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God is Love: A Desert Prophet’s Message

By Lauri Lebo

…hardy bunch, live here year round, braving temperatures that will climb to 130 degrees. It was 112 when I was there Saturday and Sunday. At the entrance to Slab City is Salvation Mountain, an adobe mountain covered in bright paint and topped with a white cross. Its creator is Leonard Knight, a desert prophet, an Elijah, who says God sent him here 30 years ago and commanded his Chevy dump truck to break down. While Knight was waiting to get his tr…

Ted Haggard on ‘Loveless’ Evangelical Church

By Lauri Lebo

…mility since the scandal which led to his ouster from his pastorship of the 14,000-member Free Life Church and his resignation as head of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals. Or perhaps his ego is still stinging from some of the comments church leadership made about him, a man who was once one of the most powerful evangelical leaders in America. After he had pronounced himself healed of homosexual “urges,” he received much c…

Of Mosques and Men

By Amina Wadud

…ough the Qu’ran in Arabic on my own this was exhilarating. Somewhere around 12 or 14 units, I lost track of everything outside of the recitation and the ritual performance—the zone. It was even more intense because Michigan had a summertime fast-breaking that was well after 9 p.m. Tarawih prayers did not start until 11 and were not over until after midnight. Then before 4 a.m. the morning meal or suhur had to be completed. Since that time, I have…

The Queen is Coming: Preparing for Ramadan

By Amina Wadud

…nd beauty of diversity. The phenomenon known as religion After teaching for 15 years in the southern part of the US, I have understood how important it was to explain the phenomenonological approach to religious studies. In brief, there is this phenomenon amongst humans and through out human history, known as “religion”. We look at this phenomenon as part of what it means to be human. Nothing more; nothing ominous; just like looking at different k…

Mormons React to Prop. 8 Ruling

By Joanna Brooks

…in this country, and we urge people on all sides of this issue to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility toward those with a different opinion.” As we’ve reported here at RD, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, responding to a letter from the Church’s First Presidency read over the pulpits during Sunday meeting in June 2008 and other organizing efforts headed by high-ranking and local Church leaders, contributed the…

Pat Robertson’s Women Warriors Leading Spiritual Warfare In Zimbabwe

By Sarah Posner

…od] revealed to me that if I would submit myself and these women under the spiritual leadership of Pastor Vicky that He would raise up an international army of mighty warriors, and together we would enter into a realm of intercession that would change nations. The following year, seeking to assist the family of Rami Ayyad, a Christian bookstore owner who was killed in Gaza, she traveled to the Ukraine and visited with Henry Madava, a pastor there…

The High Church of Art

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…museum escape the fiction of its own secularity and thereby rediscover its spiritual roots, its spiritual task? It is telling that Sweeney’s bold vision was not entirely successful. He resigned from the Guggenheim when Harry Frank Guggenheim encouraged him to promote “a more popular educational approach.” And he was later asked to step down from his post at the Houston Museum when his “innovative if controversial curatorial approach came up agains…

The ‘Messy’ God of Science

By Mark Vernon

…ising to the position of professor in the University of Cambridge. Then, in 1979, he resigned his chair, and trained to become an Anglican priest. In the quarter century since, he has written about two dozen books on the relationship between science and religion. A delightful man to meet, between papers and presentations he talked quite as easily with humble journalists as with distinguished peers. Polkinghorne describes himself as a ‘bottom-up’ t…

Bobby Jindal Squares Packing Heat with Jesus

By Welton Gaddy

…what happens in the sacred space designated for worship, amid the peaceful spirit of a faith that wants to change the world, not bend to society’s lowest standards for resolving problems. Yes, I understand the violent environment in which some worship centers are located. One time in the past, I had a bottle rocket shot at me while I was delivering a sermon in a pulpit. Such an occurrence is frightening. But that is not a reason to replace peace-m…

To Be Loved or Feared: Doctor Who, part IX

By Gabriel Mckee

…to shake the holy hand of fate? —Kansas, “Rainmaker” from the album In The Spirit of Things The first of two episodes that together make up the season finale of Doctor Who is “The Pandorica Opens.” Although it ends with quite a cliffhanger, the fact that Doctor River Song had already passed through these experiences when we encountered her in a previous episode suggests that all will turn out okay for her and her husband. Time travel can make for…