World Daily
Holy Land: Holy Land
04 January 2006 A coalition of U.S. evangelical groups, led by none other than Pat Robertson, is negotiating with the Israeli government to lease 125 acres of land in Galilee — possibly at no charge from Israel’s ministry of tourism — in order to build the Galilee World Heritage Park, a biblical theme park featuring gardens,...
This Week in Gay Church Schisms
A day after an open letter to Archbishop Rowan Williams of the Church of England was posted on the website of the “Global South Primates” under the names of 17 conservative Anglican bishops, criticizing him and challenging his authority over his “soft” position on homosexuality, one of the conservative bishops has claimed that his name...
Virulent, Sadistic, Fascistic Fury
Little Green Footballs fans have been writing en masse for two days to either wish that I be sodomized with a broken bottle for suggesting that the rhetoric of the site is fascist and hatemongering, or to assure me that the two comments I quoted in my original post were highly unrepresentative. Looking only at what’s...
Peace Prize Fight
Peace Prize Fight 28 October 2004 Some critics in Norway and Sweden are angry that the Nobel Peace Prize concert will be co-hosted by Tom Cruise, arguing that it’s too difficult to separate “‘artist Tom Cruise from Scientology Tom Cruise,’” and that Cruise’s Church of Scientology will consider the event a “‘validation and use it as far...
Reformation Redux
Reformation Redux 28 October 2004 Diarmaid MacCullough, an Oxford historian who’s one of the preeminent scholars of the Reformation, warns that those who ignore Martin Luther’s legacy may be doomed to live through the bloody wars like those of his times: “Donald Rumsfeld talked darkly of ‘old Europe’. If he had wanted to find the...
Evacuating Gaza
Evacuating Gaza 27 October 2004 Israel’s parliament voted last night to remove Jewish settlements from Palestinian territories for the first time after 37 years of occupation. Ariel Sharon broke with his right-wing constituency to promote the plan, which will evacuate about 8,000 settlers living in the Gaza strip.
Born-Again, Not Really Dead, and a New Reason to Blow Yourself Up in Iraq
A daily collage of religion news from the war in Iraq. See also two new Revealer features: “Coffins,” by Michael Lesy; and “Secular Confessions,” by Scott Korb and Kathryn Joyce. Falluajah Baptism “This is is a good place to be reborn out here.” –A Marine preparing for baptism on the outskirts of Fallujah. “So many service personnel on deployment...
Iraq for Hire
Also new today: “Who Killed Pat Tillman?” AP just reported that the U.S. has a new plan for subduing Fallujah — hire the same guys who’ve been fighting the Marines. “A U.S. military officer privy to the negotiations said it was ‘very likely’ that the Fallujah Protective Army, which would fall under the command of the 1st Marine...
Religion News from Iraq
A daily collage of religion news from the war in Iraq. Also new today on The Revealer: Atrios & the “Liberalish” Debate; & Julia Rabig writes onPoor, Poor Clergy. Sadr v. Shrine “Sadr’s forces have evicted more than 100 rival Shiite clerics and shrine employees, replacing them with their own armed militiamen, who roam the rooftops and...
Voodoo Postmortem
Revealer associate editor Kathryn Joyce writes: It’s more than an un-PC cliche. “‘Voodoo is part of Haitian politics,’” voodoo priest, Philippe Castera tells Marina Jimenez, a Toronto Globe and Mail correspondent on assignment in Haiti. “‘The National Palace is filled with the spirits of the ancestors, and the president must be introduced to those spirits and deal with them.’” Jimenez does a fine...
Hearts, Minds, Mortars
In a 2,600 word New York Times report by David Rohde on the American “Hunt… for Hearts and Minds” in Afghanistan, the role of religion gets one mention: “As watching Afghan women wailed and recited prayers, one sergeant placed the mortar round on the teenager’s back, and another held the captured rifles in the air. A soldier snapped a souvenir photo...
Which Side Are You On?
Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, leaves little room for doubt in hispaean to an Iraqi Christian pastor on The Wall Street Journal‘s opinion page. “‘We have a big vision,’ Pastor Jule says. It’s bold as well. Christian missionaries from America and Europe have found Muslim countries the hardest to evangelize. Pastor Jule, however, is working from within....
