The Revealer

Best Buy's Best New Market?

The Revealer — 2010-02-09T11:57:16-05:00

Elissa Lerner: It couldn't be more American. The LA Times reported Best Buy's recent initiative to engage in marketing to Muslims this past Eid-al-Adha. Although naysayers point out that for some, "Muslim" is synonymous with "terrorism" and could lead to...

Sweating Out the Details

The Revealer — 2010-02-08T23:36:33-05:00

Stephanie Butnick: Judith Weisenfeld writes that mainstream media coverage of the October 2009 "sweat lodge deaths" at self-help counselor James Arthur Ray's Arizona retreat has failed to adequately examine responses by Native American communities to the incident or discuss the...

The Puritan's Dilemma

The Revealer — 2010-02-02T23:06:50-05:00

What do Tea Partiers and Jonathan Safran Foer have in common?

By Scott Korb

One afternoon last week, I read both Ben McGrath’s recent New Yorker piece, “The Movement,” about the rise of American Tea Party activism, and Michael Pollan’s new pamphlet-book Food Rules. Both are well reported – or, for those of you who have read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and/or In Defense of Food, you’re asked to think back to the reporting behind those books while reading Food Rules. If you haven’t read those earlier books, Pollan asks you to trust him; indeed, that we ask journalists to tell us how to eat is one of his great American gripes. (And yet, here he is, telling us once again.) And both McGrath’s piece and Pollan’s book are worth reading. What’s more, each should take you about the same length of time to read.

Food Rules is little more than a list of 64, well, food rules – or what he calls “personal policies” – divided into three categories that will also be familiar to anyone who’s read Pollan before: I. Eat food. II. Mostly plants. III. Not too much. (This was originally formulated on the cover of the Times Magazine as “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” which has a poetry to it that Pollan himself is sensitive to when people get it wrong.) And so we find here what he calls “pieces of food culture,” pithy lines such as: “If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t” (#19); or, “Eat animals that have themselves eaten well” (#27); or, most simple of all: “Cook” (#63). This is, indeed, the definition of pithy.

Although in Food Rules Pollan is most concerned with returning culture and tradition to a central place in our meal planning, the needlessly complicated (in his view) questions that have shaped Dilemma and Defense – and before that The Botany of Desire – are just as often answered with a healthy serving of evolutionary science. For instance, it’s not that animal rightists such as Peter Singer and Jonathan Safran Foer are bad guys; it’s just that when they argue – with a “deep current of Puritanism” – against eating animals and in favor of what Pollan calls a “vegan utopia,” well, those animal philosophers “betray a deep ignorance about the workings of nature.”

God and Groundhog Day

The Revealer — 2010-02-02T16:15:20-05:00

Nicole Greenfield: Center for Religion and Media co-director Angela Zito discusses religion and Danny Rubin's 1993 movie "Groundhog Day" on NPR's The Takeaway....

Religion and Objectivity Collide in Google Searches

The Revealer — 2010-01-29T19:22:20-05:00

Elissa Lerner: Among the myriad of tweets and news posts in the last 48 hours over the new iPad and President Obama's State of the Union address, Mashable managed to spot an update on Google that would likely otherwise escape...

Love Thy Neighbor

The Revealer — 2010-01-27T09:08:44-05:00

Elissa Lerner: The Latin American News Dispatch offered an unusual take on the crisis in Haiti yesterday morning. Amid the countless fundraisers, the injured and dead, Simon McKormick reports of mixed feelings among Dominicans. Adjacent to earthquake ravaged Haiti, the...

Listen to the Earth

The Revealer — 2010-01-17T16:02:12-05:00

Early interpretations of Haiti's tragedy from the theological frontlines.

By Angela Zito

Listening to The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC the day after the Haiti quake on Tuesday, January 12, his first local caller—a man named Gabriel from Brooklyn—called all Haitians to prayer: “I’m not going to open my mouth and say that God cast them off or the Vodou and all…” At that point, Lehrer did one of his famous, forceful “Thank yous!”. Gabriel was just the first, local voice I heard mobilizing a theological narrative of divine retribution.

In the wake of disaster, we have come to rely on Pat Robertson to drag in some form of “religion” that sinks the conversation to a puzzling new low from any non-evangelical point of view. We had him on September 11, excoriating feminists and gays for bringing the attack upon America. This time, he blames the Haitians' “pact with the devil in the 1700s to overthrow slavery for their poverty and bad luck”.

The Devil's Logic

The best counter thus far to Robertson’s narrative of divine intervention comes from Elizabeth McAlister, who teaches religious studies at Wesleyan. She wrote the wonderful Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora and has done fieldwork among Haitians there and in New York for over 25 years. In a short essay for Forbes, “Devil’s Logic,” she first kindly contextualizes Robertson’s remarks in terms of the current interest that evangelicals have in rescuing Haiti from Satan...

