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The Real Story Behind Rick Perry’s Secret Meetings with Pastors

By Sarah Posner

…reproductive rights, and LGBT rights by deploying the rhetoric of spiritual warfare. Robison maintains that depending on the government “is idolotry. We must control it, or it will control us. Stop the madness! Hitler believed that Germany needed a government over the people, not of the people. God deliver us from this kind of insanity.” I suspect a lot of observers of Perry’s theocratically-driven rise will use that last line many times, but wit…

Sex, Violence, Art, and Religion

By Kent L. Brintnall

…in mind. I can name the people who were my imagined audience. I have their numbers in my cell phone. There are, of course, lots of other people I would invite to eavesdrop on this solipsistic soliloquy. I’d like Bataille scholars to read the book. I’d like people who’ve never heard of Bataille to read the book. I’d like feminist and queer theologians—and those scholars who study queer theory—to read it. And if a serious scholar of Bacon’s or Mappl…

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

By Lisa Webster

…n’s living room in the Oakland hills, 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,…

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

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…ook About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (and many, many other books), he is the former founder and pastor of the Mars Hill Bible megachurch in Grandville, Michigan, from which platform he resigned after the controversy. Since leaving Mars Hill, Rob Bell has found an even sturdier platform. He writes a book a year, produces short films and a podcast, and goes on speaking tours with high-profile self-help personalities. B…

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…

Conservative Rep Grills Oklahoma Personhood Sponsors

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…tors are caught in the middle, and the voters themselves are… well… making phone calls and holding marches, because what else is there to do? (When I called the office of one member of the Public Health Committee to register my opposition to SB-1433, the staffer on the phone said, “Goodness, it seems like everyone in Oklahoma is calling.” I wearily replied that most of the calls must be in support of the bill, right? “Oh, no,” she said. “Against i…

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…

Where Polls and Surveys Fall Short: A Conversation with Robert Wuthnow on “Inventing American Religion”

By Andrew Aghapour

…national] terms are now saying, “You know what, I just don’t want to have anything to do with it.” That’s a hard story for many of us to believe, but there does seem to be pretty good data supporting it, as part of the story at least. Then, number three, is that the studies that actually ask a person the same question a year or two later are finding that individuals change their minds a lot. That seems to occur especially with people who are ident…

End-Times Watcher Sees Satan in an Energy Drink

By William R. Black

…anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.” The author of Revelation meant that 666 was a person’s name turned into a number via the Jewish numerological practice of gematria. Since every Hebrew letter was also a number, the letters of a name could be added up to produce that person’s number. Here’s an example of gematria using an alphabet we’re more famil…

Global LGBT Recap: Nigeria Jails Gays, Russian Orthodox Spox Calls for Criminalization Referendum

By Peter Montgomery

…ountry that lived through decades of religion being illegal, but in fact many, many Russians identify as Russian Orthodox and have this vague idea of a Russian national identity that is tied to the Orthodox church.” In response to a question from Gross about why the anti-gay witch hunt was catching on now, Gessen responded: Well, for a couple of reasons. One is that it’s convenient. I mean it’s Putin’s effort to shore-up his constituency around is…