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Tragic Violence in Libya: No Excuse for Perpetrators—or for Provocateurs

By Haroon Moghul

…orse still, the reprehensible actions of the few target and often kill the best people. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was well liked in Libya, and a veteran of postings across the Middle East. He was the kind of person the American government is lucky to have on its side. (I remember, some years back, that a famous Muslim filmmaker, who had made the first big-budget movie about the Prophet Muhammad, was killed by al-Qaeda in one of its typical in…

The Trouble With Harry (Potter): Religious Conservatives Do Have Something to Fear

By Jay Michaelson

…ean here the unreconstructed monotheistic God) has no role whatsoever. The best man wins the duel—or rather, the man with the best wand. Now, one could, of course, make the same claims about comic-book sagas like Superman or Batman. Why should Harry Potter have to take any more refuge in the numinous than Kal-El or Bruce Wayne? Well, because there is something intrinsically religious about the Potter series; and I don’t just mean the rab…

Purpose Driven Atheism: Secular Maharishis Seeking True Believers

By Frank Schaeffer

…bout thanksgiving, shared suffering, loss, pain, generosity, and love. The best religious people and the best secular people learn to ignore our chosen (or inherited) religions’ nastier teachings (be those found in the Bible or in the “science” of eugenics and white racial superiority) in order to preserve the spirit of our faiths, be it a faith in secular humanism, science, God or in all of the above. It’s the tediously consistent fundamentalists…

Ann Coulter Puts the “Con” in “Homocon 2010”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…my best friends are gay Republicans. Well, I guess I should say some of my best friends are gay former Republicans. They didn’t leave the party, they tell me. Instead, the party left them with its frog-stepping march to the right-wing fringe over the past few years. These are people who believe in fiscal conservatism, but have seen the Republicans run up record deficits. They like the tax cuts, they say, but have seen Goldwater Republicanism tramp…

America, the Mythical: “Mother of Exiles” or Denier of Safe Haven?

By Ed Simon

…rected on a pike at Plymouth following the conclusion of King Phillip’s War. The settlers subsequently decided that that impalement also warranted a similar declaration of general thanksgiving. As Leonard Cohen sings of America’s covenantal ambivalence, this land is “[t]he cradle of the best and of the worst.” Thanksgiving has been marshaled yet again in the battle over what is the proper interpretation of the idea of America. With thousands of Sy…

Evolution Sunday: Pastors Celebrate Darwin

By Lauri Lebo

…their assault on teaching evolution in science class. Zimmerman thinks the best way to change this mindset is for scientists to step back from the debate and hand the reins over to religious leaders. This Feb. 12 will be Darwin’s 200th birthday. Three days later, as part of Evolution Sunday, a holiday Zimmerman created, pastors around the world will be speaking from the pulpit about Darwin’s contribution to our understanding of the world. Zimmerma…

Breaking Up with God: I Didn’t Lose My Faith, I Left It

By Sarah Sentilles

…stuff I love all the time, and in the end, I am glad they did. Some of the best advice I ever received was that if there is a sentence that you wrote that you think is amazing, just go ahead and cut it because it probably sucks and is bad writing. It’s called “killing your darlings.” The editorial experience for this book was brutal, in a good way. During my first meeting with my editor, she told me she had made a lot of cuts. Before I saw the cut…

Meet the New Haggards—Same as the Old Haggards?

By Kathryn Joyce

…at. My husband often points out that in the scripture it talks about Jesus numbering himself among the transgressors, and he says that’s what I did. Can you talk about what your period of exile was like? That was a very dark time in our lives, and I really felt that the separation from the church was as big a blow to me as the difficulties in our marriage. It really became worse because Ted and I were healing together and were working through the…

Replacing Godless Hollywood with Bible-Based “Cultural Dominion”

By Julie Ingersoll

…lterous violations against one’s current or future spouse. Last year, the “Best Feature” winner was Fireproof, starring Cameron, whose work in that film and the Left Behind movies (as well as in the much-ridiculed videos with Ray Comfort on how bananas prove evolution wrong) have earned him the admiration of conservative evangelicals. Illustrating the wide-ranging influence of these Reconstructionist-inspired films, and the lack of mainstream noti…

The Sacred and the Dead: I Love You More than Words Can Tell

By David Vanderveen

…knees and stop, drop and roll roll roll out of that broke-down palace. The best thing I got from Wheaton was lifelong friends—and finding a place to live in community, doing life, raising our families, becoming more fully ourselves as the years pass. Together. Mark grew up in Laguna Beach, Calif., and after college, returned there to start his own family. One of the many things he taught me was the importance of place. Where you choose to live mat…