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Just when it seemed that the interminable presidential campaign had plumbed every depth of the absurd, witchcraft entered the picture....

John the Baptist baptized Jesus of Nazareth. The synoptic Gospels all say so, and the kerygma in Acts connects the beginning of Jesus’ ministry with that baptism. But although Mark seems to find it quite right that Jesus should have been among those who heeded John’s preaching, all the other evangelists seem discomfited by the suggestion that Jesus was somehow a disciple of this other preacher.

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Like a starter’s pistol, this brief first verse rings out and Mark’s narrative is off and running....

Residents of the Pacific Northwest are redefining what it means to be religious. The region is sometimes called the None Zone because 63 percent of those polled for the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey said that they were not affiliated with a religious group, compared to 41 percent of all Americans, and 25 percent claimed to have no religious identity—compared to 14 percent nationally. By checking “none” on a survey, however, Northwesterners are not necessarily signaling a lack of interest in religion. They are indicating, says Patricia Killen, a historian and dean of Pacific Lutheran University, that they do not think “religious identity is connected to a historic religious institution or faith.”

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Susan Jacoby is a formidable social critic who writes from a progressive stance and in an accessible style....

A world more full of weeping than [we] can understand.” David O’Connor quotes this line from Yeats in the first...

The problem of evil has plagued Christians for centuries....

Gustav Niebuhr was a longtime religion reporter for the New York Times and is the grandson of H....

Screenwriters love structure: it gives them something to focus on as they plow ahead in their storytelling or to retreat to if they get off track....

I have not baptized many adults, so those I have baptized stand out and are special to me. One was a woman I'll call Eleanor. Eleanor's hair has tight curls....

For more than a decade, Adbusters magazine has been promoting Buy Nothing Day, an anti-consumerist alternative to hittin...

What motivates so many evangelicals—with their preference for heavenly treasure and their devotion to the Bible, a book full of diatribes...

My George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine is sitting in my basement, serving as a lovely stand for our waffle iron....

Lydie Raschka’s article on her experience of helping serve dinner to homeless and hungry people at Thanksgiving raises issues that I ...

In the course of discussing tax policy with an unlicensed Ohio plumber, Barack Obama suggested that “spreading the wealth around” a bit more would be good for the country....

Cuddle and preach? Some people allege that Mattel’s Little Mommy Cuddle N’ Coo doll emits the words “Islam is the light.” The toy manufacturer says that the sound emitted resembles the word night, right or light. The company promises to eliminate the misleading sound in future production of the doll (UPI).

It’s almost Thanksgiving, and soon my church in New York City will be serving turkey with all the trimmings to over 400 people. I play a major role in this volunteer effort and sometimes I feel quite virtuous. At last, I tell myself, I’m learning how to feel useful during a holiday that is emotionally fraught for many. But sometimes the annual meal looks less like a joyful act of holiday giving than a thinly disguised act of “slumming.” Those of us serving the meal will be almost uniformly white, after all, while those being served will be mostly black and Hispanic. After the meal is over, the “out-of-towners” will go home and eat healthier, more gourmet Thanksgiving meals.

Whereas new atheist writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are deadly serious, Bill Maher’s mockumentary on religion, Religulous, is as funny as Maher’s comedy show on HBO....