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Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

By Vyckie Garrison

I just returned from watching 2016: Obama’s America, arch-conservative Dinesh D’Souza’s election-year documentary (based on his book The Roots of Obama’s Rage) with my 19-year-old daughter, Chassé. As someone who is now a secular progressive single mom of seven kids, five of whom live at home, I wouldn’t normally choose to spend our family’s perpetually-insufficient income to see this Obama-bashing movie, let alone take along one of my kids. But…

Violent, Genocidal Anti-Palestinian Rhetoric Moving to US?

By David Sheen

…er this week the Times of Israel published a post, written by American Yochanan Gordon, titled “When Genocide is Permissible,” which concludes with the following question: If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals? Last week, the man gunning for the top spot at the Anti-Defamation League, New York Univer…

Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

By Scott Blaine Swenson

Growing up in Topeka, Kansas, wasn’t exactly Hell—not for me anyway. Then again, I spent most of those 18 formative years hiding from Topeka’s foremost biblical authority, the infamous anti-gay funeral picketer, Reverend Fred Phelps. As a child I had a secret buried deep within and was convinced if what Rev. Phelps said was true—that “God Hates Fags”—then I must be the Antichrist. The fact that the US Postal Service assigned “666” as Topeka’s zip…

An American Muslim Abroad, Or, Things I Saw in Dubai

By Haroon Moghul

…he United Arab Emirates, or UAE, is the only functioning federation in the Arab world, composed of six states that joined together in 1971 and a seventh that decided to come along a year later. The two primary emirates are Abu Dhabi, the capital and wealthiest of the seven, whose territory is 87% of the whole country’s, and Dubai. Dubai is the second of the two, but easily the more famous. In the past fifteen years, the city has grown from a small…

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

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…white space. Short sentences that force you to stop. And think. And start again. What would Rob Bell do to fill up eight hours in person? The message of the book is simple: look around at your life, decide if it’s what you want, then devote all your energy to living the best life you can. Don’t stop yourself from doing something you want to do. Just do it. Even if that thing is being an assistant regional manager of an insurance company—he actual…

Religious Affiliation, ‘Mankind’: India’s Anti-Corruption Activist Leads Second Freedom Struggle

By April L. Bogle

…er own country, and has lent her considerable status to the grassroots India Against Corruption campaign as the movement evolves. What some are calling India’s Arab Spring has been more like a summer of discontent, complete with demonstrations and arrests, all in support of this epic fight against government corruption—what Anna Hazare, whose hunger strike made headlines, has named “India’s second freedom struggle.” I was glad to have the chance t…

Penn Jillette’s Signs You May Already Be an Atheist

By Steve A. Wiggins

…God, No! was published, to great acclaim. As of October it ranked #273 in Amazon’s book sales category. (Those of us whose books are ranked down in the millions can’t help but feel a little pang of jealousy; it does tell us, however, who is getting read!) Jillette is the vocal member of Penn & Teller, the bad-boy magician duo, and a noted iconoclast. Largely a ramble through his inner monologue, God, No! is the first book to cause me to laugh out…

The Religious Implications of Nudity

By Steve A. Wiggins

A TSA pat-down—security never felt so good! Or so bad. “But it’s against my religion,” I explain to the stern-looking officer who is directing me to the full-body scanner with a gaze that would stop Superman. I feel as if I have been profiled. A man traveling alone, looking like he has nothing to lose (people tell me I should smile more). It is a lazy weekday morning in the Raleigh-Durham Airport and I am returning from a business trip I didn’t r…

What the Lost Finale is Really About

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…efore the finale sinks in. What then am I offering in the midst of the hullabaloo? Why write before it is over? Why write at all? Because the ultimate response to the show’s questions have already been answered. The ending of the finale is (spoiler alert) not important. There are no answers that can be given that will leave anyone feeling satisfied. It’ll be like a Thanksgiving feeding frenzy: gobble it up and think we are satiated, but an hour la…

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Men “Stand Up” for “Religious Freedom”… On a Plane

By Kara Loewentheil

…lly in the person’s own best interests: you offer to pay your seatmate to vacate, or you claim that contraception is harmful to women. Third, if none of that works, you create costs for both the authority attempting to regulate you and the innocent bystanders around you in the hopes that if you create enough problems the authority in question will cede way (in other words you block the aisles for a 10 hour flight, or you file lawsuits and cost the…