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Should NASA Have Given $1.1 Million to a Theology Institute?

By Michael Schulson

…etition. Most recent topic: “Resolved: An overriding ethical obligation to protect and preserve extraterrestrial microbial life and ecosystems should be incorporated into international law.”) The Library has a Chair in Astrobiology and hosts dialogues about astrobiology-and-society issues. Robin Lovin, a prominent Methodist theologian and a senior research fellow at CTI, had been involved in some of the Library of Congress dialogues. At some point…

Sex, Violence, Art, and Religion

By Kent L. Brintnall

…gical discourse, especially in its apophatic mode. I’m realizing that this project probably needs to come first as a kind of prolegomena to the engagement with mystical and pornographic literatures. (And since I’ve been using that word to describe it, I keep trying to think of a title that would riff on Kant’s Prolegomena: there’s a clue into how my mind works.) Both projects, like Ecce Homo—and like the three other book projects simmering in the…

Gay Marriage Opponents Running on Empty

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…… about 95 marriage equality supporters marched in to the event to counter-protest NOM on a sidewalk across from the event. Impressive. Once again, NOM has been embarrassed on this tour, drawing significantly fewer supporters to their event than local marriage equality groups and organizations have assembled in response (and often on short notice). NOM wasn’t embarrassed by the low turnout of its previous rally in Lima, Ohio, touting on its blog,…

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

By Lisa Webster

…So I took the chance of trying to listen to him. I would make an effort to practice what I preach and listen to a person I totally disagree with about a subject I know a lot about. So we started having a conversation, and one of the subjects had to do with interpretation of scripture. At one point we were back and forth and I realized: this man, I disagree with him a lot but he has a heart. This is not a maniac—he has a heart, he’s feeling somethi…

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

…. And it’s not hard to understand why: What of women with life-threatening pregnancies? Does the fetus get legal representation? Will its competing claim to the woman’s circulatory system be argued before a judge? Will the doctor be prevented from acting in the meantime? And what of frozen embryos? Will they have inheritance rights? Will reproductive endocrinologists be brought up on charges if they freeze embryos and some are destroyed, as routin…

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

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…dings come in for a lot of flack from Bell. At most megachurches, he says, preachers preach sermons to fill seats, to win donations, to “buy a new building.” Although Bell’s original authority comes from his status as a megachurch pastor, these days he seems to get equal status from his choice —whether voluntary or under pressure—to leave that setting. Whatever it is he’s doing now, it seems to be a mirror of the zeitgeist. We hear a lot about tha…

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

By Sarah Posner

…ying around a good Christian candidate (Mike Huckabee) earlier in the 2008 process that ultimately produced John McCain as the candidate about which the religious right was decidedly lukewarm. That doesn’t mean they’ll all agree about who the right candidate is this time. Robison, who was a key figure in the early days of the religious right, is serving as a bridge between the era of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and the present. The founder of…

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

By Andrew Aghapour

…eported may be in the general ballpark correct, but probably can’t be interpreted very precisely in terms of the small trends that are being reported. For instance, if somebody reports that American religion is declining because church attendance is down a percentage point this year from last year, don’t pay much attention to that. Secondly, pay attention, skeptically, to the way the headline describes the data. So once again, let’s imagine that t…

End-Times Watcher Sees Satan in an Energy Drink

By William R. Black

…ebrew 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 familiar with, the Roman alphabet. Say someone’s name was Vic. Each letter in his name is also a Roman numeral. V=5, I=1, C=100. Using gematria, we find that Vic’s number is 5+1+100, or 106. So whose name adds up to 666? Most biblical scholars believe the beast was the Roman emperor Ner…