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You Can Call Me Al
Is the Religious Right dead? It should be, suggests Sarah Pulliam in evangelicaldom's most influential magazine, Christianity Today. Not the movement; the label. "Several politically conservative evangelicals said in interviews," writes Pulliam, "that they do not want to be identified... [ Continue reading: ]
My Bloody Valentine
Louis A. Reprecht asks, "How have we gone from a beheaded priest to a giddy worldwide day of romantic love? In a word: the widespread conviction that love is a dizzying sacrifice."... [ Continue reading: ]
RNC Religion
Michael Steele, new Republican National Committee chairman, is African-American; he's also a serious Roman Catholic who spent three years studying for the priesthood. The former fact is front and center in mainstream coverage of Steele and his new job; the... [ Continue reading: ]
Updike at Rest
John Updike is dead; NYT responds with curiously brief AP obituary, featuring this even curiouser comment on sex and religion, describing Updike's most famous character, Rabbit Angstrom: "a believer in God even as he bedded women other than his wife."... [ Continue reading: ]
Inaugural Hope, Civil Religion
Most of the NYT's inaugural reporting hasn't really been reporting at all. It's the would-be scripture of civil religion, much taken with the glory of it all, of the world but not really in its mess and contradiction. An exception... [ Continue reading: ]
Rick Warren vs. The IRS
Just how powerful is Rick Warren? Ask the IRS. When they tried to collect back taxes from the pastor, Warren used his mega-clout to campaign against them--and won. With the help of Congress, that is, which stepped in to preempt... [ Continue reading: ]
Scott Simon Sings Songs for the Butcher's Daughter
Revealer editor Peter Manseau talks to NPR's Scott Simon about his new novel, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter.... [ Continue reading: ]
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Seattle Post-Intelligencer may soon be joining the Christian Science Monitor, the Madison Capital Times, and many other papers around the country in printless limbo, or worse.... [ Continue reading: ]
The Smart Set
Tim Townsend of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch responds to the Religion Newswriters Association's dull list of top ten list of 2008 religion stories with a smarter list of local Missouri stories he expects to be covering. It's too heavy on... [ Continue reading: ]
A Well-Wrought Urn
"It's not the vase, it's what you put in it." That's what Carlos Williams, the missionary hero of this WaPo story, tells a wino he wants to reel into his new church. It's not a bad motto for religion reporting,... [ Continue reading: ]
Death Match: Mickey Rourke vs. Mel Gibson
It should come as no surprise that The Wrestler is a religiously-inflected flick -- nearly every review uses "resurrected" to describe Mickey Rourke -- but Gabriel McKee connects the blood spatters on his SF Gospel blog.... [ Continue reading: ]
Kosher collapse
Elizabeth Dwoskin details the collapse of a kosher empire for the Village Voice. This is one of the best reports on the Agriprocesser scandal we've seen, the only one to seriously venture into the Orthodox Jewish community's support for the... [ Continue reading: ]
Odetta, 1930-2008
Odetta, 1930-2008. "Some folks sing songs," writes Richard Corliss in Time. "Odetta testified." But Corliss gets one thing wrong: Odetta didn't just want to "sing black truth to white power," she wanted to sing truth to whoever needed it. That's... [ Continue reading: ]
Left, Right, Emerging
Sharlet: Emergent evangelical writer Tony Jones, author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier responds to my essay for Dispatches from the Religious Left. (Maybe it's time to dispatch the term "dispatches.") Jones is skeptical of terms like... [ Continue reading: ]
Calvin, Again
Marilynne Robinson's "extemporizing on, say, Karl Marx’s Capital is often punctuated with laughter and blithe phrases such as 'Oh, goody!' When a question gave her pause during our interview, she’d often shrug and say, 'Calvin again,' and then look away... [ Continue reading: ]
Under God, Underground
Gawker, as usual, brings us the religion news: The Rev. George M. Docherty, a Scotsman who advocated for adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance so that Americans sound like royal subjects who say "God save the Queen" --... [ Continue reading: ]
