify political moves. Speaking to a group... [ Continue reading: ]

Republicans and Mammon
Hawley: Stirrings in the conservative underworld: The New York Times reported this week on the political fortunes of Ralph Reed, formerly of the Christian Coalition, who is running for Lieutenant Governor in Georgia. Pat Robertson has denounced his old protégé,... [ Continue reading: ]

Salt-Stain Mary and Priest Jokes: Media Returns to Normal
The media strikes the Catholic news while the public-interest iron is still hot, delivering these two cute, and ever-so-slightly irreverent stories to transition us from JP II praise songs to Hitler's Youth exposés: First, the Catholic priest-shortage has led to... [ Continue reading: ]

Axes: Bold as Love and Hate
The gay-friendly empire is striking back. A resistance is underway. An alliance has been formed between rabbis of all three major non-orthodox branches of Judaism -- conservative, reform and reconstructionalist -- and Jerusalem's Gay and Lesbian Center to support the... [ Continue reading: ]

Generation Gap: Muslim U.K. Style
A meeting of the Muslim Council of Britain, the main umbrella group for Muslims in Britain which gathered to discuss a "voter guide" for the next general election, was disrupted by a group of young Muslim protesters thought to be... [ Continue reading: ]

Translating for True Believers
Sharlet: Paul Asay of The Colorado Springs Gazette reports on the minor media blitz surrounding New Life Church, a congregation of 11,000 in his hometown pastored by Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and thus a power... [ Continue reading: ]

Voice o' God
Maureen Dowd fits a little bit of everything God-newsy into her Times column on the state of the Voice of God today: the image of stately Ted Koppel balking at covering "wet burka" contests; the VoG authority of old patriarch... [ Continue reading: ]

Revelators
"I must confess that I was reeled in by its slick production values. Granted, its use of scripture is an embarrassment and the Christian characters in it are either mysterious Vatican types or, as I'm assuming we'll soon see, Protestant... [ Continue reading: ]

Black Market Tea
The Supreme Court has decided to hear a case on whether or not a Brazil-based church in New Mexico may continue to use a hallucinogenic tea containing a drug banned in the U.S. in its religious services. The Bush administration... [ Continue reading: ]

Is it Weird, Is it White?
New pope. Update: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Check here later, when the site recovers from the news.... [ Continue reading: ]

Cosmic Couples Therapy
Another entry in the "Is the media Catholic?" files: Susan Gilbert, writing in the Health and Science section of The New York Times, reports at length about why couples therapy won't save your marriage in the long run and how... [ Continue reading: ]

Freedoms To and From: Anti-Conversion Legislation in Sri Lanka
The long-standing conflict between Sri Lankan Buddhists and the Christian missionaries they accuse of conducting unethical or coerced conversions gained more international attention last week as the World Evangelical Alliance met with the U.N. Commission on Human Rights to lobby... [ Continue reading: ]

The Touch, the Feel of God
A St. Paul local news station, WCCO, delivers a fuzzy -- in terms of both warm sentiment and lack of detail -- report on "the God Squad": a volunteer group of Christian clergy associated with the local police force who... [ Continue reading: ]

God Bless America -- Or Else
Religious fascism at Yankee Stadium? Evangelical scholar and writer Randall Balmer says it's so when singing "God Bless America" becomes a compulsory part of the ballgame. On the Christian site, The Matthew's House Project.... [ Continue reading: ]

The Nuclear Option and the Wild, Wild East
There's so much to love about "Justice Sunday," that it's hard to decide what to love best: the "high noon" ring of the title; the flier graphics showing a young, double-fisted believer slinging Bible n' gavel, ready to take on... [ Continue reading: ]

Hamas Morality Police
Hamas has admitted that three to five of its gunmen were responsible for the murder and brutal desecration of the body of a 20-year Palestinian woman in an "honor killing" over "a mistaken 'suspicion of immoral behavior.'" The Gaza Strip... [ Continue reading: ]

Festival of Pits
80 Indian parents have been charged by New Delhi Police with burying their children alive in an ancient Hindu ceremony called "the festival of pits," wherein some first-born children are buried under leaves and dirt for up to a minute... [ Continue reading: ]

And They're Off!
Those who prefer their pope-news in the style of The Daily Racing Form will find an excellent guide to ponies -- Ratzinger ahead by nose! -- compiled by Doug LeBlanc at Get Religion.... [ Continue reading: ]

Luther in Brazil
Reporting on the growth of evangelicalism in Latin America isn't exactly "news," but Henry Chu's LA Times feature on the transformation is an exception to the usual fare for several reasons. First, because he turns to Latin American talking heads... [ Continue reading: ]

Scalia: Too Sexy for the Supreme Court?
If you're looking for smart journalism about the legal and religious ideas of Supreme Court Justice Scalia, perhaps the most conservative Christian to ever sit on the court, try Margaret Talbot's profile in the March 3 New Yorker (q&a with... [ Continue reading: ]

Blame Game
The conservative Washington Times can't be faulted for lack of transparency in its coverage of Tom "The Hammer" DeLay. We admire them for publishing the full transcript of an interview the paper's editors and reporters conducted with the congressman, including... [ Continue reading: ]

Where Are They Now?
After the Promise Keepers' stadium-filling, beach ball-bouncing heyday in the 1990s, the evangelical group that urged men to assume their God-given roles as heads of the family and benevolent controllers of wives, dwindled to a fraction of its former glory... [ Continue reading: ]

Belief, Belief, Good for the Heart...
Religion -- or more likely, the maintenance of social ties that regular church attendance affords -- has been found to slow cognitive declines in Alzheimer's patients according to a study released yesterday. Another study released yesterday also promoted the health... [ Continue reading: ]

Day of Noise
In an effort to counter the success of the annual Day of Silence, a nationwide event to oppose anti-gay bias observed today at hundreds of schools and colleges, the Alliance Defense Fund -- with the endorsement of Focus on the... [ Continue reading: ]

Nicholas D. Kristof Shows Us His Cheeks
Why, oh why, do they hate us so? Such is the question posed by earnest Nick Kristof in "A Slap in the Face," yesterday's column for The NYT. The "they" and the "us" are the masses and the media, separated... [ Continue reading: ]

Cover the Uninsured Week
A large-scale interfaith effort, including representatives from the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Council of Churches, the United Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Islamic Society of North America, the Salvation Army, and six other... [ Continue reading: ]

Gaming God
New opportunities abound as ever to introduce your children to spiritual warfare the fun n' easy way, whether with the new Focus on the Family-licensed video games "Adventures in Odyssey" and forthcoming Christian music dance-pad game (created by gaming company... [ Continue reading: ]

Shocking Confessions
An Onion-esque Ekklesia headline, "Tabloids royally shocked by Christian belief in repentance," responds to the car crash of scandal-mongering and theology that occurred last week as British tabloids partially digested the news that Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles would recite... [ Continue reading: ]

The Messiah May Yet Save Your Town
Aryeh Deri, former leader of the ultra-orthodox Shas party in Israel, addressed right-wing Jewish activists on Sunday, warning them that attempts to enter Temple Mount en masse could lead to violent retaliation from Muslim countries, and that any human intervention... [ Continue reading: ]

Eat Meat God's Way
"Eating meat God’s way helps prevent Mad Cow disease."... [ Continue reading: ]

Putting a Hit on the "Judicial War on Faith"
The "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference, the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration, and Christian Reconstructionism, oh my! Salon's Michelle Goldberg writes about last week's "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" conference in Washington D.C., wherein 200 or so religious right... [ Continue reading: ]

Key Words: In Its Tracks
The head of the 2.7 million-member National American Legion, Commander Thomas P. Cadmus, has entered the Boy Scout fray with written requests to Congress, asking it to amend Title 42, The Civil Rights Act, to prevent the American Civil Liberties... [ Continue reading: ]

Losing Religion in the Holy Land
"When asked by friends why I no longer pray or fast I reply that living in the Holy Land has cured me of religion." Elen Ghulam, writing in Muslim WakeUp!, describes losing one's religion over a Jerusalem coffee shop bombing,... [ Continue reading: ]

Who's Afraid of the Holy Ghost?
In a set of guidelines for religious education released this week in England, teachers have been instructed to avoid frightening children with certain explanations of religious practice, such as describing the Eucharist as becoming the blood and body of Christ,... [ Continue reading: ]

Barricading the Holy Land
Yesterday, 3,000 Israeli police officers surrounded the Al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem with a steel barrier in order to prevent a right-wing Jewish protest/mass prayer from taking place at the contested Temple Mount site. The rally, intended as a... [ Continue reading: ]

OTB: Doctrine Division
No matter who wins the online pot on the pope's successor, writes David Von Drehle of The Washington Post, the U.S. Catholic Church will be faced with a number of questions concerning the traditional hierarchy of the Church and the... [ Continue reading: ]

Sharia Law and the Press
A week after the Saudi Arabian government decided to move certain lawsuits out of religious courts and into specialized, secular courts run by related ministries (i.e., trying press and publication trials in information ministry courts), a group of Muslim clerics... [ Continue reading: ]

Canadian Values
At a number of religious rallies held in support of same-sex marriage across Canada, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other religious leaders demonstrated for their right to perform gay and lesbian marriages, with one pastor adding that gay marriage is about... [ Continue reading: ]

Crazy for the Anti-Christ
Protestant pope-mania: What does it mean? For insight into the evangelical adoration of the man Martin Luther, the Westminster Confession, and generations of fundamentalists insisted must, by virtue of his office, be the anti-Christ, no better source can be found... [ Continue reading: ]

