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“Giving Godhead”: A Bloody Vision of Religion’s Deepest Influence

By Spencer Dew

…armed against. War in the name of faith is a recurring theme, as with cell-phone videos of beheadings. Krieger reads such rage within a dichotomy of “fundamentalist repression” and its opposite, freedom. Alhough she prefers the phrase “over-pervy libertinism” as, for her, the dichotomy is spread wide, with ISIS on one end and the antinomian carnival of de Sade’s vacation home at the other. That’s a freedom worth fighting for, she implies, but it i…

“You’ve Never Met a Muslim”

By Hussein Rashid

…slipped into the dorms we couldn’t get signed into, and posted hundreds of cheap notices printed on 8.5 x 11 paper. We’d invited a prominent imam to speak and ordered a delicious dinner, convinced that the perpetually elastic undergraduate stomach would be the gateway to the soul. The next morning, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were struck, thousands were murdered, New York City went into lockdown, and our community was sent reeling. Eve…

Yes, It’s Worse To Be Gay in Russia

By Chrissy Stroop

…bravery. The law that passed in June—which is, I think, best explained as cheap populist scapegoating—has served to activate and embolden widespread homophobia, which seems to me to have been previously often latent (the homophobia I encountered in Vladimir 10 years ago was none too aggressive). Phenomena like “Occupy Pedophilia” have appeared on the scene. Although it’s hard to say exactly how common anti-LGBT violence is in Russia, it should be…

Recovering From Rejection: The Second Coming of Ted Haggard

By Wendy Norris

…nks. You have to determine that on your own.” Haggard’s weekly Oval Office phone calls and grip and grin NAE photo ops with former President George W. Bush are now mere vestiges of an old life, prior to what he calls the “crisis.” At New Life, which Jeff Sharlet described as “not just a battalion of spiritual warriors but a factory for ideas to arm them,” worship services were extravagant multimedia, fog machine-choked productions, in which Haggar…

What Can a Real Life Haunting Tell Us About American Religion? [Updated]

By Daniel Wise

…ouse. She reported that, whenever she tried to speak to this friend on the phone in the house about the haunting, the phone connection would be interrupted. As a busy woman with two kids, Maria doesn’t always have a lot of time to devote to spirituality, but when she does, she often relies on intuition. In the case of the haunting, she reports that her intuition pointed her toward the conclusion that it’s the land on which the house was built that…

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

By Betsy Shirley

…the Old Testament because 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; re…

In the Aftermath of the “Himalayan Tsunami”

By Luke Whitmore

…(first as Uttaranchal) in 2000, the region has seen a massive rise in the number of visitors to the region, especially by the growing Indian middle class. Roads widened and hotels and visitor services grew exponentially. Building a new hotel or a restaurant by the side of the road felt like a smart investment—even when the road was near a river. Kedarnath saw the building of new cell phone towers, a railway reservation office, helicopter landing…

Rick Perry and the New Apostolic Reformation

By Sarah Posner

…e Texas Observer, Forrest Wilder has a story about the larger story of two Texas pastors who in 2009 went to Rick Perry to tell him, as Wilder puts it, that “a chain of powerful prophecies had proclaimed that Texas was ‘The Prophet State,’ anointed by God to lead the United States into revival and Godly government. And the governor would have a special role.” Perry, Wilder argues, is venturing into new territory for an aspiring presidential candid…

Pathological Optimist Documentary Makes a Medical Martyr of Anti-Vax Crusader

By Gordon Haber

…y theorist’s handbook, when Carmel Wakefield asserts that Amy Meachum, the Texas judge, has ruled against them because her husband Kurt is a “lobbyist for the vaccine industry.” A little Internet sleuthing reveals that Kurt Meachum’s client is in fact the Texas Academy of Family Physicians, which strikes me more as a professional development organization than a front for Big Pharma. To provide a whiff of objectivity, The Pathological Optimist does…

Bright Lights, Big Bible: A Liberal, Literary Evangelical Keeps the Faith

By Liesl Schwabe

…elize—to witness about Jesus and to spread the good news—and to do it in a Texas-big style. I rapidly realized that that style didn’t have any currency in New York (in addition to being an awkward fit for my personality); over time I developed another, quieter style of sharing my religion. In New York, I was never told outright not to be religious, but I did immediately understand that if I wanted to bring up my beliefs, I’d better be ready to hav…