Book Criticians and Pentecostalists
Why didn't any editor at the NYT Book Review flag Virginia Heffernan's use of the term "Pentecostalist" to describe the religion of Sarah Vowell's youth as an anachronistic variation on "Pentecostal"? Does this oversight shed light on the Book Review's... [ Continue reading: ]
Anti-Oogedy-Boogedyism
Leftist blogger Frederick Clarkson is wondering why conservative columnist Kathleen Parker isn't being taken for the woodshed for her religious bigotry. Anti-Muslim? Dismissive of liberal Christians? A Wicca basher? None of the above. Parker is taking aim at "an element... [ Continue reading: ]
Making Whoopee With the NYT
A Texas megachurch pastor offers advice on "how to move from whining about the economy to whoopee!” Gretel Kovach for The New York Times reports. It's a decent little story, and that's its weakness. This sex story is too wholesome,... [ Continue reading: ]
Ann Coulter Takes Peyote and Channels Patty Hearst, Our Evil Robot Future, and the Bug in Her Brain
"Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people," Patty Hearst, AKA "Tania" of the Symbionese Liberation Army, famously declared. Ann Coulter, on a vision quest to find the messiah who will resurrect the G.O.P., doesn't... [ Continue reading: ]
WCF Strikes Back, Belatedly, Inaccurately
Kathryn Joyce: The World Congress of Families, a right-wing "pro-family" group that I wrote about in a March cover story for The Nation ("Missing: The Right Babies"), severely misquoted me in a press release issued Oct. 30 to promote its... [ Continue reading: ]
The One (and Another One)
In his NYT column, Milton scholar Stanley Fish offers the first Obama/Jesus comparison that actually makes sense. Meanwhile, NYT's in-house pop conservative, David Brooks, tells The New Republic that he's thrilled that Bono is joining the papers stable of columnists... [ Continue reading: ]
Palin: Reagan Invented San Francisco
Plenty of pundits pounced on Palin's resurrection of failed Civil War general George McClellan in last night's debate (apparently, she meant General David McKiernan, who is alive), but not many noticed her erasure of near four centuries of history when... [ Continue reading: ]
Palinology
Will McCain's Palin pick revive his once-high hopes of winning Latino votes? Will mainstream media be able to comprehend the overlap of the Latino, evangelical, and Pentecostal demographics? The answer to the first question, says B. Adriana Venegas-Chavez, is: Possibly.... [ Continue reading: ]
Just When You Thought It Was Over
"As the Bush era comes to a fitful close, and the American presidential elections approach, the Christian evangelical movement that brought the Republicans to power in 2000 is, to all outward appearances, losing its political influence. The strange spectacle of... [ Continue reading: ]
Go Ask Sarah
ABC reports that two of the books Palin's church allies in Wasilla may have singled out for censorship are Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous, and Pastor, I Am Gay, by a Wasilla area pastor named Howard Bess who describes himself... [ Continue reading: ]
We Can't All Be Queen
Evangelical Palin's fans are comparing the governor to the biblical Queen Esther, whom her pastor said Palin took as her role model when she was elected. The Nation's Jon Weiner outlines some of the pitfalls of that parallel here. And,... [ Continue reading: ]
McCain Isn't a Made Man Yet
The Family Research Council -- Washington's one-stop lobby shop for all things fundamentalist -- is warning McCain that picking Palin won't be enough to win evangelical loyalty unless he unpicks his media pals. Writes FRC leader Tony Perkins in an... [ Continue reading: ]
So That's What She Meant
Dan Kennedy's Media Nation blog points us to two helpful Palin perspectives, including a Pentecostal scholar of Pentecostalism who says -- contrary to Steve Waldman's point, below, and my own read of Palin's word -- that it's fair to interpret... [ Continue reading: ]
Waldman's World
Beliefnet founder Steve Waldman's list of "what's scary, what's not scary" about Sarah Palin's religion is a useful, if slightly misleading, tool for journalists eager to find an entry point for writing about the trinity of church, state, and Palin.... [ Continue reading: ]
This Joke is Funny Because...
