Carole Pizzolante, from Ontario, Canada, is standing in a historic church in New York City, and she is trying not to cry. Before her is a wall, plastered with the faces of people killed on 9/11. “It’s all so bloody senseless, I can’t get through it,” she says with a wave of her hand, and […]
It may not be fair to call what’s happening in the atheist community a backlash, since atheists have always been and continue to be one of the smallest, most derided groups in the country. In a recent NEWSWEEK Poll, only 3 percent of respondents called themselves atheists and only 30 percent said they’d ever vote
BeliefWatch: Smackdown Read More »
Mornings were chaos. “Four full-blooded little Grahams,” the young mother wrote in her journal. ” I feel this a.m. it’s gotten quite beyond me. They fight, they yell, they answer back. Breakfast is dreadful … Now they’ve gone off to school looking nice enough (for once) and with a good breakfast but with the scrappiest
A Family’s Heartbreak Read More »
The Beliefnet.com post is typical teenage angst, but with a twist. Mother is a zealous new convert to Roman Catholicism. Father is along for the ride. “Silentmist” wants an answer to this question: “How should I go about telling [my mother] about my Buddhism?”
BeliefWatch: Buddhists Read More »
This summer, tourists who want attractions with a Christian flavor have at least two new options to choose from. The first, opening to the public June 5, is the Billy Graham Library, situated on 63 acres in Charlotte, N. C. For historians, the draw is the archives: the personal papers, drafts of sermons and correspondence
BeliefWatch: Edutainment Read More »
With a presidential candidate, a recent television special and 13 million adherents worldwide, the Mormons have gotten an extra dose of media attention lately. But there’s another indigenous American religion that is now making a bid for the spotlight. Formed in the 19th century, four decades after the Latter-day Saints, it, too, emphasizes a bizarre-seeming
BeliefWatch: Witness Read More »
In interviews with NEWSWEEK in the days before the announcement of the “Jesus family tomb” (the suburban Jerusalem cave said to contain the bones of Jesus and his relatives, a claim that later turned out to be overblown), publishers and publicists worried aloud that the public might be suffering from what they called “ossuary fatigue.”
BeliefWatch: Entombed Read More »
Pope Benedict’s trip to Brazil last week revived an old retelling of the Christian story in which Jesus is cast as a social revolutionary determined to overthrow the established order.
A Portrait of Faith Read More »
Who are you for? The cabbies or the airport commission? In Minneapolis, that most open-minded of American cities, the debate has gotten vicious. This week the airport will begin imposing strict sanctions on cabdrivers who refuse to pick up passengers carrying alcohol. After two offenses, a driver can have his license
BeliefWatch: Taxi! Read More »
During his tour in Vietnam, Angelo Charles Liteky, a Roman Catholic chaplain, often traveled with the forward line because he thought it was important to know what the boys out front were feeling. That way, when they broke down, he would be better able to persuade them to soldier on. On Dec. 6, 1967, Liteky
Chaplains: The Calm in the Chaos Read More »