Where is Jesus’ foreskin?  Listen to David Farley discuss An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town on NPR’s Rick Steve Show.

Does Daddy Know Best?  Ann Pellegrini on the nature of recent attempts to further limit women’s privacy and reproductive choice.

Are imagination and science really at war? An excerpt from Lawrence Lipking’s “Facts and Dreams” at The New Republic:

To some extent the so-called conflict seems bogus. A benevolent reading of Blake’s proverb [What is now proved was once, only imagined" from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell] might reduce it to common sense, or to a maxim that any scientist might follow in applying for a grant to test an idea. No idea, no funding; no imagined Higgs boson, no CERN. In this respect the hypothetical construct that drives attempts to prove or disprove it is not the opposite of science but its prime mover. Imagination and proof couple together as tightly as mind and body, or as Blake’s visions and the books that he makes with his hands. Great scientists are visionaries, too.

Can Romney break the Hoover Curse?

Is Obama the Devil?  Ok, ok.  Is he anti-religion?  Social conservative Steve Chapman writes at Reason, that Obama hasn’t been all that bad for faith-based organizations, critiques that he’s anti-religious freedom be damned.

Can a woman be feminist and pro-life?

How much money does the state of Indiana give to “family values” organization Indiana Family Institute each year?  Andy Kopsa does the accounting at Nuvo.

What’s so funny about the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia’s recent Fatwa?  Paul Mutter tracks journalist Hamza Kashgari’s extradition for tweeting about Muhammad.

What happens when a Catholic hospital merges with a non-denominational one?

What is informed consent?  Governor Bob McDonnell, who opposes Virginia’s mandate that all women seeking an abortion be given a sonogram (often requiring an invasive procedure), still loses points for allowing that such information is “informed consent.”  McDonnell said, “Mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state.”  Sure enough.  But don’t we think pregnant women know they’re pregnant?  How much information must patients be given?  How can the state determine when a patient really understands the procedure they face?  How can a doctor?  These questions are asked and answered all the time.  Check out Thaddeus Pope’s recent notes on a “futile care” case in Canada.

Things we love about the new Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life poll on “Mormons in America?”  So glad you asked:

Substitute your own word in here:  ”Many _____ feel they are misunderstood, discriminated against and not accepted by other Americans as part of mainstream society.”

Minority Rights are a “Special Privilege;” Next to Newt’s Godliness; Tebowing the Spotlight; Catholic Attitude; Because Your Military Rulers Said So; The Sui Juris of Citizenship

Abby Ohlheiser: Something we’re keeping an eye on: Christian Iranian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who faces death for the crime of apostasy, could face execution any time after Wednesday should he refuse to renounce his faith a fourth time.

It’s an interesting case with a bit more to say than the familiar narrative of persecuted Christianity, partially because pastor Nadarkhani’s apostasy might not even be that, according to Iranian law.

By Abby Ohlheiser
Photos by Merel van Beeren

“Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and the Hartmanns perish??” –Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky

I was sitting in a French-style chain cafe (sorry America), finishing my croissant, talking to Merel, when we heard the opening notes of “The Star Spangled Banner.” It was a restrained, beautiful choral rendition, and we listened. It was all kind of a relief: we were just blocks from Ground Zero, at around 8:30 AM on the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001, but the only signs we’d seen of something solemn going on were the expressions on the cops’ faces as they watched us leave the subway at Fulton Street, as they told us to keep walking in a no-gawking zone, as they told confused spectators no, not that crosswalk, you have to go around the block. This moment, listening, would be the closest we would get to the ceremony at the memorial plaza finally established on top of the former World Trade Center site. Instead, we spent the day in the blocks around the site, in the throngs of tourists, New Yorkers, missionaries, and protestors. We watched as a block’s worth of people waited to move one block forward, in front of St. Paul’s.  Merel said, “I wonder what this would look like as painted by Norman Rockwell.”

Here is what I, and the rest of the crowd, saw on the outskirts of Ground Zero during the ceremony, on the other side of the police checkpoints and “you can’t go theres” between us and the heartbreaking, mourning substance of the official ceremony.