Sharlet: Fred Clarkson of the anti-religious right site Talk2Action told me a couple of days ago that this story would be coming today. Fred thinks the story is huge; I'm skeptical. What's the story? Well, that's the problem. It's complicated.... [ Continue reading: ]
Oldest Magazine on the Continent Likes My Book!
Sharlet: The oldest continuously published magazine in North America -- and the second oldest in the English-speaking world -- likes The Family. Says the United Church Observer: "From the early evangelical efforts of Jonathan Edwards in the 18th century, through... [ Continue reading: ]
Obama's Dot, Dot, Dot
"As a Christian," Obama told George Stephanopolous today, "I have a lot of humility about understanding when does the soul enter into …" The dot, dot, dot -- Obama's, not ours -- refers to either an embryo, a fetus, or... [ Continue reading: ]
Things to Do in Denver If You're Unborn
"On the fiery issue of abortion, the Democratic Party has been taking small but notable steps to the right." What's that? "Whining" from the no-compromise left? Hardly. That's The Wall Street Journal's fine religion reporter Suzanne Sataline, reporting on the... [ Continue reading: ]
Obama and the Kings
This essay from The Nation on "Obama and King" -- which would have been better titled "Obama and the Kings," as in Martin Luther King Jr. and Sr. -- is a week old but it's must reading in preparation for... [ Continue reading: ]
NEW News
The Network of Enlightened Women (NEW) "defines what conservatism is," a NEW leader tells Politico's Helena Andrews. Unfortunately, either NEW or Andrews is keeping it a secret -- this story on a possibly important movement of conservative college women provides... [ Continue reading: ]
The Church Press
Brad Greenberg, author of the L.A. Jewish Journal's "God Blog," points us to Kathleen Parker's WaPo column in which she argues -- with no animosity toward Rick Warren -- that "tthe winner," of the Saddleback "debate" "was Warren, who has... [ Continue reading: ]
Hertzberg's Warren
No mainstream pundit has gotten Rick Warren's Saddleback forum for the candidates more wrong than The New Yorker's usually astute Hendrick Hertzberg. "With his genial personality," Hertzberg writes of Warren, "his emphasis on happiness over hellfire, and his instinct for... [ Continue reading: ]
FundamentaListing
Revealer Kathryn Joyce is filling in for invaluable Sarah Posner while she's on vacation. Read Kathryn's special edition of the "FundamentaList" at The American Prospect -- prayers for rain, bountiful babies, pundits who can't tell their left from their right,... [ Continue reading: ]
The Wheel in James Dobson's Head Keeps on Turning
Sharlet: The liberal blogosphere will soon be a-twitter over James Dobson's announcement that he's reconsidering his once absolutist opposition to McCain. Evidence, say Dobson's and McCain's critics, of the Christian Right's hypocrisy. But I've long maintained that Dobson, despite his... [ Continue reading: ]
Guns n' God
Every now and then, two great faiths converge. Such meetings transcend the ecumenical impulse; indeed, they may lead to new religions. That nearly occurred at Windsor Hill Baptist in Oklahoma City. The church decided to promote a special youth weekend... [ Continue reading: ]
Church v. State, Immigration Edition
"The beacon of the Catholic church to immigrants has rarely shown more brilliantly" than in Postville, Iowa, writes Samuel G. Freedman in The New York Times. Freedman, one of the great religion writers at work, is referring to a tiny... [ Continue reading: ]
Couldn't resist:God arrested for selling cocaine.... [ Continue reading: ]
A Priest, a Rabbi, and George Carlin Walk Into Heaven...
