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This is not a Religion Column: Sarah Palin, American

By Jeff Sharlet

…st time I encountered it was at Ted Haggard’s New Life Church, in Colorado Springs. When I asked for a restaurant recommendation, I was warned to steer clear of downtown, no matter what I did; urban areas, New Lifers told me, are rife with demons. It was no accident, one New Lifer told me this past spring, that Pastor Ted’s downfall occurred up in Denver, surely a sister city of Sodom. That view, it should be remembered, is very much a minority pe…

Witches, Fine… Does Sarah Palin Believe in Religious Tolerance?

By Lisa Webster

…back to the Morningstar Ministries and the World Prayer Center in Colorado Springs and finally to C. Peter Wagner’s so-called New Apostolic Reformation. Here’s the thing, though, and it’s not as Halloween-y as the whole witch-hunting thing sounds. It has been fun, in a sad way, to think that Gov. Palin has so little discernment that she allowed a witch-hunter to lay hands on her (see video below). But that makes the whole thing too easy to dismiss…

RDBook: Wifely Submission and Christian Warfare

By Kathryn Joyce

…ibed as a fundamentalist or neo-Calvinist Presbyterian pastor, author of a number of books including A Christian Manifesto, and creator of the film series Whatever Happened to the Human Race. Schaeffer is widely credited with rousing the apolitical giant of fundamentalist Protestant voters to action against secular humanism—an opposing religion, in his own description, that could not be squared with a Christian worldview—and to an even greater deg…

Heresy, Bad Taste, or Capitalist Adventure: Is it Still Pentecostalism?

By Anthea Butler

…. Today, despite the occasional outbursts of televangelists, a substantial number of Pentecostals do not engage in the practice, as evidenced by the Pew survey on Pentecostalism in 2007. Instead, practices of healing, faith, and exorcism have gained primacy among the “spiritual gifts.” As a result, the long-term emergence and strength of Prosperity Gospel and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) rests on the elevation and promotion of these practic…

Undercover at Falwell’s Liberty University, Finding Common Ground

By Nathan Schneider

…for a meeting in Providence’s new Freemason-themed hotel, I got a surprise phonecall from Father Isaac, the cassocked gentle giant who serves as Eastern Orthodox chaplain there. We hadn’t known each other well while I was a student, but I’d always liked him. Upon hearing I was in town, he thought he’d ring me up, and what followed was certainly the longest conversation we’d ever had together. He wished me well, but much more, he thanked God in a d…

Niebuhrian Humility and DC Punditry

By Daniel Schultz

…er of his argument is a specific critique of ideology. Niebuhrian humility springs from his involvement—and later distancing from—unions and the pacifist movement. He came to realize as his thinking developed that it was far easier to act as a moral individual than as the representative of a group. Individuals are much freer to act against their own interests than are groups, and their perspectives can shift much more easily to accommodate new inf…

Prosperity, Spiritual Warfare, and the ‘On-Demand’ God

By Anthea Butler

…he left the seminary in the early ’90s to establish a ministry in Colorado Springs. The NAR, according to Wagner, began in 2001, prompting him to call the 21st century the beginning of the “Second Apostolic Age.” Those in the NAR believe that in order to bring about the coming of Christ, Apostles must be recognized, and the church is a government that should be run by Christians in order to cleanse the world for Christ’s coming. Power encounters s…

Rapture Coming, Mark Your Calendars

By Lauri Lebo

A friend snapped this photo on the way to work in Colorado Springs: Apparently, these pictures have been popping up around the country, with sightings from Erie to Waco to the Bay Area. Harold Camping, owner of Family Radio and Christian radio host, is the leader of this campaign. To clarify, May 21 is not the actual end of the world, according to Camping’s WeCanKnow.com. Rather, that’s merely the day of the Tribulation and Christ’s ret…

Scientology: All-American or Aging Hoax?

By Gordon Haber

…urch is, to some extent, a reflection of American values. He also posits a number of broad questions (maybe too broad) about how we define religion in America and about “legal and theoretical issues in the study of religion.” In the interest of objectivity, Urban employs a simultaneous “hermeneutics of respect and hermeneutics of suspicion”—meaning that he takes Scientology’s religious claims at face value while acknowledging its illegal practice…

Are Scientists Ethical?

By Arri Eisen

…imer’s and Parkinson’s, a couple of honchos who control a lot of the purse springs had a different idea. Let’s all collaborate in a few huge projects, share trial participants, share data, and, in perhaps the biggest ethical leap for biomedical scientists, make all the data public as soon as its available. Already, the approach has led to several recent breakthroughs in identifying potential pieces of the Alzheimer’s puzzle. What if this, only mad…