National Motto Display Act
"The National Motto Display Act," a proposed Pennsylvania law soon to come before the state House, would require every public school classroom, auditorium and cafeteria in Pennsylvania to display the "national statement of faith," "In God We Trust," as "part... [ Continue reading: ]

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us
Church Marketing Sucks -- which, despite its title, is actually a very pro-Christian-advertising blog devoted to making church self-promotion more effective, more graceful, less...sucky -- reports approvingly on two recent marketing schemes employed by Westwinds Community Church in Jackson, Michigan.... [ Continue reading: ]

China Patriotic Church
Antoaneta Bezlova of Inter Press Service reports on the speculation that the pope's successor may normalize relations between China and the Vatican, more than fifty years after China's government expelled foreign priests and cut all ties with the Holy See;... [ Continue reading: ]

Scalia in the South
Speaking at a Red Mass banquet in Shreveport, Louisiana, Justice Antonin Scalia derided the conception of "acceptable religion" among educated sophisticates in the North; instead praising the ground he stood on: the unsnobbish South where orthodox believers and "traditional Christians"... [ Continue reading: ]

Always Make War by Proxy
So apparently the memo -- the error-riddled one outlining GOP "talking points" for cashing in on the Terry Schiavo controversy with pro-life voters -- was real, with the caveats that the "working draft" was never meant to be printed by... [ Continue reading: ]

Christian Legal Society
An Illinois chapter of the Christian Legal Society, a law student group that requires its members to "adhere to Christian beliefs" -- i.e., not be gay -- has sued Southern Illinois University for revoking its official school recognition March 25.... [ Continue reading: ]

Half-Mast
France's decision to fly flags at half-mast yesterday and on Friday in honor of the pope has caused a public debate, with some critics accusing the government of violating the country's commitment to secularism and of following a double-standard on... [ Continue reading: ]

Not Much to Say
Reporters have been calling to find out what The Revealer has to say about the death of the pope. Not too much, we tell them. The Philadelphia Inquirer's Rome correspondent, Ken Dilanian, accepted that as a fair answer and ran... [ Continue reading: ]

Back to the Retail Fold
Time was when poor churches rented retail space in malls and storefronts because their congregations were unable to buy or build churches of their own. Not so anymore, at least in Wasilla, Alaska, where the Crossroads Community Church -- a... [ Continue reading: ]

Christianity Without God
Adding to the young discourse on megachurches in exurbia, former religion editor and author of A Turbulent Peace: The Psalms for Our Time, Ray Waddle, traces today's rapidly growing megachurches back to a short-lived theological movement in the 1960s called... [ Continue reading: ]

Other People's Holidays
The San Antonio Express-News experiments with a new strategy for overthrowing the country's secular overlords: make atheists look like a pack of sad lonely hearts who weren't invited to the believers' ball. In one of the saddest ten-second sketches of... [ Continue reading: ]

Good Coverage and Good Press
We're pretty juvenile here at The Revealer, and we get jealous when a lot of other people start nosing into our territory by badmouthing the media's lapses in covering religious news. So now that calling the media religiously illiterate is... [ Continue reading: ]

Kansas Ban
Kansas is gearing up for its very own gay marriage ban with poster campaigns, neighborly division, a "Mayday for Marriage" rally and more than $135,000 in out-of-state money. The campaign supporting Kansas' proposed ban -- one of the strictest in... [ Continue reading: ]

The Non-Traditional Body of Christ
Gene Robinson, the openly gay Anglican Bishop whose consecration is at the heart of the Communion's current divisions, has again outraged conservatives in the Church with recent remarks challenging the supremacy of nuclear families that were interpreted as a claim... [ Continue reading: ]

Flirting With Mob Morality
There's nothing like being exposed to national ridicule by The New York Times to make a science museum rediscover its educational obligations to the community. Not two weeks after the Times reported on the decision of several southern Imax theaters... [ Continue reading: ]

Conservative Judaism Reconsiders Policy on Gays
The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which considers religious law for the Conservative branch of American Judaism, will meet next week to reconsider its 1992 decree opposing the blessing of same-sex couples and the ordination of open homosexuals as... [ Continue reading: ]

Antiabortion Order
The Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, a new, explicitly political, order of Catholic priests which will dedicate itself exclusively to fighting abortion and euthanasia, has been formed this week with the blessing of the Vatican. The male-only order will... [ Continue reading: ]

This Is the Fray
Cynthia Burton of the Philadelphia Inquirer surveys the market value of religiosity for New Jersey candidates running at the state and local level. The story succeeds more for giving a broad overview than any in-depth analysis, but it's admirable in... [ Continue reading: ]

Love May Tear You Apart; Stick with Hate
The New York Times catches up with the veritable peace train that is the interfaith movement to oppose an international gay pride parade and festival, "Love Without Borders," from occurring in Jerusalem this August, and reports that now Islam's on... [ Continue reading: ]

Republican Roots
As House Republicans discuss an upcoming vote on a proposal that would ease restrictions on federal funding for stem-cell research, former Republican senator, Episcopal minister, and recently resigned U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John C. Danforth, weighs in on... [ Continue reading: ]

The Liberty Legal Institute Economy Boost
The Dallas Morning News' Kim Breen reviews the Plano school case -- the handful of Christian-message candy canes at an elementary school Christmas party that became a debate over religion in public schools that became a lawsuit brought by Plano's... [ Continue reading: ]

Church V. BBC
The BBC has aggravated (some) religious sensibilities again, and sparked a minor Church of England scuffle, with its Christmas day airing of an episode of the popular sitcom The Vicar of Dibley, which featured a chocolate baby Jesus and the... [ Continue reading: ]

Same Old Disdain, Great New Flavor
We've been arguing with Caleb Stegall, an editor of our favorite small-o orthodox Christian website that likes to bash us, about how to write these little blurbs below the fold of The Revealer. Caleb charges us with using the cover... [ Continue reading: ]

Stang Suspect Held
A Brazilian farmer suspected of killing Dorothy Stang has turned himself in to the police, though he denies involvement in the murder.... [ Continue reading: ]

Hunter S. Thompson Is Not Dead
In a story that sounds like a schizophrenic explosion of multiple American dreams, a West Virginia man dressed as a combination frontiersman/Indian/army commando was arrested outside of St. Louis with a carload of guns and ammunition, various drugs and a... [ Continue reading: ]

Party Like It's 2006
End-Times Update (U.S. only): After analyzing and interpreting various Koranic verses, Palestinian scholar Ziad Silwadi has published a study currently circulating in many Muslim countries that claims the United States will "cease to exist" sometime in 2007, when Allah will... [ Continue reading: ]

Do-Good Journalism: 100% Conclusion-Free
Five months after the news fad of God Gap articles that contrasted blue- and red-state households, and all the earnest, post-election attempts to understand evangelical America, The Boston Globe's Brian MacQuarrie has found a Christian Family from the Heartland to... [ Continue reading: ]

Eye for an Eye
Focus on the Family gears up for James Dobson's appearance on MSNBC's Scarborough Country tonight, where the good doctor will discuss Terri Schiavo and "judicial activism," with a statement in today's New York Times that disparages the entire judicial branch... [ Continue reading: ]

Spring Break Eternal
What does Campus Crusader Becca Johnson hear on the beach in Florida this spring break? Not waves or partying or even the solicitations of Girls Gone Wild filmcrews; Johnson hears the yearning of sunbathers to listen to the Good News.... [ Continue reading: ]

Status Quo'd by The Da Vinci Code
In spirit of the holiday, Maureen Dowd tries to find common ground between Da Vinci author Dan Brown and Da Vinci judge Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who recently led the Vatican's counter-attack, declaring Brown's book full of lies and a throwback... [ Continue reading: ]

Columbia Wars
New York Magazine's Jennifer Senior speaks to WNYC's Brian Lehrer on the controversy at Columbia University's Middle East Studies Department. Listen now.... [ Continue reading: ]

It's No Piss-Christ
A Moscow art exhibit entitled "Beware of Religion" has been deemed "insulting" and "overtly provocative" by a district court, which today fined two museum staff members for "actions tantamount to fanning ethnic and religious strife." In January, the exhibit led... [ Continue reading: ]

Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest
There is no shortage of foolish rhetoric clamoring for the attention of poor Terri Schiavo, from both the self-declared "culture of life" and the smeared "culture of death." The mystery here is why the press is so unable, or unwilling,... [ Continue reading: ]

Easter Shroud Debunking
An Idaho English teacher, Nathan Wilson, has offered a theory on how the Shroud of Turin -- Jesus' supposed burial cloth -- was faked, by using of paint, glass and linen to create a false "photo negative" image. Wilson, an... [ Continue reading: ]

Conception Parties
The satirical website, The Swift Report, investigates another way to celebrate Easter weekend and "liven up the culture of life": Christian "conception parties," whereing married couples gather on March 25 to celebrate and "reenact" the immaculate impregnation of the Virgin... [ Continue reading: ]

Peace Radio
This Sunday, Israeli and Palestinian radio stations are scheduled to simultaneously play versions of a Mid-East peace song, "In My Heart," written by a duo of peace activists, Israeli David Broza and Palestinian Wisam Murad. The Palestinian station will broadcast... [ Continue reading: ]

Scottish Episcopal Church
Three weeks after bishops in the Scottish Episcopal Church declared that practicing homosexuals were eligible for ordination, the news agencies have caught up, today triggering a response from the minority evangelical wing of the Church, which has vowed to turn... [ Continue reading: ]

