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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….

To Be Christian, Intellectual and Black: A Response to Vincent Lloyd

By Joshua L. Lazard

…f the way he occupies the public square. He does so in a large and visible way—a way that is accessible by many public entry points. Lloyd offers a fair premise about the need for a public black theology in the 21st century. Based on the landscape as I see it, there are numerous persons who did so in the 20th century and there is no shortage of those who are doing it in the 21st century. The seat of critique as I see it rests with the larger metho…

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…

Are You Rapture Ready?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ds remind me of signs teasing a television series or the opening of a Broadway show. Jesus is about to make his big entrance only his final number will feature the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Tom Evans, spokesman for Family Radio said their math for setting the return date came from a verse in Luke 17: “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man.” According to Camping’s prediction, the Rapture will happen exac…

6 Overlooked Takeaways From a Reviewer of Controversial Texas Textbooks

By David R. Brockman

…eligion by conquest.”10 Students reading those pages would naturally come away with the idea that Christianity’s spread was more peaceful than that of Islam. In fact, Islam spread at times by conquest (for instance, in North Africa), and at other times through trade, settlement, and missionary work (for example, to Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia). Christianity, too, spread by conquest—most notably, under the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne,…

You Are Being Organized by Something: 10 Questions for Kathryn Lofton on Consuming Religion

By Kathryn Lofton

…he question first the way I think we tend to speak, and then answer it the way I think is true. What we say: I am always working on several things at once. Right now, I am continuing a longstanding exploration of Bob Dylan, his fandom, and his artistic iconicity; I am thinking about the queer history of American church organ manufacture; and I am working on a collection tentatively titled Sensitive People. In it, I’m thinking about the emergence o…

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…

Will Women Priests Change the Church?

By Mary E. Hunt

…ls have found that by excommunicating women priests they have a convenient way to distract from the criminal activity of priest pedophiles and bishops who covered up their crimes. Note that while every woman priest has been excommunicated, not one of those men has been. Contemporary understandings of priesthood are changing. Outmoded biologistic understandings of apostolic succession—the hands that laid the hands that laid the hands—are giving way…

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…

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…