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

By Sarah Posner

…elist James Robison, to continue to plot what Kaylor describes as a “behind-the-scenes strategy” to defeat Barack Obama in 2012. In the second part of his two-part article, Kaylor reported: A group of pastors and other conservative Christian leaders from across the country continue to plan their behind-the-scenes strategy to defeat President Obama in 2012. However, the group does not seem likely to support a Republican during the primary race or e…

Sex, Violence, Art, and Religion

By Kent L. Brintnall

…t to all subjects in our culture. Even if we are positioned differently vis-à-vis having attained a self, most of us have given into the temptation that acquiring selfhood, in a particular fashion, is the endgame. This, I think, is a genuinely dangerous conception, and I try to sketch an alternative vision found in the work of Bataille and Kaja Silverman. And, of course, because I describe the project’s politics as, in part, feminist, some people…

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…

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

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…gious affiliation by checking “D: none of the above.” Mostly composed of 18-to-34-year-olds, this cohort sees affiliation with a religious institution to be neither necessary nor desirable, even if they are looking to do good work in the world, or to remain “spiritual but not religious.” Rob Bell may not have a building any more, but he does have a space—or rather, many spaces. For this latest book, he’s going on what he calls a “living room” tour…

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

By Daniel Wise

…uring in which Catholic heroes fight off demons. Maria drew from these word-of-mouth tales and the media she consumes to conclude that these otherwise unexplainable phenomena were a haunting caused by ghosts. Maria isn’t particularly odd or deviant; survey data show that paranormal belief is common for Americans of all demographics. Maria’s husband Mark, who describes himself as religiously agnostic, didn’t believe in ghosts before his experience…

Conservative Rep Grills Oklahoma Personhood Sponsors

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…seem to have considered that it might be unwise to brag about how much out-of-state money they’re spending in the hopes of changing Oklahoma’s laws, but I suppose we’ll have to see whether that comes back to bite them.) In any event, SB-1433, Oklahoma’s so-called “personhood” bill was recently passed by the House Public Health Committee. And the comments of Rep. Cox, a member of the committee and one of only two doctors in the entire legislature,…

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

By Betsy Shirley

…e care,” “An endless stream of diarrhea,” or “A defective condom” with fill-in-the-blank statements like “I got 99 problems but ________ ain’t one,” A Game for Good Christians, released earlier this year, offers a scriptural twist: most of the material from its 300-card deck has been lifted directly from the Bible, with chapter and verse to prove it. The results fall somewhere between playful irreverence and flat-out blasphemy. For example, if the…

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

By Andrew Aghapour

…by selecting “none of the above.” Nones seem to have jumped from a stable 6-8% of the population during the 1970s and 1980s to, in recent years, 16-20%. Do you think this reflects a shift toward disbelief in America? The rise of the Nones—meaning people who say they don’t have a particular religious affiliation or actually identify themselves as being non-religious—does appear to be a trend that is picked up in the very best academic surveys as we…

End-Times Watcher Sees Satan in an Energy Drink

By William R. Black

…hungrily combed through his online ramblings for evidence that he was left- or right-wing—whichever ideology the pundit wanted to tarnish by association. Liberals pointed to Loughner’s opposition to fiat currency and centralized government, while conservatives pointed to Loughner’s 9/11 trutherism and anti-religious ideas. The truth was that Loughner wasn’t liberal or conservative. He was a conspiracist. His central belief was that unseen forces…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…road, he notes, “The irony is that it is the new conservative vanguard—anti-gay, anti-abortion and pro–“traditional family”—that has most successfully cultivated the West’s financial and institutional support.” The church’s close ties with American evangelicals reflect a shift in policy. For much of the post-Soviet period, the Russian Orthodox Church held evangelical denominations at arm’s length, fearing that they would compete for influence with…