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The Best Books Media of 2008

By Jeff Sharlet

…* * * The Picturing the Bible exhibit at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Proves that visual and material elements were crucial to Christianity from the start. * * * The Manga Bible, by Siku. One of the better new forms of this thing called the Bible. *** Envy, or Yiddish in America Jeff Sharlet, a contributing editor for Harper’s and Rolling Stone, is the author of The Family and co-author of Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible. He publ…

Israel Under Bush: The Islamophobia Years

By Joel Schalit

…al gestures toward peace in the Middle East, we also saw a remarkably high number of attacks on Islam, on Iran, and on Arab Americans. There was the Republican outing of Barack Obama as a ‘secret Muslim’ and the promotion of this theory to both elderly Jews and conservative Christians. One survey, released in October, showed that at a sizable portion of the Texas voters polled actually believed Obama to be a Muslim. The other glaring example was t…

RDBook: Is Nothing Secular? A Review of Jewel of Medina

By Gordon D. Newby

…t Abi Bakr). Denise Spellberg, an Associate Professor at the University of Texas, is reported to have objected to the novel on the grounds that it was historically inaccurate and “soft core porn.” Unlike Sherry Jones, Prof. Spellberg knows the original sources in Arabic and has dealt with the issues of early Arabic sources. As one who has published on the earliest biography of Muhammad and is familiar with those same sources, I contend that it is…

Purpose Driven Politics: Rick Warren’s Civil Service

By Bill Berkowitz

…r the sick; and Educate the next generation. “For the past four years, thousands of members of Saddleback Church have been testing prototypes of the P.E.A.C.E. Plan around the world,” the release continued. “During this phase, called P.E.A.C.E 1.0, more than 7,700 members volunteered on over a thousand P.E.A.C.E. teams to serve in 68 countries. A dozen other Purpose Driven Network churches were invited to beta-test the plan with Saddleback. After…

Conservative Christian Book on Obama’s Faith

By Bill Berkowitz

…ome cases through near-plagiarism, the lies of pseudo-historian and former Texas Republican Party chairman David Barton, a man who Mansfield described in the book’s acknowledgements as a friend and mentor.” Rodda also commented on Mansfield’s 2005 book, The Faith of the American Soldier, “a book in which he … defend[s] and prais[es] Gen. William Boykin and his 2003 ‘sermon,’ in which he stated, referring to the capture of Somali warlord Osman Atto…

Excommunicated For ‘Grave Scandal’ of Ordaining Women

By Roy Bourgeois

…papers in the United States reported on the torture manuals they used, thousands joined our movement to close the School. It was in giving hundreds of talks about the SOA at churches and colleges that I met many devout women in the Catholic Church who told me about their call by God to the priesthood. These women had been rejected because the Catholic Church teaches that only baptized men can be ordained. This brought back memories of the segregat…

Court: 5-Year-Old Apache Boy Allowed to Wear Braids

By Joanna Brooks

…an expression of his religious beliefs. Administrators for the Needville, Texas Independent School District had told the boy and his parents that wearing the braids was a violation of school dress and grooming policy, but suggested that as an alternative the boy might wear the braids under his shirt or his 13-inch-long hair in a bun. The court protected the boy’s right to wear his hair in plain sight in keeping with his beliefs. And this week, th…

Postcard from the Vatican

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…e to become a true minister of the gospel, and to remain one, than certain Texas-based websites suggest). So, no ecumenical Eucharistic celebrations, either. Article Four turned to the Sacrament of Penance, and identified a frightening array of violations of the priestly office of confessor: such as the absolution of a violation of the Sixth Commandment (the commandment against adultery) for reasons of personal interest or the priest’s own implica…

Religious Right Historian: Net Neutrality is “Unbiblical Socialism”

By Julie Ingersoll

…of course he thinks that private ownership and free markets are biblically sanctioned. One serious limitation of this view is that there are resources upon which free markets are dependent that are not privately owned—what Barton’s beloved founding fathers would have called the “commonwealth.” Companies that pollute the environment while making their products, for example, do not “own” the air into which they pour that waste associated with their…

Julian Assange Nativity, Castro’s Hanukkah, & a Burger Blessing

By Michael J. Altman

…Rights sent nativity scenes to all 50 state governors. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is represented in nativity scenes in Naples, Italy. A Dallas, Texas megachurch pastor is compiling a list of business that fail to recognize Christmas and instead settle for ‘Happy Holidays.’ Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma is taking a stand in the war on Christmas by trying to keep the “Christ” in “Christmas parade.” And the three wise men may have been from China….