The Revealer

The Revealer — 2008-07-02T13:28:16-05:00

Couldn't resist:God arrested for selling cocaine....

A Priest, a Rabbi, and George Carlin Walk Into Heaven...

The Revealer — 2008-06-29T22:52:42-05:00

The universe is in balance, George Carlin once said, because Jesus has a little statue of a middle-class American hypocrite on his dashboard. In a bold move, NBC pays tribute to the dead comic with an old Saturday Night Live...

Fresh Brains for Zombie Buddha!

The Revealer — 2008-06-28T19:02:59-05:00

You just can't kill this Buddha.

By Jeff Sharlet

Six Realms of Rebirth

Killing the Buddha.com -- god for the godless, cheaper than church, Allah in the family -- rises from the grave, again. The website Peter Manseau, Jeremy Brothers and I founded in 2000, declared dead once and for all after numerous resurrections during the last two years, marches back onto the internet like a zombie in search of fresh brains. And KtB has found them: three Revealer (and NYU journalism grad school) alumni, Meera Subramanian, Ashley Makar, and Marissa Kantor-Dennis, have revived the anti-tradition of Buddha-killing.

That sounds cruel, doesn't it? Oh, ye, of little faith. From the opening pages of the first KtB book, A Heretic's Bible (available used for four, count 'em, FOUR pennies at Amazon):

Late morning, just before lunch, one of Lin Chi’s monks comes up to him half-crazed, out of his mind with ecstasy, babbling about Buddha. Says he’s seen him. Says he was just walking down the road when suddenly: Buddhamind. Enlightenment. Nirvana. The big payoff. The monk can’t stop talking about it. Lin Chi strikes a match, lights his pipe, takes a long drag. Leaves the monk hanging, waiting for his reward. Instead, Lin Chi blows a cloud of smoke, reaches out, and smacks him.
“You meet the Buddha on the road,” Lin Chi says, “kill him.”
Imagine the monk’s face. Better yet, imagine your own: You’ve been to church, you’ve gone to the zendo, you took your bat mitzvah money and ran. You’re an atheist, or you’re an agnostic, or you’re an orthodox believer without a cause. Maybe you’ve tried not to think about it. You’ve opted for sex, drugs, and electronica, you’ve opted for a career; you’re poor and you never had any options. You’ve run away from your family, you’ve started a family, you’ve given up on God, Family, and Nation. And then, when you were minding your own business, getting on with things, you stumbled upon -- something. Him, Her, a Higher Power, Buddha, Jesus, the Shekhina, Shiva. The mysterium tremendum, the big white whale. And even though you’re no seeker, you weren’t looking and you didn’t ask to find, you had to admit: God is Great. Allah Akbar! Holy Ghost Power.
To which Lin Chi says: Super. You found it. Now you can kill it. The Buddha you meet is not the true Buddha but an expression of your longing. If this Buddha is not killed, he will only stand in your way.
When Lin Chi contributed the idea of deicide to his godless religion a thousand years ago, he was talking not just about a long-dead teacher who had come to be known as Buddha but about the dominant ideologies of his day: One True Path, One True Story, One True Anything. The preachers and the gurus, the Christian Coalition and the secular masses, the heart that wants what it wants and the mind that always thinks better: These are the Buddhas we meet on the road, the Buddhas we know and love and listen to, the Buddhas we all are. Faced with modern-day atheists or fundamentalists or guys who thump thousand-year-old Zen aphorisms hard as any Bible, Lin Chi would probably say the same thing: Don’t be a chump. A single story never explained anything.

So Meera, Marissa, and Ashley have re-launched the site with four: Andrew Boyd, author of Daily Afflictions, on monastic temptation; Emily Weinstein on "The Book of Weinstein," which is about leaving the ways of the Weinsteins behind; Toby Van Buren, on the '84 Buick Couple, "My Skyhawk Guardian Angel," that saved his soul; and, for old times' sake, I guess, me, on getting "Found in Translation."

Much more to come, including the second KtB book, an anthology of first person nonfiction from the KtB's first eight years, Believer, Beware, to be published by Beacon next year.

While you wait -- KillingTheBuddha.com. Try it at home.

Jewish Anarchists

The Revealer — 2008-06-28T18:46:21-05:00

In the late 19th century, the biggest political movement in Jewish America was anarchism, equally opposed to church and state. One of the offspring of that movement was a Yiddish paper called Freie Arbeiter Stimme, "The Voice of Labor," lovingly documented in this hour long film available for a free download here.

Mystical Realism

The Revealer — 2008-06-24T20:23:11-05:00

The NYT delivers news of The Shack, a gi-normous bestseller of a Christian novel, to the secular world, comparing its sales to Eckhart Tolle's new age blockbuster, A New Earth. But the paper misses the more interesting connection between Tolle's...

The Diane Rehm Show

The Revealer — 2008-06-24T07:41:21-05:00

Sharlet: I'll be discussing my new book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, on The Diane Rehm Show, from 11-noon, east coast time....

Christian Right Revealer Radio

The Revealer — 2008-06-16T06:59:04-05:00

And Family news.

Southern Baptist Style and Substance

The Revealer — 2008-06-16T06:47:39-05:00

harlet: Bob Smietana, religion reporter for the Tennessean and occasional Revealer contributor, responds to my Friday post on the most overlooked religion story of last week, the change in leadership of America's biggest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention..

The 'F' Word

The Revealer — 2008-06-14T18:09:09-05:00

What Rick Warren, a founder of modern advertising, and the dirtiest word in politics don't have in common. Adapted from The Family, by Jeff Sharlet, and excerpted here from CounterPunch.

Big Baptist Blowout! Little Press.

The Revealer — 2008-06-13T09:17:23-05:00

Big, big story missed by the press: Messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting, held in Indianapolis, rejected the relatively moderate vision of outgoing SBC president Frank Page by electing -- with big numbers -- Johnny Hunt, an Atlanta...

Bomb Throwers and Hall Monitors

The Revealer — 2008-06-04T13:27:51-05:00

Sharlet: Mark Silk, an eminent scholar of religion, politics, and journalism, takes issue with my Casting Stones post on the how the press is re-arranging its account of Obama's ascent now that his victory is assured...

Apocalypse Savings

The Revealer — 2008-06-03T17:00:55-05:00

"The mind is capable of artful compartmentalisations; in one moment, a man might confidently believe in predictions of Armageddon in his lifetime, and in the next, he might pick up the phone to inquire about a savings fund for his grandchildren's college education or approve of long-term measures to slow global warming." Novelist Ian McEwanreads the story of the end of the world.

Machine Politics

The Revealer — 2008-06-03T16:57:42-05:00

Sharlet: WNYC's Leonard Lopate and I discuss "maximalism," cronyism, and The Family....

You Say Journalism, I Say Betrayal

The Revealer — 2008-06-03T16:25:46-05:00

Sharlet: Harper's editor Bill Wasik and I talk about The Family and how the article we collaborated on as author and editor five years became a book. Here's an excerpt.

Obama's Exorcism

The Revealer — 2008-06-03T16:19:44-05:00

It looks like it's the end of the line for Clinton and the beginning of a new battle for Obama, and that means it's time for the press to do what it does best -- tidy up the tale, craft a chronicle of inevitability, obscure its own role in the political process...