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Weird Testament: The Bible Gets the R. Crumb Treatment

By Gabriel Mckee

…ad already built an impressive body of biblical illustration years before Crumb began truckin’—and that work was anything but satirical. Basil Wolverton was a major influence on Crumb, who has said that Wolverton’s cover to Mad #11 [image right] “changed forever the way that I looked at the world.” His famously grotesque style can be seen as the starting point for all of the bizarre excesses of the underground comix scene. It’s a bit surprising, t…

Evangelicals ‘Crossing the Tiber’ to Catholicism

By Jonathan D. Fitzgerald

…writer John Michael Talbot and Patrick Madrid, editor of the Surprised by Truth books, which showcase conversion stories. Would Saint Augustine Go to a Southern Baptist Church in Houston? McKnight first identified these converts eight years ago, and the trend has continued to grow in the intervening years. It shows up in a variety of places, in the musings of the late Michael Spencer (the “Internet Monk”) about his wife’s conversion and his decisi…

Obamunism? The Traditional Values Coalition Coins a Term

By Bill Berkowitz

…he truth would’ve taken place. Jill Stank, executive director of BornAliveTruth.org: On behalf of BornAliveTruth.org, a co-sponsor of the film’s world premiere in Washington DC, we want to continue educating the American public about post-abortion infanticide: babies who survive their abortions and are medically neglected, as in the case of the abortion portrayed in 22 Weeks, or outright murdered, as in the case of the ongoing case in Hialeah, Flo…

The Passion of the Slayer: On Buffy’s Twentieth, “The Big Bad” Is Still Out There

By Elijah Prewitt-Davis

…nting to Willow] is more powerful than all of them. So I say we change the rule. I say my power, should be our power… from now on every girl in the world who might be a slayer, will be a slayer. Every girl who could have the power, will have the power. Every girl who can stand up, will stand up. Slayers. Every one of us. Make your choice—are you ready to be strong? Buffy used its feminism to explore a whole range of themes and topics, some of whic…

Does War Make Sense? Science and Religion on the Battlefield

By Nathan Schneider

…to operate like gears of a mechanism, the smoother their deadly work could run. The Prussian army’s 1726 manual divided the process of loading and firing a musket into 76 separate stages. Commanders drilled such precision into their soldiers with minute efficiency, teaching them to march in geometric columns (at exactly 75 steps per minute) against the enemy’s geometric fortifications. King Frederick the Great’s army could fire sustained volleys w…

Anxiety About Homosexuality and Apocalyptic Worldview is An Old Marriage: 10 Questions for the Author of Visions of Sodom: Religion, Homoerotic Desire, and the End of the World in England

By H. G. Cocks

…The story still retains enormous power in some places. This is especially true of the religious Right across the world, but particularly in America where far-Right pastors and theorists of the apocalypse like Tim LaHaye (one of the fathers of the religious right in the US and one of the authors of the popular Left Behind series of religious thrillers) have consistently invoked Sodom and Gomorrah in order to show that homosexuality is likely to cor…

Politics in a Fallen World: Lying, Fact-Checkers, and the Future of Civilization

By Michael Schulson

…the Gospel of John, where truthful speech is the organization of the whole world. So untruthful speech would then be undoing the image of God. What’s interesting about Augustine, though, is theologically he takes that position, but when you read his books about lying, he’s constantly having to make exceptions. You know, you can conceal, you can intend differently… Well, it can be hard to know what exactly makes something a lie. These debates about…

Anger, Privilege, and Invisible Injustice: What Cain and Abel Have to Do With Ferguson

By Eva Mroczek

…ed!” Abel answered and said: “There is indeed a judgment and a Judge and a world to come! The righteous will be given a good reward and the wicked will be called to account!” And because of these words, they fell to quarreling in the open field. And Cain rose up against his brother Abel and drove a stone into his head, killing him. Cain and Abel’s remarkable argument is little known today, but it is not a mere blip on the radar of biblical interpr…

Controversial Mary Statue Weeps Because ‘We’re Killing This World’

By Joseph Laycock

…eeping—weeping for the world, weeping because there’s no love left in this world.” Another added, “I watch the news and I can’t help but be saddened by what I see, but how much more for this woman? This is a woman who watched her own son die on a cross. Now she’s weeping for us because we’re killing this world.” In some cases, Church authorities who speak out against popular seers are seen as complicit in “killing the world.” Lueken and Van Hoof f…

The Trouble With Harry (Potter): Religious Conservatives Do Have Something to Fear

By Jay Michaelson

…h objects became regarded as magical sources of power. Like Harry Potter’s world, their true power was concealed from the uninitiated, but was available esoterically to a select few. Such societies were often branded as heretical, other times co-opted by church authorities. The very notion that the world is not one of ordinary objects supervised by a supernatural deity, but rather a world of ordinary and extraordinary objects that doesn’t seem to…