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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.

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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.

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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?

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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."

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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)?

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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.

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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: ]

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