Teaching the Dalai Lama’s Monks: Better Religion Through Science
Arri Eisen
A biologist in an experimental program teaching science to the Dalai Lama’s monks explains why this project is so much bigger than even working to reconcile religion and science.
Ten Commandments of the Antichrist: The Georgia Guidestones
Joseph Laycock
A mysterious Georgia monument bearing a message for civilization has become a spiritual and political Rorschach test.
By the Way: Riverside Minister’s Abrupt Resignation Reveals the Perils of the Pulpit

Randall Balmer

Wherein the author, a friend of the Rev. Brad Braxton and an Episcopal priest, recalls his own harrowing year in the pulpit and the toll it can take on self and family.

Books
To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise

Diane Winston

According to a pathbreaking new book, Wal-Mart’s success in reframing traditional gender roles, bending the curricula of business schools, and sanctifying working-class consumer capitalism, help explain the connections between conservative politics, the market economy, and family values.

Christianity v. Christ: An Excerpt From A People’s History of Christianity

Diana Butler Bass

Most people know only the Big-C Christianity—Christ, Constantine, Christendom, Calvin, and Christian America—but there is another one, linked to a biblical parable of a wounded man’s rescue by a stranger.

Undercover at Falwell’s Liberty University, Finding Common Ground

Nathan Schneider

Brown sophomore Kevin Roose, an Ivy-league heathen, infiltrated the nation’s holiest university and emerged a changed man—not committed to conservative Christianity, but to finding a new language for reconciliation.

Transforming America’s Israel Lobby

Dan Fleshler

In an excerpt from a new book Dan Fleshler, an American Jewish activist from “the pro-Israel left,” explains the reluctance of Jewish liberals to criticize Israel on the human rights front, even when they share the rest of the world’s objections to Israeli behavior.

Why I Am Still a Christian

Diana Butler Bass

A friend once asked Diana Butler Bass why she was still a Christian. The answer lies in the question of spiritual memory, and of a community that exists through time.

More in Books »
RDBlog: The Devil's Advocate
Take It Off, Or We’ll Make You: On Sarkozy’s Proposed Burqa Ban

at 2:03PM

When you step out in clothing that boldly states your womanhood, you are a free woman. You are no longer a slave to old rules and notions. Modernity is inherently free.

“Future of Babylon” Project Preserves History to Some, Ushers in “End Times” to Others

at 11:10AM

An uptick in tourism could transform the ancient city of Babylon back into a major destination for tourists, which according to several conservative Christian evangelicals, could set the stage for the ‘last days’ of history.    

Misreading Neda and Judges 19: Death of Young Iranian Woman Is Not a Rallying Cry for War

at 3:41PM

Some, like Paul Wolfowitz, have criticized Obama for not responding to the Iranian election violence, symbolized by Neda, more aggressively.

The Qawwali-Gospel, a Cross-Cultural Musical Experiment

at 12:22PM

Attempts at the recent Muslim Voices festival to reinvent the qawwali, of having it cross-fertilize with other musics, made the concert seem so promising as a closing event.

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