Ban Gay Marriage, Get to Beat Your Girlfriend
Ohio's gay marriage ban doesn't just protect the sanctity of good Christian marriage the way God intended it; it's also got the added perk of getting domestic violence abusers off the hook, as in the case of Frederick Burk, a... [ Continue reading: ]

God Racketeers
The Ten Commandments and PBS, abstinence education and Revelations, the Justice Department's "religious rights" unit and Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, Ashley Smith, Dennis Rader, Terry Ratzman and, of course, Terri: Frank Rich is pissed about it all. But beyond... [ Continue reading: ]

The Best Party You Missed Last Year
Singapore officials have refused to allow a local gay Christian support group to hold a planned AIDS awareness concert because the headline act is a gay Christian duo from San Francisco, and the officials argue that their presence would promote... [ Continue reading: ]

21st Century Ship
Now that racism, unequal opportunity, inner city poverty, voter disenfranchisement, police profiling, inequities in the justice system and in the sentencing of convicted criminals are all taken care of, black ministers, lobbyists and conservative activists are steering the Black Vote... [ Continue reading: ]

Rabbis for Human Rights
Amid the dozens of stories about Israeli rabbis encouraging "forcible resistance" to the evacuation of Jewish settlements, comes the story of Arik Ascherman, an American-born rabbi living in Jerusalem who has been convicted of interfering with police duties for trying... [ Continue reading: ]

Biblical Smells
Christian theme-park watch: Yet another Disney-meets-your-holy-book adventure park/leisure resort is set to open, this time in Yorkshire, England under the name Ark Alive. AA will feature a life-size Noah's Ark, David and Goliath re-enactments, a Garden of Eden bio-dome, Christian... [ Continue reading: ]

Because It Just Doesn't Fit With British Reserve
As abortion politics comes of age in England -- that is, becomes a touchstone for outraged single-issue voters, and a quick n' easy way for candidates to align themselves with the side of Family and Morality -- Tony Blair has... [ Continue reading: ]

A Heretic's Zoology
Everyone's a blasphemer these days, including Rabbi Nosson Slifkin, an ultra-Orthodox Israeli scholar and Talmudic zoologist who has written nine books attempting to reconcile Jewish Scripture with natural science. Slifkin, The New York Times reports, isn't trying to debunk much,... [ Continue reading: ]

God of Small Things
Revealer contributor and friend Bob Smietana has suspended his blog, God of Small Things, for the time being. Bob's writing there, here and elsewhere, has been consistently thoughtful, measured and compassionate -- in the true sense of the word, not... [ Continue reading: ]

Also Starring...
Poor Scott McConnell picked the wrong month to offer himself as a conservative Christian cause célèbre. But even though the martyrdom role for March has already been filled, McConnell's an ambitious understudy, declaring himself the evangelical victim of Blue State... [ Continue reading: ]

God Gene Redux
A study on the religiousness of identical and non-identical twins at Minnesota University adds a few more numbers to the debate over the import of VMAT2, a DNA strand popularly dubbed the "God Gene," finding that identical twins reported similar... [ Continue reading: ]

Yet Another Reason to Find God
Finding Christ won't just get you into Australia, it may get you off death row. Or at least it's fair-game for juries to consider a convict's religious conversion when deciding whether or not to deliver a death sentence. Today the... [ Continue reading: ]

Force Assist
Scientology Christmas cards and on-the-clock spiritual massage: the things Tom Cruise's co-workers have to put up with. Well, so it's not exactly the purpose-driven bank branch, but the apparent similarities between the proselytizing of such evangelical businesses and Cruise's efforts... [ Continue reading: ]

Special Ops Jesus No More!
Steve Peacock, of the Greater Binghamton Progressive Media Center, reports that the U.S. Army Special Operations Command has cancelled its order for 10,000 modified Bibles rather than comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request he filed last fall.... [ Continue reading: ]

Jesus Points
Joyce: When I was in South Africa several years ago, I attended a seminar for citizens hoping to expatriate themselves to Australia. It was a shady business, since many people -- especially many whites -- wanted in to Australia, and... [ Continue reading: ]

Imax Says Amen
Let Intelligent Design proponents dally around with talk of "open debate" and critical assessment of multiple theories about the origins and mechanics of the world. Members of a focus group in Fort Worth, Texas, previewing an Imax documentary on Volcanoes... [ Continue reading: ]

Yours In Christ, Condi
The Condoleezza Rice '08 contingent shouldn't lose all hope after the secretary of state's insistence last week that she wouldn't seek the presidency; Rice has again proved her facility with bold, empty gestures during yesterday's visit to China, when she... [ Continue reading: ]

In God's Country
Why won't you visit Estes Park, Colorado? Because of the town's recall election tomorrow for an agnostic town trustee, David Habecker, who refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance because it violates his religious convictions, or because the godless man... [ Continue reading: ]

RLUIPA
Oral arguments for a case concerning Ohio prisoners and the constitutionality of the 2000 federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act will begin at the Supreme Court this morning. The suit, Cutter v. Wilkinson, was filed by a group... [ Continue reading: ]

The Original Plan Was To Go With A "Sea of Love" Theme, But Another School Had Already Claimed It
"GOP leaders in both houses describe [the Terry Schiavo] case as having to do with the 'culture of life' theme expected to be central in the 2006 congressional races." -- Gail Russell Chaddock in The Christian Science Monitor. What's interesting... [ Continue reading: ]

Certainly, He Said
"Despite, or perhaps because of, the lack of historical fact about his motivations, Judas remains a fascination. 'Certain traditions form around certain figures that appear in the Gospels,'" says Adam Becker, assistant professor of religious studies at New York University.... [ Continue reading: ]

50 M.P.H. Doubt
In the wake of the shootings at the Living Church of God in Brookfield, Wisconsin, a "distraught" woman decided that the deaths proved that God doesn't exist and she should therefore drive her car into the side of St. Joseph's... [ Continue reading: ]

Plush Elder Gods
On this week's 68th anniversary of the death of horror writer and myth-maker, H.P. Lovecraft, the Library of America has re-released his writings; Tim Clodfelter at Relish surveys the wealth of horror and sci-fi movies, comic books and video... [ Continue reading: ]

Holy Warring in Gaza
The efforts of Jewish fundamentalists to thwart disengagement plans in Israeli settlements continue to get biblical, this week with a plot to occupy the disputed holy site of Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa mosque, plus a good, old-fashioned stoning. The plotting, captured on... [ Continue reading: ]

Imagine
An international, interfaith team of U.S. evangelicals and ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews have come together to fight the upcoming World Pride Parade from taking place in Jerusalem this August, claiming that the gay parade would offend the religious sensibilities of local... [ Continue reading: ]

Auto-Deistic Victimhood?
Can a Satanist be the victim of a hate crime? The Village Voice's Kristen Lombardi investigates the case of Daniel Romano, a 20-year old Satanist from Queens who was beaten last January by two Christian acquaintances (both of whom claim... [ Continue reading: ]

Pancakes, The Purpose Driven Life, and the Perfect Story
Evangelical media has been abuzz with the story of Elizabeth Ashley Smith, the hostage of the Atlanta courthouse killer who convinced her captor to give himself up by reading to him from Rick Warren's best-selling spiritual self-help manual, The Purpose... [ Continue reading: ]

Medicine Men
A federal court has approved a settlement between Nebraska Native American inmates and prison officials allowing the inmates to use medicine men and a tocacco substitute during religious ceremonies.... [ Continue reading: ]

Disney On the Ganges
Though Disney may have sold its nostalgic utopia, the town of Celebration, last year, the will to create scale Edens and religious theme parks can't be kept down, to witness recent examples such as The Holyland Experience, The Creation Museum,... [ Continue reading: ]

Da Vinci Cardinal
A cottage industry in books debunking Dan Brown isn't enough: now the author of the bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, gets his own Vatican-appointed cardinal, the Archbishop of Genoa, Tarcisio Bertone, who was clocked into work yesterday with an interview... [ Continue reading: ]

NYT: "Seen By Some As A Cult"
Wisconsin police are focussing on the role of religion in Terry Ratzmann's murderous attack on his own church, reports The New York Times. Let's hope the police are doing a better job than the Times. "The Living Church of God,"... [ Continue reading: ]

Like, To Death
Everybody must get an updated Old Testament. Or at least British kids have to, according to Hodder & Stoughton, publishers of Today's New International Version Bible, which has just issued a revised version clarifying that biblical sinners got executed, not... [ Continue reading: ]

Oil God
Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton waxes poetic on the op-ed page of The NYTimes today, describing in rapturous prose the miracles of American ingenuity that will allow us to suck oil from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge without... [ Continue reading: ]

Wedge O' Truth
There was time enough last fall to grow familiar with the phenomenon of campaign aides "frankly" discussing political strategy with the media -- divulging upcoming talking points, spin tactics to be employed, the agenda underlying the candidate's rhetoric -- before... [ Continue reading: ]

Presidential Prayer Team
While hosting Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez insisted that the United States government was attempting to assasinate him and voiced a public prayer that God "'save us'" from President Bush, who, according to Chavez is obsessed with... [ Continue reading: ]

I'm Too Sexy For My Celibacy
Chastity is all the rage: NYT's Alex Williams falls all over chastity crusader Lauren F. Winner and her new book, Real Sex, in the paper's Fashion & Style section. "She wears retro cat's-eye glasses, has four tattoos, weaves references to... [ Continue reading: ]

