Lisa Miller

Lisa Miller is a domestic correspondent for the New York Times. She is a former contributing editor to New York magazine, the former religion columnist for the Washington Post, and former senior editor of Newsweek magazine. She is the author of “Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife" and a co-author of "Take Up Space: The Unprecedented AOC."

Even if they don’t follow its rules, Catholics stick with their church

American Catholics are famously indifferent to the directives of their leaders. They don’t follow the rule book on much of anything: birth control, legal abortion, premarital sex, divorce. They wish, by a wide margin, that their bishops were talking more about social justice issues such as poverty and less about culture-war issues such as abortion. […]

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The Wrecking of Zipcar?

Unwelcome turns. An upbeat e-mail arrived this week from my friends at Zipcar, and it made me so sad. “Add a damage fee waiver for smooth sailing, Lisa,” it said. “Be prepared and enjoy the ride.” Zipcar, launched in 2000 to transform a maddening industry, was selling me collision insurance I probably don’t need. It

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Reasons to Love New York: Because Now Even Our Principals Are Speaking Out Against Overtesting

New York’s public-school principals have generally felt it their duty to protect, not strain, relations between their schools and the DOE bosses at Tweed. Accordingly, principals have mostly not been among the critics of the system’s growing emphasis on standardized testing. But this year, a small group of them began to speak out. Among the

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Homeschooling, City-Style

Why more and more city parents are teaching their kids themselves. Homeschooler Ocean, 5, of Cobble Hill, playing with his 2-year-old sister, Billie. “When school was created, it prepared people for the industrial revolution or factory jobs,” says mom Oona Hart, who shares homeschooling duties with her husband, Danny Timmins. “It’s limiting.” It’s 1:15 on

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