Catch Diane Winston on Krista Tippett’s “On Being.”  She’s talking about TV, storytelling, and faith.

In his new book, The Meaning of Marriage, Timothy Keller, by omission, matches up practiced marriage to the rare (Christian) ideal–and forgets that the institution was meant to serve a number of social purposes, not all of them holy.  In an interview with Christianity Today he says, “the church doesn’t do a great job of giving people a vision for what God wants marriage to be.”

Thank God!  The House has voted to protect the national motto, “In God We Trust.” Randy Forbes, a Republican from Virginia issued a (strangely paranoid) resolution that states, “if religion and morality are taken out of the market-place of ideas, the very freedom on which the United States was founded cannot be secured.”  Of course, “In God” wasn’t the national motto until 1956; nor was it about to be removed.

So meta!  The Revealer contributor S. Brent Plate reviews The Revealer founding editor Jeff Sharlet’s newest book, Sweet Heaven When I Die, in which The Revealer‘s current editor (moi) makes an appearance in chapter four.  It’s a great review!  Read it at Religion Dispatches here.

A little bird (Eboo Patel, my latest favorite obsession) retweeted us to a new idea in interfaith understanding (blech).  It’s called speed-faithing!  Cause the best way, apparently, to love your Hindu or Muslim neighbor is to have a 5 minute date with them.

HarperCollins, a publishing company owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., has purchased Thomas Nelson, known for religious titles.  Murdoch knows his audience.

There’s a morality lesson in here somewhere.  The Atlantic tells us that one year in prison costs $44,000.  Hefty.  Check out their infographic comparison to one year at Princeton, $37,000.

Put the protest back in Protestant:

I have to begin by asking how did we get here, as a society? Ascetic Protestantism played a major role in the institution of modern capitalism. One could aver that the capitalistic system of economics was the progeny of an organized structure of religious ideals that originated in the writings of Martin Luther and the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation and was further advanced into its current manifestation as a result of the pioneering ideas of the protestant scholar and theologian John Calvin and the pillars of the ascetic Protestant faith.