Fatwa Issued on bin Laden
On the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 and wounded 1,900, all of the city's 650 churches began ringing their bells at sunrise; traffic and work stopped for five minutes of silence; a memorial park of... [ Continue reading: ]

Everybody Loves a Comeback
Can the religious left get its groove back? Amy Sullivan discusses the challenges to progressive Christianity reasserting itself into politics in a Salon essay that is part history of the religious left -- its crowning achievements in the era of... [ Continue reading: ]

Banned in the U.S.A.
The French Catholic Church has succeeded in having a fashion company's ad posters, featuring a group of models posing in a Last Supper tableau, banned for its "'gratuitous and aggressive act of intrusion on people's innermost beliefs.'" The posters were... [ Continue reading: ]

Rabbi Sez...
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the ultra-orthodox Shas party in Israel, makes the New York Post for allegedly cursing Ariel Sharon and praying that G-d strike him down, kill him, and send him to a sleep from which he... [ Continue reading: ]

Audio Wallis
"Religion has to be disciplined by democracy. That means you don’t enter the public square and say I’m religious so I ought to win. Or God has spoken to me directly and I have the fix for Social Security. You... [ Continue reading: ]

Business-Friendly Creation Care
The New York Times' Laurie Goodstein investigates the environmental agenda of the National Association of Evangelicals and finds that, for all the NAE's Creation-Caring, an evangelical-Earth First marriage still isn't likely. The Rev. Rich Cizik, NAE vice president of governmental... [ Continue reading: ]

Godcast Power Hours
God-blogging is so old-new media. The next biggish thing is Godcasting, in which sermons are recorded and uploaded onto the internet to be downloaded onto iPods and the like. MP3 Bibles have been available for a while, but according to... [ Continue reading: ]

Competitive Victimhood
BBC director general, Mark Thompson, bit back at Christian Voice -- the religious group most instrumental in organizing the protest and intimidation campaign against BBC executives after the broadcast of Jerry Springer: The Opera -- when he spoke at a... [ Continue reading: ]

A Burning Feeling
Street preachers, pyromaniacs, Doug Henning: This is for you. (Supply your own lighter fluid.)... [ Continue reading: ]

No Tomorrow, for Whatever Reason
Bill Moyers updates the article that caused a big flap last February for a possible second-hand misquotation of former Reagan secretary, James G. Watt, in The New York Review of Books. Though the Watt reference made for good snark --... [ Continue reading: ]

The Miracle of Scalia
Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist, finds a little bit of the miraculous in Justice Antonin Scalia's common-sensical declaration that the Ten Commandments do, in fact, contain a religious message. Scalia, who's played fast and loose with historical fact before,... [ Continue reading: ]

Jewish Violence
While Gaza Strip settlers await the government withdrawal planned for July, signs of a violent, if submerged, resistance are apparent in graffiti threats to Ariel Sharon, inviting the prime minister to join his dead wife or Yitzhak Rabin, the former... [ Continue reading: ]

Kansas Episcopal Church Considers Separating
The governing board of the Christ Episcopal Church of Overland Park, the largest parish in the Episcopal Diocese of eastern Kansas, has recommended that the parish separate from the diocese over recent disagreements about homosexuality and theology. Parish members will... [ Continue reading: ]

Oprah Sect Secularism
Another day, another broad generalization about the horserace between "religion" (define it as you will) and "secularism" (ditto). Today, secularism inches ahead with the speech of University of Wisconsin sociologist, Wayne Thompson, who claims that people -- namely white blue-state... [ Continue reading: ]

Marrying Monarchs
Edward Leigh, a British parliamentarian and Catholic, will introduce legislation today to repeal a 300-year old law preventing heirs to the throne from marrying a "Papist." Leigh's bill is not expected to receive sufficient time to pass, but is part... [ Continue reading: ]

Better to Burn Out Than to Fade Away...
Michael Marcavage, the litigious 25-year old head of Repent America and near-martyr in the "Philly Four/Five" case, is no doubt happy to find himself back in the spotlight as jury selection for a federal lawsuit regarding events at Temple University... [ Continue reading: ]

I See Your Subjugation of Women and Raise You the Worthlessness of the Disabled
Faced with a growing number of injuries and potential deaths from backstreet abortions in Iran (of which there are at least 80,000 per year), religious conservative lawmakers have decided to ease the strict prohibitions on abortion which only allow for... [ Continue reading: ]

Religion and State in Post-Post-War Japan
The Japanese government has proposed an amendment to the Constitution to allow government bodies to participate in religious activities that fall within the categories of "social etiquette or folk events." Japan's separation of religion and state was introduced after World... [ Continue reading: ]

Pope Joke Fallout
New York Press editor Jeff Koyen has just resigned from his position after last week's cover story, "The 52 Funniest Things About The Upcoming Death of The Pope," which prompted big outrage from lots of folks -- including Senators Schumer... [ Continue reading: ]

Fred Phelps Attends Gay Rights Forum! Kindof...
There'll be fun for the whole family this Sunday, when Rev. Fred Phelps Sr., of the hate-spewing Westboro Baptist Church, takes the Equal Rights Coalition up on their offer for public debate at a forum for gay rights at Indiana... [ Continue reading: ]

Christian v. Christian
A group of Christians in the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys are protesting the bankruptcy reform bill introduced by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa as being at odds with the biblical mandates for charity and debt-forgiveness. But Grassley... [ Continue reading: ]

Pre-K Law
The ACLU is arguing against the constitutionality of a Florida law setting up a pre-kindergarten program that will be run mostly by private day-cares and schools, including religious organizations that meet state standards. As the pre-K law is now written,... [ Continue reading: ]

Justice Department: R.R.U.
For anyone surpised that the House passed a bill last week that would assure tax-payer-funded organizations' right to religiously discriminate in hiring, there's more precedent for unequal opportunity in the Justice Department's religious-rights unit: a branch of the civil rights... [ Continue reading: ]

What Do You Know for Sure?
"So what am I saying? I am saying the best way for the left to discover the values suitable to a pluralistic society is in a committed struggle with those forces that are hell-bent on reshaping America as a sentimental... [ Continue reading: ]

The Controversy of Valladolid
Jean-Claude Carriere's "The Controversy of Valladolid" opens off-Broadway, and apparently, the acting and directing falls flat. But AP reviewer Peter Santilli finds that the bland delivery doesn't overcome the importance of the subject matter of the documentary play: the re-creation... [ Continue reading: ]

See You at the Pole
Cleveland Jewish News reports on the flap at a local public school, Shaker Heights High, where some non-Christian students are angry about a Christian club that meets on school grounds, Students for God. There are some colorful descriptions of the... [ Continue reading: ]

Tag Teamin'
Next Tuesday, Florida Republican Representative David Weldon, with the support of the National Right to Life Committee, will introduce the Incapacitated Person's Legal Protection Act, a bill that would give the parents of Terri Schiavo the opportunity to argue their... [ Continue reading: ]

They're Up, They're Down
A short month and a half after reports that atheists were poised to take over the world -- err, a mid-sized cafeteria -- comes the news that atheism is on the verge of extinction. Again! According to a UPI report... [ Continue reading: ]

Jilbab Ruling
Shabina Begum, the 16-year old British Muslim girl who took her school to court over the right to wear a full jilbab instead of the school uniform, won her appeal yesterday in London, with the judge deciding her human rights... [ Continue reading: ]

Right to Discriminate
The House narrowly passed a bill allowing religious groups under federal job-training contracts to discriminate in their hiring based on employees' religious beliefs. The current law disallows such discrimination for jobs that are financed by taxpayers -- not clerical positions,... [ Continue reading: ]

Who You Calling Centrist?
Hillary Clinton's faith-talk continues, with televangelist-worthy invocations of God's name, and so do the long media meditations on what it all means. The latest example of Hillary-decoding comes from The Village Voice's Kristen Lombardi, in a feature story, "God is... [ Continue reading: ]

Naughty Jerseys
Is the NFL more godly than the NBA or Major League Baseball? No definitive word on that, but they are more righteously homophobic -- we mean anti-homosexual. Jim Buzinski of Outsports discovers that among the "naughty words" the NFL won't... [ Continue reading: ]

Banks Drop Muslim Accounts
Abdus Sattar Ghazali of Dawn writes that a growing number of American Muslims and Muslim businesses have had their bank accounts closed without explanation since September 11, 2001, including a New Jersey organization, the Islamic Education Centre, which was recently... [ Continue reading: ]

Sister Dorothy's Legacy
The New York Times points out that while the government of Brazil is trying to respond to the murder of Dorothy Stang with a new ban on logging in 20 million acres of the Amazon, the creation of two new... [ Continue reading: ]

Banning the V-Monologues in Uganda
What does Eve Ensler have to do with the president of Uganda? The Vagina Monologues were banned in the country last week for promoting prostitution and homosexuality, and Charles Onyango-Obbo, a columnist for The East African, is perplexed, having considered... [ Continue reading: ]

WCC Judge's Relatives Killed
Joan Humphrey Lefkow, the U.S. District Judge once allegedly targeted for murder by Matthew Hale after she ruled that he could no longer call his white supremacist group the World Church of the Creator because another group had copyrighted the... [ Continue reading: ]

Did I Ever Tell You About My Drinking Days?
If you make enough self-deprecatory personal allusions, they will believe you're sincere, despite all evidence to the contrary? It's not as catchy a guiding mantra as that in Field of Dreams, but it seems to be the theory behind Bush's... [ Continue reading: ]

