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Vienna’s Newest Boy Band
The question comes off like an old “Monty Python” gag. What musical group in Britain is more popular than Paul Simon or the Ting Tings? The Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz. Several weeks ago, a group of Cistercian monks who live in a 12th-century monastery near Vienna, who wear cowls and wake at 5 each morning
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Joining the ‘Out’ Club
While in the secular world some colleges are debating whether to designate special restrooms for transgendered students, Christian colleges are pondering whether to allow gay students to organize at all. Andy Swenson is an unlikely revolutionary. Raised in a conservative Lutheran household, he grew up believing that homosexuality was a sin. He arrived on the
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‘If He Were Here, It Would Be Different’
Jerry Falwell’s widow Macel remembers her husband in a new book, and wonders how the religious right is doing without him. When the Rev. Jerry Falwell died a year ago at age 73, his obituaries were like the mixed reviews of a blockbuster movie. While acknowledging his power and influence—Falwell founded the Moral Majority in
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His Mobile Ministry: The Houston mega-pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell
Politicians have long sought the counsel of faith leaders. Obama’s got 100 dialing in to pray for him. The Houston mega-pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell—who presided over Jenna Bush’s wedding last month and has offered spiritual counsel to her father—is a Christian VIP, so busy that his cell-phone voicemail says, “Do not leave messages here.” But on
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The Milquetoast Manifesto
Though Saddleback’s pastor, Rick Warren, helped draft the document and was rumored to be among the signers, he is not. What if the evangelicals wrote a manifesto and nobody cared? It was supposed to be a decisive document, a credo that unified American evangelicals around the Christian principles that form the foundations of their faith.
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The House That Wright Built
It’s just a church. It’s a two-story yellow-brick building in a crummy but not terrible Chicago neighborhood. There’s red wall-to-wall carpet throughout, and high behind the altar are two modest stained-glass windows. There are three services on Sunday and Bible study on Wednesday nights. The pews are filled with “church ladies” in sweater sets and
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✴︎ Religion
Everything Old Is New Again
It should come as no surprise that N. T. Wright believes that the resurrection really happened. As the Anglican bishop of Durham, a commitment to the idea of a risen Jesus would seem to be part of the job description. Among many Western Christians, however, the word “resurrection” means something else: a supernatural event, a
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An Algorithm for Mr. Right
Let’s say you want to get married and you’re thinking of joining an Internet dating site. Wouldn’t you want that site to be just a little bit picky? Wouldn’t you want it to eliminate the creepy already-marrieds
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The Preacher Speaks
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is a man of many faces. He’s an old-school ’70s lefty, a man who preached every Sunday in what the American religion scholar Martin Marty has called “greenish African-American pajamas.” He’s an intellectual, a professor who reads Hebrew and Greek, a gifted musician who can play a wide variety of instruments
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✴︎ Religion
Why This Pope Doesn’t Connect
The Rev. Gerald Fogarty decided not to go to the pope’s mass in Washington because he’s busy teaching that day at the University of Virginia. The Rev. John Dufell considered joining him at Yankee Stadium, but he’s got a couple of weddings to do, so he also passed. Paul Kane, a retired lawyer who goes