Seven percent of Americans say they “attend religious services in someone’s home.” This surprising little fact was buried in a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which showed that Americans are as loosey-goosey in their […]
House of Worship: Finding Spirituality at Home Read More »
The YouTube video is almost too corny to believe. The year is 1955. A young boy, about 6 and afflicted with polio, is sitting on Oral Roberts’s lap. With praise and prayer, the preacher touches the boy all over his
An American Original: Oral Roberts Read More »
Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor who drew fire last January when he gave the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration, is to be lauded for his fortitude. In a videotaped statement released last week, Warren condemned proposed legislation in Uganda that
Rick Warren Finally Opposes Uganda Anti-Homosexual Law Read More »
Heaven, according to polls, is a place nearly everyone wants to go to, so why don’t movies ever remotely capture that yearning? We all carry inchoate visions of heaven around in our heads, but we don’t realize how bruising another’s
Heaven on Film – the Lovely Bones Read More »
Were I to submit my cells to DNA tests, results would doubtless show that —barring any surprises—I am a Jew. I have four Jewish grandparents. Genetically speaking, I share a common ancestry with most Jews, no matter where they live,
We suffer, this week, from a moral myopia. Thanks to the passage in Congress of a health-reform bill, abortion is in the news again, but with the same old warriors brandishing their same old spears. Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling
Health Care: Abortion Is Not the Only Moral Issue Read More »
We are giving ourselves shallow and untenable choices. Either Islam is a religion that condones violence. Or Islam is a religion of peace. Either Maj. Nidal Hasan, who opened fire at the Army base in Fort Hood, Texas, last week,
Hasan was both a Fundamentalist and a Terrorist Read More »
At Harvard, it’s sounding a lot like the ’70s again. Thanks to the provocations of True Love Revolution, the university’s three-year-old pro-abstinence club, brainy women are defending their right to have sex with whomever they want, whenever and however they
The Fight over Abstinence at Harvard Read More »
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
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,
Calling for a Cease-Fire in Religion vs Science Read More »