AIO's Red Pill
The attorneys involved in the dispute between the University of North Carolina and an evangelical Christian fraternity at the school, Alpha Iota Omega, have failed to reach a compromise as directed by a federal judge, and the case will now... [ Continue reading: ]

Rumsfeld Sued
The ACLU and Human Rights First announce that they've brought a civil lawsuit against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in northern Illinois federal court for the torture and abuse of eight men who were incarcerated in Iraq and Afghanistan. The... [ Continue reading: ]

BBC Strikes Back
"'We are not running some kind of Pop Idol competition in which the greatest number of votes gets a programme pulled from the schedule.'" BBC television director, Jana Bennett, will make a speech later today countering the attempts of religious... [ Continue reading: ]

Tangipahoa Parish Prayer
Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco has issued a statement condemning the federal court decision last week barring the Tangipahoa Parish School Board from beginning its meetings with prayer. U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan, who heard the case, ruled that the School... [ Continue reading: ]

Religion and Marketing
It's a belief-system, it's a political heavyweight, it's a marketing tool. Two weeks ago ComBlu released a new nine-step marketing model called The Evangelist Effect(TM), which relies on "customer evangelism" and Word-of-Mouth testimony. Today Martin Lindstrom, author of Brand Sense:... [ Continue reading: ]

Founder Worship
The New York Times' conservative beat reporter, David Kirkpatrick, experiences God's Washington, D.C., with David Barton, vice president of the Texas Republican party and point man in the conservative Christian movement to emphasize the importance of Christianity in U.S. history... [ Continue reading: ]

Flirt Squad
Pious hard-liners in Iran are outraged over alleged public flirtations that occurred in an affluent area of Tehran on the night of Ashura, the most sacred day of mourning in Shiite Islam, which commemorates the death of Iman Hossin. According... [ Continue reading: ]

Special Relationship
Christian Voice -- the British evangelical group which protested the broadcast of Jerry Spinger: The Opera by releasing the home addresses and phone numbers of BBC executives on the internet, and which later intimidated a small cancer charity into refusing... [ Continue reading: ]

Ten Commandments Case
"'I didn't sue Christianity or Judaism. I sued the government.'" Thomas Van Orden, the now-homeless Vietnam veteran and former lawyer who brought this Wednesday's Supreme Court case challenging Ten Commandments monuments on public grounds, discusses his upcoming case and his... [ Continue reading: ]

The Anglican Not-Divide
Reports on the communiqué issued yesterday by Anglican primates have widely misrepresented the news as final proof of an Anglican split, and interpreted a request in the document -- that the Episcopal Church U.S.A. and the Anglican Church of Canada... [ Continue reading: ]

Attorney General Demands Women's Medical Records
Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, a staunch abortion opponent and former state representative, has demanded the complete medical records of almost 90 women who either had an abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy (illegal in Kansas except when a woman's... [ Continue reading: ]

Mark of the Beast Gets You a Sloppy Joe
The plan of a West Virginia school to keep track of students' lunch accounts, when students kept losing their paper lunch cards, by electronically scanning student fingerprints has drawn criticism from a local pastor, who sees the system as well-intentioned,... [ Continue reading: ]

Close Your Eyes and Think of Mankind
Sisters may be doing it for themselves, but the Alliance Defense Fund says it's doing what it does for the survival of the whole species. How is ADF protecting humanity from extinction today? By fighting gay marriage in San Francisco's... [ Continue reading: ]

Child Exorcisms
On the five-year anniversary of the death of a British child killed during an attempted exorcism, BBC's Newsnight broadcast an investigation of child exoricisms in African churches in England. Black church and community leaders, from organizations such as Africans Against... [ Continue reading: ]

New Noonan
Peggy Noonan enters the god-blogosphere, kindof, writing her weekly Wall Street Journal column "blog-style," and inviting readers to guess the theme connecting her musings on Hunter Thompson's death ("an occasion for compassion" and "a sense of universal idiocy"); Hillary Clinton's... [ Continue reading: ]

Halachic Ruling on Disengagement
Rabbi Shaul Bar-Ilan, writing for the Council of Rabbis of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, has issued a halachic opininion, charging that police and soldiers who carry out the evacuation of Jewish settlements will be committing 14 biblical sins,... [ Continue reading: ]

Cosmic Therapist
A new survey released by the National Study of Youth and Religion (led by UNC sociologist Christian Smith) finds that a majority of American teens believe in God, stick to their parents' faith, and attend worship services on at least... [ Continue reading: ]

Scout Appeal
A Michigan atheist, John Scalise, is appealing to the Supreme Court to review a ruling that allows Boy Scout recruitment posters inside schools. Scalise argues that the Scouts discriminate against nonreligious boys and parents and the schools are therefore sponsoring... [ Continue reading: ]

Council for National Policy
Gadflyer contributor Sarah Posner delivers a thorough investigation of the Council for National Policy (CNP), the little-known but high-powered conservative organization founded by Left Behind author Tim LaHaye in 1981. It's been described by Donald Rumsfeld as "the heart of... [ Continue reading: ]

I've Been Sanctified...
"'When a young man and a young woman give in to Satan, when they strip down like animals in the wild and prepare themselves for a lusty round of heavy petting and full-blown sex, what better reminder for them to... [ Continue reading: ]

Terri Schiavo Case
The case of Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged Florida woman at the heart of a fierce battle between her husband and her parents over whether or not her feeding tube should be removed, effectively causing her death by starvation, has... [ Continue reading: ]

Separation of Church and State In the Eye of the Beholder
Among the legislation proposed in the Arkansas House of Representatives this session -- prohibiting gay adoption, requiring parental permission for abortion, defining marriage as heterosexual in school textbooks, and creating "In God We Trust" license plates -- was Democratic representative... [ Continue reading: ]

Is This Anything?
The magic properties of the word "religion" -- simultaneously capable of bestowing protection and destroying credibility -- are shown again in battles to append or strip the label to various groups or theories. In Iowa, state authorities are trying to... [ Continue reading: ]

The Education of Senator Thune
Sharlet: Daschle defeater John Thune cites spiritual influence of a man who cites spiritual model of Osama Bin Laden. In this Q&A Christianity Today conducted with Senator Thune (R, SD), he says that the "C Street ministry" of Doug Coe... [ Continue reading: ]

The President Says So
While most of the press gets giddy over the revelation that Bush smoked pot ('cause, y'know, coke is for kids, but weed kills), leave it to the conservative Kathy Shaidle of Relapsed Catholic to note the real significance of the... [ Continue reading: ]

The Passion of Constantine
Next to Constantine, Mel Gibson's The Passion is an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. In Constantine, Keanu Reeves as the titular, demon-slaying hero visits a bar frequented by the "fallen," the decadence of whom we are to presume from their adrogynous... [ Continue reading: ]

Gay Cartoons
After the dismissal of the "Philadelphia Four" case, America gets back to discussing questions of marriage and gay rights as America best knows how: with animated stand-ins duking the issue out for us. The latest cartoon exploration of same-sex marriage... [ Continue reading: ]

Holocaust Metaphors: Still Backfiring After All These Years
Things Pope John Paul II could have learned from Democrats or MoveOn.org: It's a short list, but for starters, that Hitler/Nazi/Holocaust analogies tend to be more trouble than they're worth. Paul Spiegel, president of Germany's Central Council of Jews, and... [ Continue reading: ]

Prayers for Conviction
Virginia lawmakers, who are currently reviewing a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would secure the right to public prayer in schools and other municipal buildings, were angered last Friday by the public prayer of Rev. Debra Peevey, the... [ Continue reading: ]

Remember No Evil
Disappearances, torture and nun-killings. How's the media to make use of historical context when history itself seems stuck on repeat? Not a week after the murder of an American nun who spent her life working to defend Brazilian peasants against... [ Continue reading: ]

What's That Over There?
For anyone sad to see the "Philadelphia Four" story fade away, there's more outrage and free speech debates to be had at the University of Arizona, where "traveling evangelist" Jed Smock has been agitating liberals and embarrassing campus Christians all... [ Continue reading: ]

Ecological Sin
To mark the Kyoto Protocol, which took effect in the rest of the world this week, the National Council of Churches issued an open letter, attempting to refute "false gospel" about the environment and urging American Christians to repent "ecological... [ Continue reading: ]

What Becomes of the Almost-Martyrs?
Pennsylvania judge Pamela Dembe has dismissed all charges -- inciting riot, conspiracy and ethnic intimidation (Pennsylvania's hate crime law) -- brought against the four conservative Christian protesters arrested last fall for picketing a gay street festival with a bullhorn and... [ Continue reading: ]

More Stickers
Science class update: Wyatt Bunker, a Memphis school board member who helped establish Bible classes in county schools is pushing to add stickers to biology textbooks with the disclaimer that the evolution material contained within was just one scientific theory... [ Continue reading: ]

Exorcism Lessons
Alarmed by the apparent growth of interest in Satanism and the occult, the Vatican has begun offering priests and theology students a course on black magic and exorcism through Rome's prestigious pontifical university, Regina Apostolorum. Students will have the benefit... [ Continue reading: ]

C of E: IRA Division
After lengthy debate on whether women priests could be consecrated as bishops, the General Synod of the Church of England has resolved to continue discussing the matter at its next meeting in July. While ordained women at the meeting expressed... [ Continue reading: ]

Vocation Training
The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State have filed a complaint regarding religious proselytization in a Pennsylvania jail, charging that the only vocational training program available to prisoners forces them to participate in prayer and religious... [ Continue reading: ]

