The novelist and literary critic Mary Gordon loves the story of the prodigal son, for she is a Catholic in her bones. The story, from the Gospels, is of a father’s extravagant love for his proud and dissolute boy, a child so moronic that he spends all his money and lives among swine. Finally returning […]
Mary Gordon’s Rethinking of the Gospels Read More »
Fourteen minutes into the new film Collision, my fingers started to itch for the fast-forward button. I desperately scanned the movie’s press materials: “How long can this go on?” I wondered. (Answer: 90 minutes.) The documentary, which opens this week, shows the public intellectual Christopher Hitchens and an Idaho pastor named Douglas Wilson arguing in
Calling for a Cease-Fire in Religion vs Science Read More »
For an hour on Tuesday I was able to imagine a world in which the Good Book no longer existed—at least not in book form. Two men arrived in my office to show me their new product, a digital Bible called GLO (pronounced “glow”). Unlike other digital Bibles—which look, well, like Bibles—this one is cool
New digital Bible could hasten decline of bound Scriptures. Read More »
Billy Graham had a rule. He was a powerful man, away from his wife and children more often than he was with them. Aware of the significance of his reputation and convinced of the moral value of the Gospel message, he took precautions to guard against his own human weakness. He gave his ministry colleagues
Religious Right Gets Real on Marriage Read More »
When a committed Christian says he believes in the Second Coming of Christ, he believes it the way he believes that Michael Jordan was a basketball player. When an avowed atheist says there is no such thing as God, she knows it the way that she knows that Elvis was a rock star. According to
Fact Or Belief? Your Brain Can’t Tell Read More »
In his controversial bestseller The God Delusion, evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins attacked religious belief. He spoke with me about his new work, The Greatest Show on Earth, and his inimitable style. Excerpts: Why were you motivated to write this book? Well, it’s about the evidence for evolution. Evolution is one of the most
Atheist Richard Dawkins and the Creationists Read More »
Anne Graham Lotz, the second of Billy and Ruth Graham’s five children, says it’s all right: as long as you have a personal relationship with Jesus, church doesn’t really matter. Neither does denomination. “Religion is an impediment to knowing God,” says Lotz, who is promoting a new book, The Magnificent Obsession. “Procedures, rituals, creeds: how
Billy Graham’s Daughter Says Religious Can Be An Impediment Read More »
The latest salvo in the war between the atheists and the believers comes from the doyenne of religious intellectual history, Karen Armstrong. Her tone is one of high-minded irritation. Her argument is compelling. To oversimplify: “faith” and “reason” are not like political parties. You don’t join one after having been convinced via argument of its
Karen Armstrong Weighs In On God Read More »
There is a secret organization of powerful Christians in Washington. Only don’t call it “secret,” its defenders say. Call it “private.” Or “below the radar.” And it’s not an organization, more like a global informal network of friends, or, as one of its leaders described it, “a group of people brought together by a common
Secret Religious Group Gathering Political Power Read More »
As little children, they went to mass each week, and every day in the summertime. “We always had a rosary on our beds; and then, of course, [Mother would] hear our bedtime prayers and do our catechism with us,” said Patricia, the sixth of Joseph and Rose Kennedy’s nine children, in her mother’s memoir, Times
Ted Kennedy: His Faith, His Life Read More »