The universe is in balance, George Carlin once said, because Jesus has a little statue of a middle-class American hypocrite on his dashboard. In a bold move, NBC pays tribute to the dead comic with an old Saturday Night Live... [ Continue reading: ]
Mystical Realism
The NYT delivers news of The Shack, a gi-normous bestseller of a Christian novel, to the secular world, comparing its sales to Eckhart Tolle's new age blockbuster, A New Earth. But the paper misses the more interesting connection between Tolle's... [ Continue reading: ]
The Diane Rehm Show
Sharlet: I'll be discussing my new book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, on The Diane Rehm Show, from 11-noon, east coast time.... [ Continue reading: ]
Big Baptist Blowout! Little Press.
Big, big story missed by the press: Messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting, held in Indianapolis, rejected the relatively moderate vision of outgoing SBC president Frank Page by electing -- with big numbers -- Johnny Hunt, an Atlanta... [ Continue reading: ]
Machine Politics
Sharlet: WNYC's Leonard Lopate and I discuss "maximalism," cronyism, and The Family.... [ Continue reading: ]
What's Next, L'il Buddy?
Time's Steven Gray follows up Obama's decision to resign from Trinity United Church of Christ with what we think is the most logical and interesting story: How does the church move on? Of course, for a major media media outlet... [ Continue reading: ]
This Guy!
Jesse Sunenblick, a former Revealer, writes: "i know you're probably sick of the subject, but you should write about this guy. he is a wacky American creation: an Indian weened on the Brady Bunch (hence the nickname "Bobby"), who converted... [ Continue reading: ]
Blacks, Jews, and Obama
The Revealer failed to alert readers to what promised to be an excellent panel on "Blacks, Jews, and Post-Racial Candidate," so we're glad participant Ari Berman of The Nation gives us a glimpse of the conversation in this short but... [ Continue reading: ]
Blog v. Preacher
The collapse of John McCain's relationship with Christian Right leader John Hagee made for minor news in the mainstream media. Was this because the press doesn't think the Christian Right matters anymore? Or because they recognized that in their frenzy... [ Continue reading: ]
Judas Lies
"The Betrayal of Judas" is the rare piece of journalism that sheds light on the secrets and lies of ancient times and the modern media world. Thomas Bartlett, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, untangles the complicated tale of... [ Continue reading: ]
Fantastic Elastic Fundamentalism
Sharlet: Veteran Christian Right-watcher Frederick Clarkson reviews The Family for The Public Eye, the publication of Political Research Associates, a public think tank. I consider Clarkson a friend via internet, so it's fair to say the review is biased in... [ Continue reading: ]
McCain's Islam
Cliff Schecter, an Ohio-based investigative reporter with a new book on "The Real McCain," collects the candidate's most egregious misstatements at his "Campaign Silo" website. Most relevant to Revealer readers may be McCain's total failure to distinguish between Shi'ite and... [ Continue reading: ]
Classic Muckraking
Richard Byrne in Bookforum: "The Family is classic muckraking: passionate, principled, and powerful."... [ Continue reading: ]
A Seductively Passionate Voice
Contributing to the conservative drumbeat for war with Iran are the criers of "religious freedom," who point, correctly, to Iran's extreme restrictions on liberty of conscience. Will bombing help? We'll leave that to wiser heads to decide. Meanwhile, we're looking... [ Continue reading: ]
Reality Check
Sharlet: Amanda Marcotte -- the blogger behind Pandagon and author of It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments -- and I talk about The Family on her podcast for RH Reality Check, an online... [ Continue reading: ]
40 Years After the Catonsville Nine
"The good is to be done because it is good, not because it goes somewhere. I believe if it is done in that spirit it will go somewhere, but I don't know where. I don't think the Bible grants us... [ Continue reading: ]
Mainline Megas
Mark Pinsky coins the kind of alliterative phrase that should produce a herd of stories following his trail: "mainline megas." AKA, the revival -- or, at least, attempt at such -- of mainline Protestantism.... [ Continue reading: ]
The Dark, Glassy Lake
Does the following sentence strike you as a little creepy? "In their floor-length gowns, up-dos and tiaras, the 70 or so young women swept past two harpists and into a gilt-and-brocade dining room at the lavish Broadmoor Hotel, on the... [ Continue reading: ]
Obama's Cross
Mollie Hemingway at The Revealer's conservative counterpart on the God beat, Get Religion, does an excellent job of exploring mainstream media's empty reporting on Obama's increasingly blatant Christian campaign, featuring the same kind of visuals and rhetoric that set off... [ Continue reading: ]
Revealer Live
Upcoming Events -- Sunday, May 18, Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet discusses his new book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, on WBAI-NYC's "Beyond the Pale," noon-1 pm. Listen live or get the podcast. "Beyond the... [ Continue reading: ]
"One of those books that changes how one looks at the whole world."