"Religion" by Fiat
Boston University gets into the sticky business of defining what is and isn't a religion with their decision to recognize a group of Wiccans as part of an official religion (with full rights to a guaranteed weekly meeting place; a... [ Continue reading: ]

American Catholic Heroine
L.A. Times stays with the story of Dorothy Stang, the American nun murdered by anti-environmentalist, anti-labor gunmen in Brazil. Good for them. We wrote on Sunday about our frustration that some politically conservative Catholics are ignoring her death. Our post... [ Continue reading: ]

Goliath Wants In
For those who care about such things, there's a yawny story in The Washington Times about some gung-ho ex-state trooper-turned-Virginia legislator names Charles Carrico, all ticked off because he's not allowed to tell school kids about Davy and Goliath so... [ Continue reading: ]

Ghost in the Machine
The ghost of a religion story comes in the form of a cliche in Tim Weiner's NYT story about the automation of the U.S. Army: "Trusting robots with potentially lethal decision-making may require a leap of faith in technology not... [ Continue reading: ]

What Does this Make Chocolate Labs?
Bartholomew's Notes on Religion, a long-time fan of Christian conservative talkshow host Doug Giles, traces the lineage of Giles' exhortation that Christians adopt a Pitbull attitude back to British missionary CT Studd, who derided fellow Christians not as poodles, but... [ Continue reading: ]

God's B-A-T-T-L-E
Marilou Braswell, the University of Georgia cheerleading coach fired last year after charges that she discriminated against a non-Christian cheerleaders, told a Christian business group that she's fighting "God's battle" and compared her religious persecution lawsuit against UGA to the... [ Continue reading: ]

Poor People Stuff
In a column published yesterday in Beliefnet, former deputy director of the White House faith-based initiatives program David Kuo charged that the Bush administration had failed to follow through on the program because they lack real commitment to helping the... [ Continue reading: ]

Religious Rally for Gay Rights
Yesterday hundreds of gay rights supporters, including dozens of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Unitarian religious leaders, held a religious-themed rally in Olympia, Washington. The rally took place between the state Supreme Court, which will soon hear arguments in a case... [ Continue reading: ]

My Saudi Valentine
In honor of Valentine's Day, Saudi Arabia's morality police have once again banned flower shops from selling red roses and red cards -- on pain of imprisonment -- to deter the celebration of a holiday they consider at odds with... [ Continue reading: ]

God's Own Website
The Los Angeles Times reports on some of the goods and services on offer at the annual National Religious Broadcasters convention in Anaheim: biblical health care insurance policies, a raffle for a piece of brimstone from Gomorrah, photos with Jesus... [ Continue reading: ]

The Man with the Gold...Rules
Mr. T begins preaching on Trinity Broadcast Network.... [ Continue reading: ]

All-Odin, All The Time
"Moral relativism," it seems, plagues even Pagans. Mike, an Odinist incarcerated in Michigan Department of Corrections, writes to newWitch magazine to ask why it covers other religions...... [ Continue reading: ]

Cheap Grace & Dumb Journalism
Washington Post's Dan Balz says incoming DNC chair Howard Dean "offers a secular vision of the world at a time when Democrats worry that they have ceded the values of faith and spirituality to Republicans." Huh? What? Since when did... [ Continue reading: ]

Miss Virtual Manners
Bene Diction has some thoughts on calls for God-blog policing -- seemingly on the rise as religious bloggers sense that they're being watched.... [ Continue reading: ]

What a Difference a Word Makes
GetReligion has a two-part discussion of "The Dawn Eden Affair" as elaborated in an op-ed/profile by The New York Observer's George Gurley. Eden, a pro-life absolutist, self-described "Jew who’s accepted Jesus as the Messiah" and author of the blog Dawn... [ Continue reading: ]

Show Me What Organized Atheism Looks Like
This is what organized atheism looks like. (Proud to offer two dorky references for the price of one.)... [ Continue reading: ]

Scalping
There's an echo of faith -- violent, scary faith -- in this AP report on a scalping in Idaho. A 26-year-old woman scalped a 16-year-old girl because the girl had allegedly been disrespectful to women. Both belonged to what AP... [ Continue reading: ]

Which Disease Spreads Faster?
Religious epidemiology: Pilgrims returning from Mecca may be spreading polio, according to the World Health Organization. "We're staring at the whites of the eyes of this thing," the coordinator of the health organization's Global Polio Eradication Initiative tells The NYTimes.... [ Continue reading: ]

Talmud-Made-Easy
Talmud for dummies: Brooklyn-based publisher ArtScroll/Mesorah has sunk $21 million into a new, 73-volume, easy English edition of the Talmud. Now that's some religion media.... [ Continue reading: ]

Traditionally Republican Themes
The LA Times reports that Dem Bob Hertzberg is running for mayor of the city on "traditionally Republican themes." And -- in defiance of the "moral values" quota with which every paper seems to cover such stories -- there's nary... [ Continue reading: ]

The Menstrual Technique
The Washington Post follows AP's lead a week late in reporting on sexual interrogation tactics used at Guantanomo to religiously humiliate Muslim prisoners. What explains the time lag? The Pentagon has issued a report confirming that the "techniques" -- including... [ Continue reading: ]

Commie Harry
"What really makes these critics hate Million Dollar Baby is not its supposedly radical politics -- which are nonexistent -- but its lack of sentimentality. It is, indeed, no Rocky, and in our America that departure from the norm is... [ Continue reading: ]

What's a Nice Jewish Girl to Do?
"How a beautiful, artistic, well-to-do Jewish girl became, by turns, a hippie and still later a fundamentalist Christian makes for a fascinating chapter in the story of postwar Jewish identity." Paul Zakrzewski reviews Assembling My Father in Forward.... [ Continue reading: ]

KKK Crashes Equality Party
A Kentucky mother, Lisa Whiteside, has withdrawn her son from a local high school after protests over the allegedly uneven application of the school's strict dress code, which Whiteside claims was enforced against her son (who wore a button-down shirt... [ Continue reading: ]

Boy Jesus
At the behest of an Italian TV station, forensic scientists created a picture of Jesus from the Shroud of Turin and then used computer enhancement programs normally used to "age" photos of missing children to "back age" the picture to... [ Continue reading: ]

Symbol of God
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's doctrinal agency in charge of defending the Church from heresy, has issued a stern notification regarding Jesuit Fr. Roger Haight's book, Jesus: Symbol of God, which was an attempt to... [ Continue reading: ]

Islamic Fundraiser Deported
Abdel-Jabbar Hamdan, a Palestinian-born fund-raiser for an Islamic charity allegedly tied to Hamas and the founder of an Anaheim mosque, was ordered deported for supporting an organization that "advocates terrorism."... [ Continue reading: ]

Dignity of Marriage
The Vatican has issued a 111-page guide, titled "Dignity of Marriage," revising the procedure of annulments so that they are slightly easier to obtain. The guidelines ease the requirements of a church appeals court to approve of annulments granted at... [ Continue reading: ]

It's Not Unusual to Be Offended by Anyone...
Death-threat recipient and author, Salman Rushdie, comes out strongly against Tony Blair's proposed ban on inciting religious hatred, and not just for the reasons one might think. For one, Rushdie begins, because it will make England more like the American... [ Continue reading: ]

He Paints His Face at Night...
Former Christian Coalition leader, Republican Wunderkind and self-proclaimed guerilla warrior, Ralph Reed, has taken preliminary steps towards a candidacy for the lieutenant governor's office in Georgia -- a somewhat ambiguous position that's nonetheless attracting nearly as much attention as the... [ Continue reading: ]

A Compassionate Budget
While President Bush's proposed budget is making headlines for its hidden surprises and its suggested cuts to more than 150 traditional social service programs -- including health care, veterans' prescriptions, food stamps, and housing benefits for the poor or disabled... [ Continue reading: ]

The 30-Year Scare
Retired journalist Lee Ellis knows Easter's coming when his email inbox fills up with pleas to protest an atheist petition titled RM 2493 that is perennially said to be under review by the FCC, demanding that the agency remove any... [ Continue reading: ]

Motorhead Duck Song
Michael J. Behe, a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute, pleads the case of Intelligent Design in The New York Times, explaining I.D.'s "four linked claims," and disingenuously describing the first two controversial assumptions as "uncontroversial." It's an exercise in... [ Continue reading: ]

"A Return to Modesty"
In Peshawar the youth wing of the political party, Jamaat-i-Islami, has threatened the local government to remove advertising billboards with pictures of women by next week, or they'll do it themselves. The youth party, known as Shabab-i-Milli, staged a similar,... [ Continue reading: ]

Love Your Mother Care for His Creation
How do you get evangelicals behind conservationism when their idea of environmentalist is a tree-hugging pagan? In part, writes Blaine Harden in a two-part report for The Washington Post, by changing all the names associated with green living, from environmentalism,... [ Continue reading: ]

Shiva Classic Thong
If it offends religious groups to put their sacred symbols on the insoles of shoes, try try again, and put them on a thong.... [ Continue reading: ]

Secularism: Still Fundamentalist After All these Months
Bishop of Exeter Michael Langrish followed in the Vatican's footsteps by condemning "secular fundamentalism," here defined by half-price Christ-out-of-Christmas complaints; by calls for a local Anglican/Roman Catholic adoption agency to allow same-sex couples to adopt children; and the controversy stirred... [ Continue reading: ]

