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New Book Reveals How Faith is Like a Covert Operation for the Bush Family
A brand new investigation of the Bush family reveals a religious narrative that strays from the official story circulated to supporters and the press. How many conversions did George W. actually have and why? How did a blue-blooded Episcopalian family come to represent the evangelicals of America?
RD10Q: Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion
Branding is a combination of name, logo, and mythology; in a world in which we see more than three-thousand marketing messages a day, does religion have to sell itself in order to remain part of the cultural conversation?
The Best Books Media of 2008
Forget the standard litany of the best-selling books and most popular movies... This year’s list includes comics, rock bands, Battlestar Galactica, “Hava Nagila” sung to the tune of “The Twist,” and “I Am the Walrus” translated into Aramaic.
RD10Q: Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism
Religious horror, like Chick comics, Hell Houses, and the Left Behind books, moved from the margins in the 1960s to the center by the early 2000s with an assist from a strong anti-pluralism, anti-liberalism, and antipathy to governmental reform.
RD10Q: The Roots of Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Can a religious text be lethal? The story of Abraham and Isaac, shared by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, has been used for centuries to glorify sacrifice—and it has never been our own story more than it is right now.
RDBook: Huckabee ♥’s Nobody
Republican presidential hopeful, and dimpled everyman, Mike Huckabee’s new book is an attempt to settle scores from a contentious campaign. Why would a man with his eye on higher office so publicly slap Mitt Romney, the religious right, and the media?
RDBook: A City Too Busy To Hate
A new guidebook to the city of Atlanta, Sacred Places, focuses on civil rights sites, from churches to restaurants, and shows how the history of the struggle for freedom still permeates the urban landscape.
RDBook: Is Zionism Anti-Semitic?: Zizek's Violence
Philosopher Slavoj Zizek thinks that Judaism and Zionism are in tension with each other, but this seeming paradox is just the tip of the iceberg, or Greenberg, or Goldberg...
RDBook: Christian Culture Clash
Why are conservative churches thriving in the “spiritual wasteland” of the Pacific Northwest, while liberal churches struggle? Author James Wellman explains what's going on in the region, and how this plays out across the United States.
RD10Q: Progressive & Religious: Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life
“Taking aim” at both the Religious Right and the New Atheists, a new book aims to make progressive politics safe for the religious, and religion safe for progressive politics.
RD10Q: Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy
Whether or not we believe in evil as a supernatural force it cannot be denied that when we as a culture project the idea of evil outwards, onto others, it gives us license to engage in extreme forms of cruelty—witch-hunting, racism, nationalistic hatred.
RDBook: Bernard Avishai's The Hebrew Republic
Political economist Bernard Avishai thinks that Israel's best hope for peace and a bright future is to embrace European-style secular democracy, integrating its Arab citizens into a business-driven globalized economy.
RD10Q: Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam
The author discusses his journey through a Muslim subculture, the connection between Nietzsche and Hendrix, and how heavy metal might end the war on terror...
RD10Q: Aimee Semple McPherson, Evangelical Maverick
Sister Aimee was an early 20th century icon and a crucial figure in modern American evangelicalism. In his new book, Matthew Sutton explains why.
RDBook: Is Nothing Secular? A Review of Jewel of Medina
A romance novel about Muhammad is widely condemned and its UK publisher hides under police protection, even as its author insists she means to build a bridge between cultures. Our reviewer explains the historical and literary context of the controversy.
RD10Q: No Peace Without Pluralism
Eboo Patel on forging an American Muslim Identity, on the founding of the Interfaith Youth Core, and on the positive role that religion can play in the world...
RDBook: Whither the Religious Left?
Is a faux 'religious left' being manufactured as an official counterweight to the religious right in the media? Religion Dispatches talks with veteran religious right-watcher Frederick Clarkson about a new book of essays on revivifying a religious left.
On the Kennedy paradigm, the abortion myth, Johnson's moral compass, blithe affirmations of faith, and Billy Graham's hypocrisy...
RD10Q: MLK and the Rhetoric of Freedom
A social movement comes into being when a group of people come to see themselves as sharing a common identity, a common story, and a common destination. How did Dr. King's rhetoric inform the consciousness of the civil rights era?
RDBook: Dialogue in the Dark
In his newest book, No One Sees God, neoconservative theologian Michael Novak tries to reason with the New Atheists...