Abby Ohlheiser: If the Book of Mormon and Romney’s early campaign were a Mormon Moment, the past few weeks have been something of a “Dominionism” moment. Dominionism, a generalized term for a collection of Charismatic Christian movements that treat the structure and power of civil government, media, and other significant institutions as mission field, is a key part of reporting that understands the Religious Right (which, of course, is not synonymous with Evangelical Christians). Sarah Posner’s most recent piece on it is at Salon today. It’s part of Ryan Lizza’s profile of Michelle Bachmann, and of a substantial portion of the coverage of Rick Perry’s The Response, which I attended earlier this month.

Abby Ohlheiser: All the religious language of the last fortnight’s Perry and Ames fest ’11 (or should that be ’12) made me click on this tweet (despite the parenthetical clue) without thinking for a second that it would be a comment on anything other than something Bachmann or Perry have talked about recently. By the way: don’t google “perry bondage.”

It was, in fact, an article about the sort of bondage with a bigger but quieter internet presence: BDSM, which stands for bondage, discipline, sado-masochisim.

In Peter King’s world, the battle has only two sides and only one winning strategy.

by Amy Levin and Abby Ohlheiser 

Lately media outlets have been telling us what Americans believe, from how much we think we should be taxed, to how much we like Muslims. Even how (much) we believe in God. What Pew or Gallup haven’t capitalized on yet is Americans’ obsession with terrorism.  How many of us believe in it—as a great danger to society, for instance—or how do we collectively define it—say, as a feature of particular world regions or cultures? Not unlike past eras when Americans developed their own definitions of Marxist, Communist, fascist, or anarchist (not anything good, mind you), in our current era we confidently call individuals with non-conformist, “subversive” ideologies “terrorist.” Sure, there is a technical definition for the word, but like any of the above descriptions, the more we use terrorist, the more obscure its meanings become. Why are certain political institutions reconstructing the definition of terrorism? Which forms of power succeed in remolding the word’s transformation?  What are the implications of invoking terrorist discourse?

Steering the bandwagon on exposure of terrorist threats, Rep. Peter King (R-NY3) is but one of the the media’s returning bedfellows on the fear-trafficking topic of homeland security.  Like any politician’s platform, there’s more to King’s efforts than meets the eye.  Given the context–-the killings in Oslo by suspect Anders Breivik–of last Wednesday’s third round of hearings on Muslim radicalization it is perhaps not surprising that much of the time was spent discussing things other than the stated topic of the day, the threat of Al Shabaab in the US.

Abby Ohlheiser: A couple years ago, in a small Christian-owned performance space-cum-vintage shop, I listened to David Bazan finish a song, pause, and ask, “anyone have any questions for me?”

Bazan, who was touring with songs from his album about lost faith, Curse Your Branches, fielded earnest theological questions from the young fans sitting cross legged right up close to the stage.  He’d play a few songs, some from the album, some from his old band Pedro The Lion (a mid-2000′s crossover Christian/indie music darling), pause for questions, then keep going.

Earlier this summer, he released a new album.

by Abby Ohlheiser

Weeks after the earthquake in January, 2010, five planes, filled with medical supplies, flew to Haiti. One plane was named DFTBA, which stands for Don’t Forget To Be Awesome, an acronym popularized by the nerdfighters. The other four were named Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Dumbledore, after the most familiar and beloved characters from the Harry Potter series. Partners In Health chartered the planes with $123,000 dollars raised by a group called the Harry Potter Alliance.

Perhaps best known for its ubiquitous fan fiction, Wizard Rock bands, and for titillating bookstore owners everywhere with the promise of a packed house on book launch nights, the Harry Potter fan community (also called a “fandom”) is often discussed as it exists in isolation from the “real world,” or as consumers of a widely-hyped, money-making franchise.  But the books have now all been written and the last film came out this month.  With the exception of a Harry Potter theme park in Orlando, it would seem the franchise is all out of new ways to engage its audience.  That’s where the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) comes in.

The non-profit, founded in 2005 to channel the Harry Potter fandom energy and resources into charitable work, uses parallels to the book series to build support for a broad range of causes, connections that range from direct to oblique.  One example: The HPA works for LGBT equality, and has cited the “in the closet” hidden identities of Hagrid the half-giant, Lupin the werewolf, and the protagonist Harry Potter himself, who was forced to literally live in a closet for most of his early childhood.