popular culture

Benedict urges Catholic priests to use digital tech to teach and to evangelize, but the Holy Father may be underestimating the power of the non-hierarchical ethos of social media. Here’s hoping we might actually see a Vatican 2.0.

Ted Haggard, one of America’s most successful megachurch preachers, was officially separated from his church back in 2006. His wife and partner, Gayle, has stuck by his side through it all and has written a new book on the experience. RD spoke with her about their former church, their evolving views on homosexuality, and the future.

In the 1990s angels became a spiritual accoutrement for prosperous yet troubled baby-boomers adrift in a suburban wasteland of McMansions and Lincoln Navigators. Do the angry angels of the new film Legion, with their roots in angelmania, mean that for many Americans God is absent? And do these creatures, heavenly and horrific, fill the vacuum?

After a Tennessee news report touts anti-Muslim propaganda, a mosque is vandalized.

The ancient Greeks celebrated athletic contests because of their danger; we moderns are far more conflicted about the matter.

What do you get when you add taqwa, or God-consciousness, to the punk suffix “-core”? Can something be Islamic without being religious? As journalists try to get a handle on this genre- and culture-bending mashup, RD associate editor Hussein Rashid gets right to the source.

More on the sci-fi TV show that imagines monotheists rebelling against a polytheist society, speculates about the nature of the human soul, and asks, “Can you be free if you’re not real?”

Can a mechanical body have a personality? How about multiple personalities? Caprica asks these tried and true sci-fi questions, but then takes a leap into questions of terrorism—and sexual identity.

New Age guru James Arthur Ray was arrested in Arizona last week, charged with manslaughter in the deadly miscarriage of a sweat lodge ritual. The news lit up with “expert” analysis, but none of it was from Indian religious leaders or practitioners. What does “expert” mean in this context?

The Tebow family are in the missionary business, and the ad they produced for Focus on the Family used their son’s football stardom to good effect. But what were they really selling?