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A Valentine for the World…and for the Church I Left

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…a headscarf. As she left the church, she began to sing. “Emmanuel,” singing that word over and over, her voice strong and unapologetic. Even when she pulled the door shut behind her, the song now muffled, but there it was: Emmanuel. I was thousands of miles away from the time in my life when I sang public praise to my God, but my heart broke at this human connection, the cracked vessel through which He spoke. Yes, I thought. Yes. Emmanuel. God is…

Eclipseville, USA: The Birthplace of ‘Little Green Men’ Proudly Hosts The Point of Greatest Eclipse

By Matthew Bowman

…interesting about Hopkinsville is not that it was unique, but the ways Americans in general, and the residents of Hopkinsville in particular, made the incident an expression of their anxieties. The eight years between Billy Ray Taylor’s sprint back to the Sutton’s farmhouse and 1947’s widely reported crash of a mysterious object outside Roswell, New Mexico, was full of sightings of odd flying objects and occasionally of their pilots. Reflecting t…

Ricky Gervais: Why I’m an Atheist

By Lauri Lebo

…ou need to know to keep on reading? I’d cheerfully watch that man read the phone book. So, when my buddy Rev. El Mundo sent me the link to the comedian’s message, I eagerly clicked on it. I was surprised when I saw this wasn’t a clip of his latest hysterical stand up, but an essay he penned for the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog. The topic of his essay was how he came to be an atheist. The whole piece is here. While there is humor in the pie…

Missouri Pastor Goes Viral on Gawker: ‘Separation of Church and Hate’

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…rising thing about the reaction? I was having dinner with my family and my phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. To be honest—as lame as this might sound—the most surprising part of all this craziness was how quickly it all took off. Even though I thought the speech would only be heard by those at the City Council meeting, I owe a lot to Gawker, George Takei, and many others for sharing it, because it helps show that people of faith across the country—even…

Gay Suicide and the Ethic of Love: A Progressive Christian Response

By Eric Reitan

…fight. If someone had pressed into his fingers at that pivotal moment the phone number for The Trevor Project, he might reach out and hear a voice of reassurance, a voice that gave him hope for life by, in part, repudiating the so-called biblical teaching that who he is amounts to an offense against God. If he’d had a sense of belonging to a community that embraced him for who he is, maybe his hope wouldn’t be so fully shattered. But while other…

I Owe, Therefore I Am: Why Struggling Against the Banks is a Holy Obligation

By Peter Laarman

…down. Or, in the case of our houses, that we could borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars for real property with, in some cases, no income, no job, and no assets. “Ninjas” is what the cynical mortgage lenders called such borrowers just a couple of years ago. They loved making phone calls that even their supremely unqualified mortgage applicants found somewhat hard to believe: “Congratulations: your loan has been approved! You will close in 15 mi…

“Even the Rich Suffer”: An Interview with Google’s Jolly Good Fellow Chade-Meng Tan

By Max Zahn

…sm change when you came to the United States? When I started learning Vipassana, everything changed. I became a real Buddhist. The dharma you see in America is pure, as opposed to Asian Buddhism in which you go to a temple and there’s nothing else. I have credibility in saying that because I’ve seen both sides. Not that American Buddhism is free of problems, but it’s the purest Buddhism. Of course, if you go to a real Zen master in Japan, that’s e…

Religion or Insanity? Two Upcoming Murder Trials Will Ask the (Burning) Question

By Joseph Laycock

…because of this assumption, the “religion or insanity” question often amounts to a game of “heads I win, tails you lose,” in which whatever interests are more established get to make the rules as they go along. There is a larger pattern in which deviant religious groups are deemed insane when they invoke their religious rights while deviant criminals are deemed religious when their lawyers make insanity pleas. Whatever happens in the trials of Dob…

Mitt, the Marriotts, and Porn

By Joanna Brooks

…ernet technological and capacity innovation before the advent of the smart phone. And if we want to start a serious conversation about where presidential candidates get their money and how ethical that money is, let’s do it. I have a laundry list of labor, environmental, feminist, and human rights issues with multinational corporations I’d love to start working through. But don’t give me a thin, opportunistic connect-the-Mormon-dots story and pr…

Departure of the Queen

By Amina Wadud

…tch ride outside the gates of the estate where I can have bars for my cell phone and get in touch with them later today. Before the shaykh arrives, I continue with my Qur’an reading. I don’t use the tiny mp3 player anymore because this last juz’ includes most of the Qur’an that I have memorized myself, and this is more a review than a simple reflective read. Coming to the end of the Qur’an reading is also melancholy, and I forget why I felt I shou…