Media scholar Mark Crispin Miller, author of Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform and editor of a new volume, Loser Takes All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008, responds to The Family: "One of... [ Continue reading: ]
The Church of Politics
Pastor Dan of Street Prophets, a progressive religious group blog, parses the Wall Street Journal's coverage of a Christian Right group's attempt to provoke a legal battle to redefine the churches' ability to politick.... [ Continue reading: ]
Clinton's Pastor Problem Redux
Jeff Weiss of the Dallas Morning News wonders if Hillary Clinton's Doug Coe connection is as troubling to her campaign as Obama's "pastor problem." Weiss asks, I get to answer.... [ Continue reading: ]
In Pork She Trusts
Republicans aren't the only ones who believe in using faith-based initiatives to win votes. In the month before the Reverend Calvin Butts, one of the most influential black pastors in New York City, surprised his Harlem congregation by endorsing Hillary,... [ Continue reading: ]
NYT vs. Jeremiah Wright, Pt. 3
Maureen Dowd, the noted columnist and student of African American religious history, jumps on the NYT Jeremiah Wright hate train, reducing Wright's learned history of the black church and why it should matter to all Americans to a "’60s maelstrom."... [ Continue reading: ]
Radio Show
Sharlet: I believe I'll be on the CBC -- Canadian Broadcasting Company -- program "The Current" Wednesday morning, discussing the pundit assault on Jeremiah Wright and black liberation theology. Whether or not they use my comments, I suspect the show... [ Continue reading: ]
NYT vs. Jeremiah Wright, Pt. 2
The NYT's Bob Herbert (writing in the opinion pages, at least), joins the liberal elite's outrage over Jeremiah Wright. Yes, I just said "liberal elite"; there is no other term with which to describe the big media Obama backers distressed... [ Continue reading: ]
NYT to Rev. Wright: Be Quiet!
Holly Berman: A surrogate for the Obama campaign announced today that in light of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's decision to defend himself in the public square, it's clear that "Mr. Wright doesn’t hate America, he loves the sound of his... [ Continue reading: ]
More Andrea Elliott Brilliance
Another brilliant portrait of New York City Islam from the NYT's Andrea Elliott -- a major feature on the Khalil Gibran International Academy and the campaign to destroy its founding principal, Debbie Almontaser, who's just speaking out now for the... [ Continue reading: ]
Bishop Goes to Market
There's some irony that Bishop Gene Robinson, the out gay Episcopal prelate, has been relegated to the "Marketplace" at the Anglican Communion's Lambeth Conference, a worldwide gathering that occurs only 10 years. Conservative bishops threatened a boycott unless their brother... [ Continue reading: ]
Clinton, Coe, and the King
What do the king of Norway and Hillary and Clinton have in common? They're both pals with Doug Coe, the "First Brother" of the fundamentalist network known to those in the know as The Fellowship and to those on the... [ Continue reading: ]
Jesus Christ, Vegas Showgirl
What's worse than Mel Gibson's Passion? A biography of Jesus by the director of Showgirls. Next up: Brett Ratner directs Jackie Chan as an ass-kicking, wise-cracking Thomas Aquinas!... [ Continue reading: ]
Rightward Bound
Religious right watcher Bill Berkowitz, whose work we've touted before, joined two scholars we admire -- Bruce Schulman and Paul Starr -- and a third who's new to us -- Julian Zelizer -- at Princeton University for a panel discussion... [ Continue reading: ]
Fanfare for the Common Man
Newsweek's cover story this week depicts a remote community of frustrated, working class folk facing dim economic prospects and a world that seems to have forgotten their community's glory days. In response, reports Newsweek, many of these people delve deeper... [ Continue reading: ]
