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But ‘Natural’ is Better, No? ‘How Faith in Nature’s Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science’

By Andrew Aghapour

…n’t exist. But it is there, alongside all the other terrors of the natural world: the suffering of children, disease, death itself. And yet, our existence—that of humans, of the world, of something instead of nothing—that is also a product of nature, of organizing forces that came beyond and before us, and I’m infinitely grateful for it. For me, as a religious agnostic who worships mystery, I worship that inexplicable combination of profoundly unj…

How to Meet Muslims: A (Cinematic) Primer

By Haroon Moghul

…ence and move on, as best as possible. We see in this unsettling film the true cost of extremism, and the ways in which it has undermined, cruelly and uniquely, the religious culture of the societies it does not spring from so much as it consumes from within. If I have a quarrel with the film, it is the suggestion that such extremism can be blamed solely on the 1980s dictatorship of Gen. Zia ul-Haq, who presided over Pakistan during the Soviet oc…

Billy Graham, Most Famous Religious Figure of 20th C, Dies at 99

By Randall Balmer

…d McIntire and Bob Jones Jr. for interviews, both refused to comment. By the twenty-first century, Graham, well into his nineties, had outlived most of his critics and endured as a kind of iconic figure in American revivalism. His evangelistic crusades around the world, his television appearances and radio broadcasts, his friendships with presidents and world leaders and his unofficial role as spokesman for America’s evangelicals had made him the…

A New Mormon Religion Has Taken QAnon Conspiracies and Canonized Them as Doctrine

By Cristina Rosetti

…iracy. Specifically, QAnon emerged as an answer to an increasingly chaotic world. QAnon is a conspiracy theory that, frankly, reads like word salad. For supporters, however, it’s a puzzle of cryptic codes and symbols that unveil a Satanic pedophile ring controlling the government. Beginning in 2018, the mysterious figure “Q” began detailing Donald Trump’s ascent to power and the “storm” that was coming to finally end control of the “Deep State” an…

The Americans Season Finale: Teach Your Parents Well

By Cathleen Falsani

…ength is important, let me add here that I’ve always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith. Whittaker Chambers, the man whose own religious conversion made him a witness to one of the terrible traumas of our time, the Hiss-Chambers case, wrote that the crisis of th…

I Believe You’re Wrong: The Trouble with Tolerance

By Charles Randall Paul and John W. Morehead

…our influence and vice-versa. We are free to the extent that we live in a trustworthy world. The new birth of freedom will grow as we can come see most of our opponents as men and women who, like us, dare to die for the future benefit of all—and who, like us, will rely on patient persuasion, not disdainful coercion to accomplish the good they desire. We cannot say with any degree of confidence what motivates the builders of the Park51 community ce…

The British (Bible) Invasion: KJV 400-Year Anniversary Rolls On

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…found and they founded a New World. It became a great democracy. It was a world based on the book, the Word of God. And America propagates its faith like no other people has ever done. This glad-handed embrace of the book and the empire must sound odd to a North American reader in the year 2011, and it is not entirely clear how Bragg intends us to hear it. He is the first to admit to all of the violence and mayhem unleashed by this Book of Books…

Christianity Without the Cross

By Rosemary Ganley

…stians have been thoroughly taught that the crucifixion of Jesus saved the world. If the crucifixion is absent in historic Christian art, what is present? Paradise is present, Brock and Parker assert: this world, with water, sheep, hills of grass and flowers, winged seraphim, doves, deer, sheep, and a small golden city. They found these images in the art of the apse, quite hidden, in the basilica of St. Giovanni in Laterano in Rome. “Paradise, not…

A Life After Death Double-Feature: Eastwood’s Hereafter and Noe’s Enter the Void

By Jay Michaelson

…independent film and Hereafter is produced by Steven Spielberg. So Oscar’s world is a dystopian Tokyo filled with drugs and prostitution, whereas the characters in Hereafter live in upper-class Paris, middle-class San Francisco, and the most caring and engaged child welfare system the world has ever known. But the differences are more than skin-deep, especially when it comes to religion. Hereafter goes out of its way to demean traditional religion…

Cozy Cottage or House on Fire? Thomas Kinkade’s Theo-Aesthetic Legacy

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…ows onto other worlds, providing inspiration, hope, a place in the natural world, which is also God’s world. Even so, these images are not for everyone. Joan Didion has a different take: “A Kinkade painting typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on…