Hollow Trunks

The Revealer — 2010-01-13T12:35:19-05:00

Several years ago, I began writing and editing book reviews for The Revealer. As you probably know, there was a time between then and now when things slowed down on the site. I was out of touch with with it for a time. With this first post of 2010, an essay in defense of criticism, I'm resuming my role.

I was abroad during Christmastime and over the New Year. While traveling I received a "Happy New Year!" email from a writer I know named Justin Jamail, who'd recently relocated to Tokyo. "It was a rough introduction to work life here. I felt like I was in one of those training scenes from the Rocky movies, except that it took place in a Hermann Miller chair in front of a computer instead of a gym." With this email, he included a longish response to James Wood's November 30, 2009 New Yorker review of the novels of Paul Auster. Justin sent this not knowing my plans to rejoin The Revealer, and was up front with me that Auster is "a personal friend." He also reminded me of a review I wrote of Auster's 2003 novel, The Book of Illusions. "I think I remember your not liking Auster's books either," he wrote, "and if so, that might make you a fair judge of this response." It's true. In 2003, I did not like The Book of Illusions. (I later admitted to another friend, "I ended up reviewing it, badly, I think, looking back.")

Moving forward, The Revealer will review books and comment on the book world in the specific context of religion and the media. (In other words, what follows is not perfectly representative of what we'll be up to here.) Indeed, James Wood, a regular writer on religion, will surely come up again. What we'll be interested in posting is the kind of review Justin encourages below, which takes an author, in Dryden's words, "on the strongest side."

Scott Korb

......

By Justin Jamail

A Man who is resolv’d to praise an Author, with any appearance of Justice must be sure to take him on the strongest side; and where he is least liable to Exceptions. -J. Dryden

Heretical Hannukah Party

The Revealer — 2009-12-10T10:08:41-05:00

TONIGHT: Celebrate Revealer alum and Killing the Buddha co-founder Peter Manseau's trifecta win of Jewish book awards for his novel Songs for the Butcher's Daughter. Come for the reading, stay for the stories and the Buddha-killing surprises. Say hello to...

Considering The Case for God

The Revealer — 2009-12-09T16:34:21-05:00

Karen Armstrong's rebuttal to the new atheists.

By Jenna Johnson

A flood of mainstream, atheist literature has flowed out into American discourse—and crested—in the past few years. Sam Harris’ The End of Faith opened the dam with a calling out of religious faith as the single most dangerous element of contemporary civilization, particularly when paired with weapons of mass destruction. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins used his position as a well-known biologist to argue against intelligent design and launched from this specific critique into a more general argument against belief in God. Christopher Hitchens followed soon thereafter with a polemic entitled God is Not Great, wherein he decried crimes performed in the name of religion. So strong was this new atheism that even a French screed was able to ride the wave to success, though its reach in the U.S. was decidedly more limited than its American counterparts (Michel Onfray's Atheist Manifesto sold only around 11,000 copies). Taken together, well over a million and a half copies of these books were printed and purchased in the past five years. Why did they strike such a chord in American readers?

Stepping into the debate and answering this question is Karen Armstrong. A former Catholic nun as well as a former skeptic (“for many years I myself wanted nothing whatsoever to do with religion”), Armstrong enters this conversation with twenty years of religious study to her credit. She is an expert on world religions, the author of bestselling and respected works on Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and even A History of God. So we can take Armstrong’s title, The Case for God, very seriously and hear it as a profound rebuttal to the new atheists of the moment.

Sunday Delivery

The Revealer — 2009-11-23T17:59:19-05:00

Stephanie Butnick: In the Faith section of the Washington Times, Karen Goldberg Goff reports that truckers who happen to be in Carlisle, PA on a Sunday morning now can attend a church service in a nearby motor home. The services...

Against the Black Box and the Slippery Slope

The Revealer — 2009-11-20T09:59:55-05:00

Jeremy Walton: On November 9th, Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, published a piece titled 'Going Muslim' in his regular column for Forbes magazine. In it, he forwarded a deeply troubling analysis of the tragedy at Fort Hood earlier this month, in which Major Nadal Malik Hasan killed thirteen of his fellow soldiers in an unconscionable act of mass murder. Varadarajan’s argument, in essence, was that Muslims, by virtue of their very religious affiliation, identity and practice, are necessarily prone to the type of violence exemplified by Major Hasan’s actions; just as postal workers are liable to snap psychologically and “go postal”, so too are Muslims, in Varadarjan’s unfortunate coinage, candidates for “going Muslim”.

A Slice of Heaven

The Revealer — 2009-11-19T19:03:06-05:00

Elissa Lerner: They were more than 70, and they may not have all been virgins, but 200 young women arrived at a mysterious soiree in Rome on Sunday night, and were certainly confused and disappointed by the evening's end. Responding...

A "fan" of Auschwitz?

The Revealer — 2009-10-14T14:56:07-05:00

Elissa Lerner: Raffi Berg reports that Auschwitz now has its own Facebook page. He writes that the Polish officials in charge seek to educate a younger generation about the Holocaust via "one of the most popular tools on the internet."...