Bishop Tom's Clever Fundamentalism
Leave it to the Anglicans to make biblical literalism sound thoughtful. Sholto Byrnes in New Statesman on Britain's cleverest fundamentalist, Bishop Tom.... [ Continue reading: ]
Ring Those Bells
"Art demands detachment," writes Leon Wieseltier, "but religion forbids it." Huh? That's about as narrow a conception of both as we can imagine, but Wieseltier is broader-minded when it comes to the Muslim call to prayer broadcast in Harvard Yard...... [ Continue reading: ]
Staging Belief
The counterpart to today's NYT frontpager on the pope's mild stand on behalf of immigrants is the Metro section lead, "A Populist Shift Confronts the U.S. Catholic Church." It's a fairly ordinary piece about the growing appeal of Pentecostalism, particularly... [ Continue reading: ]
"What's a Pope?"
Peter Manseau in The Washington Post, on the incredible shrinking papacy.... [ Continue reading: ]
Faith-Based Birthday
Faith-Based Initatives just turned seven. And it looks like the program may have a long life ahead of it. Bill Berkowitz offers the even-handed account of how one of Bush's signature programs has altered the federal landscape and why a... [ Continue reading: ]
John McCain's Rod
Much ink has been spilled over John McCain's ongoing relationship with ultra-right megachurch pastor and apocalypse dreamer John Hagee. Now the liberal press is starting to get up to speed on another McCain pal, Rod Parsley, the fundamentalist prince of... [ Continue reading: ]
Faith-Based Democrat Not So Democratic
Sharlet: I've been following the career of Senator Mark Pryor ever since the faith-based Democrat of Arkansas told me that through his participation in The Family -- a bizarre network of politicians and businessmen dedicated to a fundamentalist theology of... [ Continue reading: ]
Blog Wants You to Be Rich, John Hagee!
Sarah Posner ties the John Hagee story together at Religion Dispatches the old-fashioned way -- by following the money.... [ Continue reading: ]
Clinton's God Vote, Obama's None/Others
Catholics comprised the single biggest self-identified religious demographic in the Democratic primaries on Tuesday -- 28% -- and they voted overwhelmingly for Hillary, 59% to 37%. Self-described Protestants, 21% -- the same number of respondents who listed their religion as... [ Continue reading: ]
Blog Loves You, John Hagee!
Sarah Posner dedicates her "FundamentaList" at The American Prospect this week to the John Hagee / John McCain scandal. If you're reading The Revealer, you likely know about this already -- it's the kind of news that people who get... [ Continue reading: ]
Yiddish for Evangelicals
Sharlet: How often do you get a chance to defend the Christian Right, public vulgarity, and Yiddish all at once? At Religion Dispatches, Randall Balmer, an eminent historian of American evangelicalism, calls on Southern Baptist leader Richard Land to resign.... [ Continue reading: ]
Rise of the Egg People
"Huckabee endorses 'egg as person' amendment" in Colorado, reports the Denver Post. The Post doesn't mention that the proposed amendment has been rejected as extreme even by major anti-abortion groups. And that's why this is news -- off the radar... [ Continue reading: ]
Baby Talk
TUESDAY: Revealer Kathryn Joyce will be talking on her forthcoming book, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, and two excerpts published in The Nation, "Arrows for the War" (on the Quiverfull movement, which pushes women to bear a "quiverfull" of... [ Continue reading: ]
We Guess That Means No Spring Break in Priština This Year
First Kosovo, then Westminster Abbey -- the Mooslems will soon rule the world! Or so worries the sometimes-sane Rod Dreher. Christian conservatives are great proponents of democracy in the Muslim world -- except when it's, you know, democratic.... [ Continue reading: ]
It's Gettin' Chilly in Here!