It's Good to Be Rich
"For years [British] churches criticised Conservative governments and Baroness Thatcher. Now their views more closely reflect her famous comment that 'no one would remember the Good Samaritan if he only had good intentions. He had money as well.'" The British... [ Continue reading: ]

NY Same-Sex Marriage Ruling
In a 62-page decision issued this morning in New York City, State Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan said that the New York State Constitution guarantees basic freedoms to lesbian and gay people—and that those rights are violated when same-sex couples... [ Continue reading: ]

Four Years to Come Up With a Better Metaphor
Red churches and blue churches are here to stay. So says John Green, director of the University of Akron's Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, who just released the results of a nationwide survey that indicated continuing polarization between... [ Continue reading: ]

Jesus Christ, Supermodel
Milan has banned a poster ad campaign put out by the French fashion company, Marithé and François Girbaud, featuring a group of women posing in a Last Supper tableau with a Davinci Code-inspired twist: one male model standing in as... [ Continue reading: ]

Absolute Doubt
Jay Rosen's Pressthink features an interesting discussion about a recent New York Times article on some Iraqi bloggers. There was nothing religious about the original article, but the question of what was wrong with it led to a back-and-forth in... [ Continue reading: ]

Hefley's Lost Crusade
There's a ghost of a religion story in the news that House Republican leaders have booted ethics chair Rep. Joel Hefley in favor of more malleable ethics "leadership" friendly to ethically-challenged House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Hefley is no liberal... [ Continue reading: ]

Jim Bakker: The Gated Community
A Missouri developer has bought 590 acres of land on the site of a failed theme park called Camelot in order to built a Christian-themed residential community centered around Jim Bakker's new broadcast studio. The proposed community would be called... [ Continue reading: ]

Zionism is Discriminatory? Ya Think?
The end of Zionism? “In a landmark decision, Israel’s attorney general ruled last week that one of the fundamental tenets upon which the Jewish state was built — acquiring and reserving land for Jews to live on — is discriminatory... [ Continue reading: ]

Spiritual Cold War
The North Korean secret police "cannot staunch the word of the gospel," writes The Times' Michael Sheridan. "Two of our party turned out to be Christian businessmen who had come from China carrying wads of cash. Korean-language Bibles have been... [ Continue reading: ]

W.: What About God?
The Revealer's normal modus operandi is to say: Didja see that? Religion! In the secular news! We're always on the lookout for the god in the machine, and no more so than in the sermons of our preacher-in-chief. Dude's brilliant.... [ Continue reading: ]

Holy TennCare
Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen met with more than 350 clergy members Tuesday to ask them to search for "'obligations and opportunities'" to serve people in need, focusing in particular on churches helping to fund TennCare, the state's faltering health care... [ Continue reading: ]

Richard Ostling Had Nothing to Do With Him
Oh, the bias of mainstream media against religion and Oh, the liberal conspiracy of it all, proven again by AP columnist and religion writer Richard N. Ostling, reviewing yet another revised Bible, The Inclusive Hebrew Scriptures and The Inclusive New... [ Continue reading: ]

Gay Marriage in Canada
The Liberal minority of the Canadian government has filed a bill in the House of Commons to legalize gay marriage nationwide with the strong backing of Prime Minister Paul Martin who argued that Canada is "'a country of minorities'" and... [ Continue reading: ]

"Funding the Culture Wars"
The National Committ for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), a self-described watchdog group that promotes "public accountability" from foundations, grant-givers and private donors, has released a new report following the money trail between conservative foundation grandmakers and evangelical culture warriors promoting "traditional"... [ Continue reading: ]

The Ascendancy of Ned Flanders
The writers of The Simpsons know how to gauge the cultural climate. And so they've revamped the role of Ned Flanders, Springfield's holiest neighbor who's apparently inching his way towards center stage -- this week co-producing a biblical pageant for... [ Continue reading: ]

Things to Debate in Denver When You're Almost Dead
The Colorado Supreme Court is hearing arguments about whether or not to reinstate the death sentence of a convicted murderer and rapist who in 1995 was given the death penalty by jury members who consulted the Bible to see what... [ Continue reading: ]

Sonogram Religion
Religious media: James Dobson's evangelical Focus on the Family "has budgeted $4.2 million in the current fiscal year for [ultrasound] machines and on training on how to use them." The premise being, apparently, that seeing is believing. Which leaves God... [ Continue reading: ]

James Dobson, Meet John Wayne Gacy
Look, SpongeBob could be the queen of golden showers and he still wouldn't hold a candle to this sad clown story of the redemptive power of McDonald's, published by James Dobson's Focus on the Family. Henry Darger would be jealous.... [ Continue reading: ]

Blood Libel in Russia
New York blogger Bnei Levi has translated the anti-Semitic letter/petition written by 19 nationalist Russian parliamentarians and signed by another 450-500 public figures, which called for the investigation and possible banning of all Jewish groups. The letter, titled "Jewish Happiness,... [ Continue reading: ]

Some Revelation's at Hand?
Last week The Christian Century reported that the Church of the Brethren, a pacifist church which has historically opposed military service, announced that it would comply with a request from the Selective Service to institute an "alternative service" program for... [ Continue reading: ]

Hillary Gods-Up
WNYC's Brian Lehrer picks up on Sen. Hillary Clinton's recent God-talk, speaking with The American Prospect's Michael Tomasky. Listen now.... [ Continue reading: ]

Creationism on the Free Market
While Intelligent Design proponents spark angry letters to the editor and cocktail-party arguments nationwide, The New York Times' Cornelia Dean finds that the more troubling -- and far-less publicized -- challenge to evolution curriculum is science teachers who are too... [ Continue reading: ]

Super Bowl, Super Jesus
With the National Football League and 100,000 fans about to descend on Jacksonville, Florida, local Christians recognize what's going on: "'a God opportunity.'" Jacksonville, which CharismaNOW characterizes as "one of the most religiously oriented venues" in Super Bowl history, is... [ Continue reading: ]

Popetown
Popetown, a satirical cartoon set in the Vatican that was cancelled by the BBC after numerous protests by British Catholics, will be broadcast on the Italian satellite channel, CanalJimmy.... [ Continue reading: ]

They're Into Masochism, Too
Here's a lengthy diatribe on what self-serving hypocrites many evangelicals are -- published in Christianity Today's Books & Culture.... [ Continue reading: ]

Can You Love the Theocon but Hate Theocracy?
"Do you know what happened in the United States? They accused me of being a theocon—I don't know what that means..." Rocco Buttiglione, the Italian politician recently deemed unqualified to be a European Commissioner because he allgedly suggested homosexuality is... [ Continue reading: ]

Sex & Other People's Gods
Sharlet: Years ago I interviewed Wendy Doniger, the U Chicago scholar of mythology. At the time, she was working on a cross-cultural study of getting screwed, literally and figuratively -- what happens when you go to bed with a guy... [ Continue reading: ]

Dobson's Creek
Spongebob has been pressed into the service of a "homosexual agenda" and Dr. James Dobson has MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on the ropes, about to go the way of Dan Rather. If you believe either of these claims, we have some... [ Continue reading: ]

Maple Sugar Me, Baby
More naughty bunny news: Slate's Dana Stevens interviews (halfway through her column) a spokeswoman for "Postcards from Buster," the PBS kid's cartoon show which the new education secretary, Margaret Spellings, has denounced because one episode includes a character with two... [ Continue reading: ]

Get Godly, Get Paid
Who says moral values don't pay? Yet another conservative columnist has been outed as having received undisclosed payments from a government program he fluffed in his column. Mike McManus, whose column appears in around 50 newspapers, received $10,000 for "consulting"... [ Continue reading: ]

Scientology Stories
Amid the overabundance of articles on religion and the tsunami -- who has an interpretation of the tragedy as God's will; who's taking advantage; who's purely offering help -- Peter S. Goodman of The Washington Post narrows his focus to... [ Continue reading: ]

Duke ISO Pugilist
Kerry Duke, dean of Tennessee Bible College, has apparently intimidated his neighbors at Tennessee State University out of hosting a free course on Islam. After hearing of the planned course -- which, according to the would-have-been professor, wasn't proselytization but... [ Continue reading: ]

Faith-Based Investment Bankers?
The South Florida Business Journal reports, without comment, that Jeb Bush has named several insurance, investment and business executives as advisors to the state's faith-based initiatives program. The Revealer's no M.B.A., but it seems worthwhile to ask what this means.... [ Continue reading: ]

Every Woman Loves a Crusader
Wild At Heart -- the new book and Christian men's movement, not David Lynch's dark and violent love story -- takes off in Britain, where churches are reportedly recommending it to their flocks. The Times' Ruth Gledhill does better than... [ Continue reading: ]

Jerry Understands
Jerry Springer sympathizes with the Christians who protested the BBC's recent airing of Jerry Springer: The Opera, and said he wouldn't have written it himself as "'I don't believe in making fun of other religions.'"... [ Continue reading: ]

Guantanamo Thong Song
The Bush administration recommends sexual abstinence for singles -- unless, of course, you're a Guantanamo prisoner. In that case, official policy involves thongs, body fluids, and blue balls. Paisley Dodds of AP has acquired a draft of a classified document... [ Continue reading: ]

The Well-Concealed Rub
James Dobson issues a press release to counter the SpongeBob fiasco, which he claims was reported all out of context, and to ask his followers to write five journalists or commentators who mocked Dobson. In fact, the release states, what... [ Continue reading: ]

