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The Bible is a Good Book, But God Didn’t Write It

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…say that, “We are the chosen people,” or “The Pope is infallible,” or “Our way is the only way,” or “the Bible is inerrant.” You have to make a claim that locks security up tightly. It doesn’t work, but it’s popular. There will always be fundamentalist churches. They will always promise things they can’t deliver and people will leave when a tragedy comes. Fundamentalist churches don’t tend to last past the charismatic pastor that got them started….

How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?: An Interview with Jacob Needleman

By Lisa Webster

…ills, I fished in my bag for the tiny microphone I planned to use with my iPhone, to record our conversation. “Is that what you’re using?” he asked, with great interest. He held up his own phone. “I just got one of these. Will this really work?” He sat next to me on the couch as I pointed him through the app store on his phone. “There it is,” I said, pointing to iTalk. “That’s what I’m using.” He tapped the screen, but the app that came up for dow…

How to Choose a Tour Company for Your Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…omplete. It all feels rather last-minute to me. But then, maybe that’s the way it goes. No, if I had my way I would call this entry: how not to choose a tour company. Really. The choice of the company I am working this out with is the result of one of those eeny-meeny-miny-mo Internet searches. It’s a business, after all, this: getting people to and from hajj. A simple Google search produces lots of choices. But then, how does one decide? Let’s st…

Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…f the problem comes when information that’s useful in a limited, qualified way gets spun into generalization and speculation in the media. At the same time, polling firms do a lot to manufacture the appearance of certainty. In particular, they choose to report statistics as single numbers (for example, Pew recently found that 24% of Jehovah’s Witnesses describe themselves as born-again) rather than as margin-of-error ranges, normalized around a me…

Godly Game or Godless Satire? Countering Biblical Ignorance with Heretical Humor

By Betsy Shirley

…they’re long and boring…” Here pauses. “Granted, Numbers is like…” “I like Numbers, but anyway…” mumbles Caleb. “The real impetus for the game,” Thomas resumes, “is to get people to engage in Scripture and read stories they’ve never read before. When a concubine is cut up into twelve pieces, that imagery is really offensive. But a lot of people didn’t even know that story existed in the Bible.” I suspect they’re right; reading Judges 19:29 in chur…

Gay, Christian, Pagan, Artist: How Matt Morris Defies the Borders of Spiritual Identity

By Jesse James DeConto

…ney is my journey and yours is yours. For me, closing the blog and shying away from a lot of interaction online was a way to keep that fire from raging. You spent a couple of months this year leading worship music at St. Andrew’s All Saints Episcopal Church in Portland and you’re playing at the Wild Goose Festival. What has made you feel comfortable taking on these public roles at this point? I don’t really feel like I’m stepping forward as a publ…

Pastor of Kentucky Church Severed From Baptists Over LGBT Inclusion: Not Activism, Just Honesty

By Mike Greer

…see itself as an activist church on this issue. I think Crescent Hill sees itself as Crescent Hill and this is wholly consistent with the DNA of Crescent Hill that’s been in place since at least 1926 when Southern Baptist Seminary moved from Broadway downtown to the hill on which it is currently situated. Crescent Hill was formed in 1908. I feel confident in saying that this is who we are and this is pretty much who we always have been. It doesn’…

How To Talk To “Nones” and Influence People: Rob Bell’s Transrational Experience

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…on the phone a couple weeks after the event in Durham, he told me, In some ways what I do is basic pastoring. It’s, you give people an idea, you let them respond to it, you give them another idea….it’s basic spiritual direction. Like the itinerant rabbi, the guru—not to say that I’m a guru—but there’s a long tradition [of that kind of work]. But so many people right now are rethinking everything…saying wait, is this it? They’ve been handed a way o…

Sex, Violence, Art, and Religion

By Kent L. Brintnall

…self-sufficient beings, in reminding ourselves in uncomfortable, shocking ways that we are always already fractured, lacerated and coming undone. The vision of justice and political progress that reigns in American culture and progressive religious circles is one of restoring the individual’s dignity, which imagines the individual (even as a member of a community) as somehow whole. This vision of wholeness, however, often has to function differen…

My Lowest Point

By Amina Wadud

…ace. We’d made plans to meet up in case we got separated and had exchanged phone numbers. In the middle of the tawaf, the call to prayer came. The guards stopped the tawaf. Some people complied and started to form lines. I found a spot between two women, each with their husbands, and sat down on the line. This seemed an ideal spot until a woman in black niqab squeezed in on my left just as we started the prayer. Okay then. Before we had completed…