SEE Kathryn Joyce talk about her recent Nation cover story on the latest Christian conservative craze, "demographic winter." (That's a fancy way of saying, "Not enough Christian babies.")... [ Continue reading: ]
NYT: Stay Out of Our Pages!
Is the New York Times actually anti-abortion? In subtle ways, yes, argues Debbie Nathan in The New Republic, just like we all are. No, wait -- just like anti-abortion conservatives want us to believe we all are. Nathan parses the... [ Continue reading: ]
The Cross & The Camera: the films of Gan Xiao'er
TODAY! Revealer readers in New York can get an inside view of China's booming Christian culture and meet one of China's most provocative filmmakers at a special event presented by the Center for Religion and Media (home of The Revealer)The... [ Continue reading: ]
Bishop Who?
Last September we noted the death of D. James Kennedy, a leader of Christian conservatism in America. More important to our concerns here at The Revealer, we noted the lack of notice Kennedy's death received in the mainstream media despite... [ Continue reading: ]
Profit Mel
Somebody should have told Mel Gibson that he was supposed to share the 30 pieces of silver.... [ Continue reading: ]
Hip Christians, pt. 345,678
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Huckabee Pecans
Huckabee is Paulie Walnuts to John McCain's Tony Soprano, says Dan Schur in today's NYT, responsible for kneecapping Romney and now more useful than ever as a foil against which McCain can reveal himself as a truer heir to Reagan.... [ Continue reading: ]
God-heroes, Witches, and the Creator at CPAC
A round-up of reporting from CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference at which John McCain sought the support of his party's right flank yesterday: The conservative Human Events remains skeptical, arguing that McCain will hear but not "listen" to conservatives.... [ Continue reading: ]
Why Did the Press Get Huck Wrong?
Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism runs a website called Nieman Watchdog that bills itself as revealing the "Questions the press should ask." Usually it's pretty decent, but a Feb. 1 post by political scientist Laura Olson, "Huckabee and the Religious... [ Continue reading: ]
The New Monasticism
"Church is not something we attend," says Jake Neufeld, part of a "new monastic" movement in evangelicalism, "it's something we are." That's a pretty idea, but in practice, Neufeld and his fellow Christian communalists in Billings, Montana are a prickly,... [ Continue reading: ]
Rudy, Christ
If Giuliani pulls off a miracle and wins Florida, the press will pay attention to "America's [self-proclaimed] mayor" again. Until then, only hometown rags like the Daily News are watching Rudy's reinvention as a holy fool. For observers of religion... [ Continue reading: ]
Pity the Man
Are you a "postabortive man"? Or are you puzzled by the term? Sarah Blustain diagnoses the anti-abortion movement's latest epidemic in "Pity the Man." What makes her piece better than the usual dispatch from the abortion wars is her acknowledgment... [ Continue reading: ]
Huck's Constitution
Huckabee, yesterday: "I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And... [ Continue reading: ]
Huck's Melody
Mike Huckabee, says NYT's David Kirkpatrick, is like the melody and the harmony of evangelicalism. The Revealer often disagrees with Kirkpatrick, but he's been doing good reporting on Huckabee and Fresh Air's Terry Gross asked the right questions on yesterday's... [ Continue reading: ]
The Democratic Black Church
Chicago Dyke, of the group blog Corrente, warns that the Democratic courtship of religious voters -- and, in South Carolina, black religious voters -- is more complicated than it appears in a press that loves the "authenticity" it attributes to... [ Continue reading: ]
Huck's Army
Last week we criticized the NYT's reliance on evangelical VIPs for its "insight" into Huckabee, so it's only fair that we note this week's piece by David Kirkpatrick on "Huck's Army," young evangelicals turning out for the Southern Baptist preacher... [ Continue reading: ]
Huckabee Makes the NYT Nervous
