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Of Birds and Buddhists: Wildlife Rehab, NYC Style

By Jay Wexler

…hem after learning that scores of local Buddhists had been releasing large numbers of turtles into the park’s waters, where they are ill-suited to live. Buddhists believe that releasing injured or threatened animals can bring good karma to animal and releaser alike, but practiced without care and in large numbers, these releases can cause great damage. Things are even worse overseas, in places like Taiwan, where “mercy release” has become big busi…

Enough Blood, Says NYC Pastor

By Donna Schaper

In this early time after Osama bin Laden’s death, the nation turns to the meaning of the word closure. Ten years ago a terrible thing happened. The anniversary itself is begging us to close this account and its accounting. If revenge could have worked to create closure, revenge would already have its revenge. In the death of the personification of the terrorist act, we have a chance for another kind of closure. Enough, we say, when there is enoug…

The Belly of the Beast: NYC’s Shiny New Transit Hub Is All Wrong for the 9/11 Site

By Carolyn Bratnober

…rior, look to be bending outward like plumped white lashes, revealing the glass-domed roof of the Oculus space like a giant eyeball—a single oculus, like the Eye of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. Getting inside can be an epic quest, if you don’t have directions, as there are no signs from the sidewalk level pointing the way. Having at last entered the space, your journey is illuminated by the bright white light of an immense marble cavern with tower…

American Horror Story: Hotel and Monotheism’s Dirty Little Secrets

By W. Scott Poole

…ot panna cotta with almonds; his work can, and probably should be, read as purposefully light and superficial. Given this track record, there’s no real reason to believe we’ll get a true aesthetic meditation on religion and its monstrosities from Hotel. However, evangelical media watchdogs are straining at their leashes this season. Perhaps behind all the fretting about sex and violence there lies the realization that AHS: Hotel reveals some of mo…

Atheist Nazis? The Pope’s Cheap Atonement

By Susannah Heschel

Adam Clayton Powell called it “cheap grace,” but we might call it “cheap atonement”: the effort by sinners to select which sins to acknowledge and repent. Pope Benedict XVI ended his heavily protested visit to England with a heartfelt apology for German bombings of England during the Battle of Britain; though he refused to accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasp…

Are Evangelical Films Destined to Leave Secular Audiences Behind?

By Daniel Silliman

…e success either. The opening weekend saw sales of more than $6 million in tickets. That’s the kind of number that will inspire others to try and figure out the formula for the faith-and-family blockbuster. Yet, with the cost of the film reportedly exceeding $30 million, it’s an open question whether or not the Left Behind reboot will get a second installment. The marketing problem of evangelical movies is still, stubbornly, a problem. The general…

Violence of the Lambs: The Legacy of Anti-Choice Extremist Father Norman Weslin

By Kathryn Joyce

…tion figure who made national news at the Atlanta protests when he, then a Las Vegas police officer, publicly changed sides and was arrested alongside Weslin. Gallagher was launched on a career of clinic blockades, and today serves as the local leader of Las Vegas’ Operation Save America—a group notorious for distributing “wanted”-style posters of abortion providers, an act that has been judged in federal appeals court as an implicit death threat….

Hagee Calls Obama “The Most Anti-Semitic President Ever”

By Sarah Posner

…t lane. [ZOA president Mort] Klein gave Adelson a gift mezuzah for his new Las Vegas home (in which “God himself would be happy to live if he could afford it”] then Miriam Adelson told the audience “how I fell in love” with Hagee “the most effective Christian Zionist in the world” and then Hagee described the Adelsons as “the greatest citizens of America.” And the crowd kvelled. The extravagant accolades did not end there. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), wh…

Praise the Lard This Holiday Season

By Becky Garrison

…e holey as evidenced by Jillette’s Bacon and Donut party held ever year in Las Vegas as part of the Amazing Meeting (TAM). While the UCB consists primarily of skeptics and atheists, the nine commandments of bacon states they will accept anyone into the church and members of the UCB may worship another God besides Bacon. “Baconists love people of all races, backgrounds, sexual orientations, genders and beliefs. The divine smell of bacon is bestowed…

LDS Church Launches New Website Calling for Greater Openness and Understanding on LGBT Issues

By Joanna Brooks

…, and along with his boyfriend, Cox was assaulted—gay bashed—in front of a Las Vegas club. He moved home to Montana, where he helped start the Montana Pride Foundation, organizing parades and HIV testing for Montana’s LGBT community. But he never stopped being Mormon. “I could never shake my beliefs,” he said. “I couldn’t go to church because I felt guilty, and it was a small town and everyone knew. But my gay friends would get mad at me for bei…