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Harry Potter Gone Bad: Lev Grossman’s The Magicians

By Donna Freitas

…and Elizabeth Knox’s extraordinary fantasy duet Dreamhunter and Dreamquake number among my greatest reads. So I opened The Magicians eagerly, poised to lose myself in a story the Times called “a Harry Potter for adults,” only to realize several chapters in that the aptly-named Quentin Coldwater (a boy with a talent for spells and sorcery who is whisked away to a secret school for magic called “Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy”) was, chapter…

Dreaming Cyborg Dreams: Virtual Identity and Religious Experience

By Rachel Wagner

…aught entitled “Religion, Ritual and Virtual Reality.” I wanted to show my students the new virtual hajj experience sponsored by Islamicity.com in the online world of Second Life. When I forgot my password, my student Jonathan offered to log in and allow us to visit the site with his avatar. Unfortunately, his avatar was already wearing a Batman costume. So would wearing the costume on the virtual hajj be disrespectful? And if Jonathan were to gui…

Can Evangelicals Ever be Journalists First?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…k inside secular institutions. But while the same universities that helped students launch careers in those fields are offering similar programs in journalism, they haven’t been as successful at changing the nation’s newsrooms. “The media—journalism—remain one of the hardest fields for them to realize their power,” said D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist at Rice University and author of “Faith in the Halls of Power.” It chills me to the bone to won…

RDNews: Oct 20, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…nd the environment are at the top of this new agenda.” The summit “allowed students and members of the broader community to discern how to faithfully respond to a world in crisis… [It] included keynote presentations, panels, discussion, and an ‘Alliance for Climate Protection, Faith Leader Training.’” A Green Bible: USA Today is reporting that “a new edition of the Bible sets out to show that the seeds of environmentalism were first sown in the Ga…

This is not a Religion Column: Biblical Capitalism

By Jeff Sharlet

…n of Manufacturers staked him to a meeting of congressmen who would become students of his spiritual politics, among them Virginia senator Absalom Willis Robertson—Pat Robertson’s father. Vereide returned the manufacturers’ favor by telling his new congressional followers that God wanted them to break the spine of organized labor. They did. Vereide died in 1969, but his organization—known in his day as International Christian Leadership, in ours a…

Tinkering with Creation: Intelligent Design 2.0

By Lauri Lebo

…ategy. It’s not just bad science, it’s bad theology. Such dichotomy forces students to choose between faith and science. After Dover’s trial was over and before Judge Jones’ decision, I took a cross-country road trip, visiting creationist museums. My journey took me to the Paluxy Flats. I sat alone at a swimming hole and gazed at the very real footprints where dinosaurs had walked 105 million years ago. I’ve thought often of those little boys and…

Cancer Vaccine Causes Premarital Sex?

By Kate Childs Graham

…I assume that they do not teach comprehensive sexuality education to their students. Without the proper education, these young women probably are more likely to make uniformed sexual decisions. They may very well believe that this vaccine will protect them from pregnancy or that you can’t get pregnant your first time or masturbation will make you go blind or … In lieu of the vaccine, Calgary Catholic schools will have a packet of information on th…

John McCain: No God But Country

By Kathryn Lofton

…ed in archive or public record) and render an analysis of the subject. For students of religion, this analysis is not an inherently apolitical exercise, but it is, at its best, one disentangled from theological prescription. Somehow, without a God (but not, as we will see, without a powerful creed) John McCain has forged for himself a moral mode, a discourse, a rhetoric of righteousness. What, then, ought it matter whether he is or is not, technic…

Creationism v. Integrationism

By Arri Eisen

…in India. In the pilot we just completed, several professors and graduate students taught life sciences, neurosciences, physics, math, and science philosophy to thirty-three monks and 5 nuns. Evolution was the first life sciences topic two of my co-teachers and I decided to focus on. For my section, the monks developed an experiment to test the hypothesis, a small piece of Darwin’s pie, that the environment affects organisms’ life characteristics…

Ben Stein’s Intelligent Design Film Fans Flames

By Arri Eisen

…e scientists need to teach and do science better, to engage the public and students more effectively. We need to engage and maintain the glee and energy around science I see regularly in elementary school kids, to show that evolution, for example, is both powerful and the best scientific explanation for change and diversity, but it’s not the only explanation; we must demonstrate the wonders and limitations of science. America is a religious countr…