The NYT's explanation for why Huck won Iowa is a perfect example of what many evangelicals are talking about when they say that the NYT just doesn't get them. Noting that Huck drew a third more evangelicals to the polls... [ Continue reading: ]
Fear of a Huck Planet
The NYT's Timothy Egan gives a succinct summation of the Republican fear of a Huck planet: "It’s okay to have faux rubes, a la Bush senior and his pork rinds, or George W. and his Midland malapropisms. But when something... [ Continue reading: ]
The Future, Foretold
Resurrection TK.... [ Continue reading: ]
Megachurches & Money
Some of the best religion reporting in The New York Times appears in the Business Section, under the byline of Diana B. Henriques. Her latest, "Megachurches Add Local Economy to Their Mission" -- with Andrew W. Lehren -- is hardly... [ Continue reading: ]
The Argument: Youtube
According to Virginia Heffernan, Youtube rants about religion, "part atavistic race riot, part religious disputation and part earnest effort at enlightenment," are the medium's most-discussed videos.... [ Continue reading: ]
Free Speech? My Speech.
"Free speech," declared conservative writer Phyllis Chessler in observance of "Islamofascism Awareness Week," "belongs also to those of us who are pro-American and pro-Israel, and not only to those who demonize the West." Barnard scholar Elizabeth Castelli, meanwhile, points out... [ Continue reading: ]
Francis Schaeffer's Holy Fools
Jeff Sharlet: I've a review of Frank Schaeffer's fascinating new book, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back, in... [ Continue reading: ]
Where's the Treasure?
Mississippi gubenatorial candidate John Arthur Eaves ressurrects William Jennings Bryan with his challenge to the state's governor, wealthy former lobbyist Haley Barbour: “'Governor, just come clean, tell us where your treasure is,"” Mr. Eaves intoned in a preachery sing-song at... [ Continue reading: ]
The MacDowell Colony
Jeff Sharlet: I'm back, again, after a month mostly off the grid in the woods of New Hampshire. I was at The MacDowell Colony, a cluster of cabins for artists of all disciplines (including us nonfiction types). It's the oldest... [ Continue reading: ]
Kennedy Dead
Sharlet: Not that Kennedy. To me the most interesting thing about D. James Kennedy's death today is how little attention it's rating from mainstream media. As of this writing, neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post are frontpaging... [ Continue reading: ]
Hillary's Prayer, On the Air
Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet discuss their new Mother Jones feature, "Hillary's Prayer," on Cynthia Black's Phoenix, Arizona "Action Point" radio program. Hear them discuss their investigation into Hillary Clinton's surprising alliances with Christian conservatives live online, 7-8 pm eastern... [ Continue reading: ]
Jews? What Jews?
Those godless secularists! We refer, of course, to the conservatives at The Wall Street Journal, so enamored of the new book The Political Teachings of Jesus (by Tod Lindberg, editor of the rightwing Policy Review) that they decided to dispense... [ Continue reading: ]
Scientific American's Bad Religion
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins takes the hard sell approach to promoting science to skeptics (that is, the faithful): Religion is bad science, he says, just plain wrong and rather stupid. Physicist Lewis Krauss goes for the soft sell: "Teaching is seduction," he purrs, with believers in mind. But lost in Scientific American's lengthy conversation between the two are the soft sciences that study religion. Krauss and Dawkins speak of "religion" as if the nature of the beast were a settled affair; but their colleagues in anthropology, sociology, religious studies, and other disciplines know that Religion with a capital R, an entity prone to the admonitions of Science with a capital S, is a mythical creature. Which makes the Krauss/Dawkins debate an excercise in bad faith.
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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.
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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.
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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: ]
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