Author Archive
Sweating Out the Details
Stephanie Butnick: Judith Weisenfeld writes that mainstream media coverage of the October 2009 “sweat lodge deaths” at self-help counselor James Arthur Ray’s Arizona retreat has failed to adequately examine responses by Native American communities to the incident or discuss the commodification of Native American spiritual practices. “The significance of this story lies not in Ray’s...
The Puritan's Dilemma
What do Tea Partiers and Jonathan Safran Foer have in common?
By Scott Korb
One afternoon last week, I read both Ben McGrath
God and Groundhog Day
Nicole Greenfield: Center for Religion and Media co-director Angela Zito discusses religion and Danny Rubin’s 1993 movie “Groundhog Day” on NPR’s The Takeaway.
Religion and Objectivity Collide in Google Searches
Elissa Lerner: Among the myriad of tweets and news posts in the last 48 hours over the new iPad and President Obama’s State of the Union address, Mashable managed to spot an update on Google that would likely otherwise escape the average Internet user. Samuel Axon writes that previously, a search for “Islam is” would...
Love Thy Neighbor
Elissa Lerner: The Latin American News Dispatch offered an unusual take on the crisis in Haiti yesterday morning. Amid the countless fundraisers, the injured and dead, Simon McKormick reports of mixed feelings among Dominicans. Adjacent to earthquake ravaged Haiti, the Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola, which is only slightly larger than Massachusetts. Yet...
Listen to the Earth
Early interpretations of Haiti's tragedy from the theological frontlines.
By Angela Zito
Listening to The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC the day after the Haiti quake on Tuesday, January 12, his first local caller
Hollow Trunks
Several years ago, I began writing and editing book reviews for The Revealer. As you probably know, there was a time between then and now when things slowed down on the site. I was out of touch with with it for a time. With this first post of 2010, an essay in defense...
Heretical Hannukah Party
TONIGHT: Celebrate Revealer alum and Killing the Buddha co-founder Peter Manseau’s trifecta win of Jewish book awards for his novel Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter. Come for the reading, stay for the stories and the Buddha-killing surprises. Say hello to Revealer founding editor Jeff Sharlet, have a drink with the party-throwers, the folks who keep...
Considering The Case for God
Karen Armstrong's rebuttal to the new atheists.
By Jenna Johnson
A flood of mainstream, atheist literature has flowed out into American discourse
Sunday Delivery
Stephanie Butnick: In the Faith section of the Washington Times, Karen Goldberg Goff reports that truckers who happen to be in Carlisle, PA on a Sunday morning now can attend a church service in a nearby motor home. The services in Carlisle, led by a “retired truck-driver-turned-pastor,” are one of 74 outposts of Truckstop Ministries....
Against the Black Box and the Slippery Slope
Jeremy Walton: On November 9th, Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at New York University
A Slice of Heaven
Elissa Lerner: They were more than 70, and they may not have all been virgins, but 200 young women arrived at a mysterious soiree in Rome on Sunday night, and were certainly confused and disappointed by the evening’s end. Responding to an agency call for “500 attractive girls between 18 and 35 years old, at...