The Family

The Revealer — 2009-07-01T12:22:47-05:00

By Jeff Sharlet

The Revealer is on summer hiatus, but I'm currently blogging at KillingTheBuddha.com, an online literary magazine about religion I created with novelist Peter Manseau back in 2000. Read more about that here. KillingTheBuddha.com has just published a new book of which I'm co-editor, Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith. I hope you'll check it out. But I'm guessing Revealer traffic today will be driven by NPR's "Fresh Air," on which I discuss my book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, and the Family's connections to Senator John Ensign's and Governor Mark Sanford's public confessions of adultery.

The Family is just out in paperback this month. Here are some of the responses to its hardcover publication last year:

“One of the most important accounts of the intersection of fundamentalist religions and politics in recent memory... Sharlet combines his experiences going undercover at The Family’s Arlington, Virginia, compound, skillful interviews with insiders and allies, and exhaustive historical research to produce this riveting account that transcends the recurring question of whether the religious right is dead.” ” — American Prospect
“Just when we thought the Christian right was crumbling, Jeff Sharlet delivers a rude shock: One of its most powerful and cult-like core groups, the ‘Family,’ has been thriving. . . . Sharlet’s book is one of the most compelling and brilliantly researched exposes you’ll ever read—just don’t read it alone at night!” — Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed
“Jeff Sharlet [is] a confessed non-evangelical whom top evangelical organizations might be wise to hire—and quick—as a consultant. As an outsider, Sharlet sees what a lot of us insiders need to see.” —Brian Mclaren, one of Time’s “25 Most Influential Evangelicals”
“An engaging writer with a keen eye… the author discovered a right-leaning political ideology informed by deference to capitalism, a weakness for foreign dictators and a fascination with the leadership techniques of Adolf Hitler.”—The Washington Post
"The finest religion book of 2008, far and away." -- Tony Jones, author of The New Christians, on Beliefnet.com
“It’s not possible to comprehend the entanglement of religion and politics in our country without reading The Family . . . Sharlet has done us all a favor.”—Kansas City Star
“This is a gripping, utterly original narrative about an influential evangelical elite that few Americans even know exists. Jeff Sharlet’s fine reporting unveils a group whose history stretches from the corporate foes of the New Deal to the congressional lawmakers who gather each year at the National Prayer Breakfast. The Christian Right will never look the same again.” — Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: the Life of William Jennings Bryan and The Populist Persuasion: An American History
”Passionate, principled, and powerful.”—Bookforum
May be the best book anyone has written about the politics of the Christian right.” – Minnesota Independent
“Simply outstanding.” – Chattanooga Times Free Press
“Deeply researched yet fast paced, moving easily from first person to third person and incident to overview, The Family is an exceptional piece of bookcraft…. Sharlet proffers one shred of hope—‘believers and unbelievers alike, all of us who love our neighbors more than we love power or empire or even the solace of certainty.’ Secular humanists can scoff if they like, but I’m here to testify that Sharlet is both more intelligent and better informed than most of them. If he believes that ‘believers and unbelievers alike’ fall into this sainted host, I believe him.” – Robert Christgau, Truthdig.com
“One of the most important books on American religion and politics to appear this year…. this is a subject that demanded unconventional reporting…. and historical legwork. To his credit, Sharlet ably accomplishes both, demonstrating both thorough research skills and elegant—at times, outright beautiful—prose.” – Chris Martin, Popmatters.com
“Sharlet’s storytelling is elegant, and his evocation of the mood of theologian John Edwards’s work is one of the most compelling this reviewer has ever read. Further, his analysis of what such seemingly mundane details as the wording of prayers reveal about the mindset of his subjects is perceptive. Sharlet has unearthed an occurrence that is all the more startling for its being hidden in plain view. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal (starred review)
"Jeff Sharlet’s prodigiously researched text reminds us of conservatism’s abiding power. The book does for conservative Christianity what Greil Marcus did for punk in Lipstick Traces (1989): it establishes connections between disparate phenomena, thereby enabling fresh thinking about religious conservatism.... Sharlet touches on some of the “spectacles” that attract bloggers, but he contextualizes and analyzes them much more perceptively than is customary. Though one would like to see further explication of important categories like gender, this work contributes vividly to our understanding of Christian conservatism. While the tone is different from that of an average monograph, this work is original in its conception and articulation and is a fine contribution to the literature." --Jason C. Bivins, Journal of American History
“I was once an insider’s insider within fundamentalism. Unequivocally: Sharlet knows what he’s talking about. He writes: ‘Our refusal to recognize the theocratic strand running throughout American history is as self-deceiving as fundamentalism’s insistence that the United States was created a Christian nation.’ Those who want to be un-deceived (and wildly entertained) must read this disturbing tour de force.” — Frank Schaeffer, author of 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