Adventist Ashes Get Catholic Burial
After a Catholic church in Boulder, Colorado publicized its practice of holding religious burials of the ashes of aborted fetuses, an Adventist hospital has also raised objections after hearing that the ashes of miscarried and stillborn fetuses were being similarly... [ Continue reading: ]

One DOMA Challenge Left
After a judge dismissed lawsuits brought by three gay couples in Florida, and the couples decided not to risk appealing to the Supreme Court in case the court set a precedent by rejecting the case, there is only one lawsuit... [ Continue reading: ]

Auschwitz Anniversary
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the main center of the Nazi's "Final Solution," with survivors meeting for remembrance ceremonies with world leaders, who warned of the growing number of anti-Semitic incidents in Europe. Last week,... [ Continue reading: ]

You Forgot Context
Though she's been called "French" for it, Peggy Noonan doesn't regret her critique of Bush's "God-drenched" address, and adds these thoughts: words have meanings that last beyond romantic sentiment; history is quite big enough right now without more overreaching ambition;... [ Continue reading: ]

Blessed Be the Fruit
Christian conservative Allan Carlson, president of a think tank called the Howard Center, proposes lower insurance rates for married couples with children. Carlson says that "children-rich" families with a working father and a homemaker mom enjoy better health. Carlson also... [ Continue reading: ]

They Will Be Your Doctors When You're Old
Kansas' State Board of Education is holding a public hearing this Saturday on the proposed statewide science standards which include a redefinition of the word "science" intended to remove bias towards "naturalistic" (non-theistic) belief systems. Pat Hayes, author of Red... [ Continue reading: ]

He's So Unusual
Constitutional "originalist" U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (of "secularism led to the Holocaust" fame) yesterday scolded his fellow judges for looking to "abstractions" or "judicial tests" rather than the pure text of the Constitution when deciding religious cases. But... [ Continue reading: ]

Satirist Fined Over Pope's Honor
A Warsaw court has fined Jerzy Urban, editor of the Polish newspaper Nie (No), $6,500 for writing a satirical article published in 2002, that ridiculed the pope on the eve of his visit to his native country.... [ Continue reading: ]

Zondervan Eats Lunch with the Cool Kids
Rolling Stone belatedly decides to accept the new kid in Young-n-hiptown after all of RS's friends already have. New kid still humbly "thrilled."... [ Continue reading: ]

Russia Remembers Auschwitz
"'Today is a test,'" said Russia's chief rabbi Berl Lazar. "'People are trying to test how society will react 60 years later.'" While the rest of the world observes the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, 20 Russian nationalist... [ Continue reading: ]

He Works with the Medium You Give Him?
Jesus Oyster, Jesus Clipboard.... [ Continue reading: ]

Death of a Heretic
In Memoriam: Gary Webb, the Pulitzer-winning journalist who broke the story of the CIA-Contra-crack epidemic connection and paid for it with his career. Why does The Revealer care? Because Webb's story is about the religion of journalism, its grand inquisitors,... [ Continue reading: ]

Vermont is So Bunny
Bush's new education secretary, Margaret Spellings, brings a fresh tone to Washington after outgoing secretary Rod Paige disgraced himself by buying off a hack journalist to spin his initiatives. There'll be no covert culture war for Spellings -- she's taking... [ Continue reading: ]

God's Convenient Politics
Lucky for Democrats, Jim Wallis is able to explain God's politics, which are a curiously good fit to the current Democratic identity crisis: God's "an economic progressive and family-values conservative," just like the black, Latino, Catholic and working-class voters Dems... [ Continue reading: ]

The A-Team
What kind of name for a band of supervillians, or even heroes, is "The Arlington Group"? More dowdy than terrifying. But then, we didn't get their calmly-worded letter of disappointment. Bush did. The coalition of Christian conservatives, which includes James... [ Continue reading: ]

Ashland U. Makes Rainbow Bracelet of Historical Ties
Ohio's Ashland University, which announced last fall that it would restrict new faculty hires to Jews and Christians, has abandoned the policy in favor of requiring faculty members to support the university's mission statement, which includes a commitment to Judeo-Christian... [ Continue reading: ]

UCC Evangelizes SpongeBob
Jesus wouldn't turn away SpongeBob Squarepants, and neither does the UCC. Rev. John H. Thomas, general minister and president of the United Church of Christ, gave warm welcome to SpongeBob yesterday -- as well to as Barney, Big Bird, Clifford,... [ Continue reading: ]

Survival of the Fittest
How come capitalist Americans, with their love of social Darwinism, and faith in "'survival of the fittest' free-market ideology," don't accept evolution as well? Stephen Peplow, on Peace, Earth and Justice News considers this underappreciated irony.... [ Continue reading: ]

Don't Play with Sri Lanka
Evangelical relief workers have reached Sri Lanka, which has been a hotbed of religious contention since long before the tsunami. Christian missionaries there claim persecution at the hands of the Buddhist majority, citing the more than 100 churches which have... [ Continue reading: ]

Holocaust Denial in Slovakia
Religion and Society points to an AP report on a proposal from Slovakia's Justice Ministry to decriminalize Holocaust denial by repealing a 2001 law. The country's Jewish community protested the proposal last Friday, imploring legislators "'not to help legalize neo-Nazi... [ Continue reading: ]

I.D. Update
The evolution debate goes on, with The New York Times and The Washington Post both printing anti-"Intelligent Design" editorials in the past two days (The Times arguing that "If evolution is derided as 'only a theory,' intelligent design needs to... [ Continue reading: ]

Alberta What's On Your Mind?
In Alberta, one of five provinces left in Canada that has not legalized same-sex marriage, 500 protesters gathered outside the legislature to pray for God's intercession in keeping the unions illegal.... [ Continue reading: ]

Washington Times Plans Minstrel Show
The Washington Times wins the cultural sensitivity award with Richard S. Ehrlich's report on "superstitious Thailand," where Thais are "spooked" by the spirits of tsunami victims, refuse to eat fish because of angry sea creatures eating human remains, and probably... [ Continue reading: ]

Ergo, the Divorce Rate
Public Agenda, a non-profit public opinion research organization, has released the results of a new survey and finds that Americans are increasingly curmudgeonly, stubborn old mules who won't compromise on anything. Well, not anything, but anything that seems closely tied... [ Continue reading: ]

NARAL-Baiting
Yesterday, on the day after the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Boulder's Sacred Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church invited the press to a mass burial of the ashes of 300-500 fetuses which had been aborted at a nearby... [ Continue reading: ]

Hey, Baby, You Wanna Check Out My Sword?
Reuters reports on the Christian "warrior" movement, inspired by author John Eldredge's bestselling Wild At Heart and descended from poet Robert Bly's Iron John movement. Some members commission replicas of the sword wielded by Mel Gibson as William Wallace in... [ Continue reading: ]

Rank Something, Anyway
Wouldn't you know -- Richard Land is a man of the people. Or so he told NPR's Terry Gross when she asked why he supported the war in Iraq when so many other religious leaders did not. Maybe, said Land,... [ Continue reading: ]

Open Letters
Leaders of Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical churches, including the leadership of the National Council of Churches, have taken out a full-page ad in The New York Times, urging President Bush to use his power to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,... [ Continue reading: ]

Peggy Noonan, Here On Earth
Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter to both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, takes a swipe a Junior's style. The music was "lame": "modern megachurch hymms" that sounded like the boring middle of a children's film. But worse was the address... [ Continue reading: ]

Acehnese Amputees
Acehnese Muslim tsunami survivors suffering from gangrene are reluctant to submit to amputations, fearing a pre-tsunami perception that amputees are beggars, and also that being "physically incomplete" may prevent Muslims from entering paradise. A local Iman told The Telegraph he... [ Continue reading: ]

Episcopal Church Apologizes
The U.S. House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church apologized for the hurt it caused the Anglican Communion by "certain actions," unspoken but clearly the consecration of the openly gay bishop, the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson. The apology was requested... [ Continue reading: ]

One Step Forward...
Catholic bishops in Spain have recanted on their statement this Tuesday, which allowed that condoms are useful in preventing the spread of AIDS, instead returning to the Vatican stance that condom use promotes immoral sexual conduct. No bishops' conference has... [ Continue reading: ]

Talking Heads Live
Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners and author of God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, talk with NPR's... [ Continue reading: ]

Reclaiming the Swastika
British Hindus hope to reclaim the swastika -- a good luck charm and the second-most sacred Hindu symbol -- from its Nazi associations with public awareness workshops and a lobby effort to prevent a proposed Europe-wide ban on the symbol.... [ Continue reading: ]

Because Cleveland Rocks...
The Southern Baptist Convention has chosen the largely Catholic city of Cleveland as its "Strategic Focus City" for the U.S. in 2006-2007, and Vancouver for its Canadian outreach program reports David Briggs of The Plain Dealer. Thousands of volunteers will... [ Continue reading: ]

God-Talk on I-Day
Revealer contributors David Domke (author of God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and the Echoing Press) and Kevin Coe predict the tenor of Bush's inaugural address this afternoon. He will talk about God, as... [ Continue reading: ]

Clifford the Big Gay Plot
Could James Dobson be heading back to the fringe? His organization, Focus on the Family and another Christian conservative group, the American Family Association, are targeting the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, as well as Barney the Dinosaur, Arthur, Dora the... [ Continue reading: ]

Godhra Report
India's Election Commission has warned politicians that strict action will be taken against those exploiting religion during their election campaigns. The warning comes after the recent release of the Justice UC Banerjee report absolving Muslims of involvement in the Go