popular culture

The mood in Cuernavaca was subdued this week after four decapitated bodies were discovered, hung from their feet from an overpass in yet another set of drug-related assassinations. Turf-battles between rival drug cartels have plagued the once-tranquil “city of eternal spring” since…

While Americans celebrate Labor Day with picnics, BBQs, and weekend getaways, Germany-based FIAA GmbH is releasing the beta version of The Bible Online: Heroes, the first installment of a projected series of MMORTS (massively multiplayer…

For the past four years, Pastor Bill Dunfee of the New Beginnings Ministries Church has led his congregation in picketing The Foxhole, a tiny gentleman’s club in Warsaw, Ohio. Church members usually arrive at the Foxhole on weekends at 11:30pm, bearing signs, bullhorns, and cameras. While…

if you are a true devotee, you can follow Gilbert’s steps to to Italy, India, and Indonesia—as a solo pilgrim, as some have done, or as a member of a tour costing a cool $19,795. Or, alternatively, you could do what seems just as rewarding: savage the movie and book on the Internet.

It was pouring rain, cold rain, on an early March morning, as I headed to Brooklyn Label, a café near my apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I was meeting Vito Aiuto, pastor of Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Williamsburg, a plant of Redeemer Presbyterian, one of the largest and most…

Law was targeted at Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps’ protests.

If Eid ul-Fitr falls on the anniversary of 9/11, it will be an especially difficult task for a Muslim in New York. How do I, as an American and a Muslim, deal with what people claiming my religion did to us—New Yorkers, Americans, human beings?

Although I have become more cynical about the power of simply listening to music in the decade since I found the CD, I still had high hopes for the festival. As a festival for music, it was beautiful, but as a venue for intercultural understanding, I believe it missed the mark more than it hit it.

When I was told that Christopher Hitchens has been diagnosed with cancer and that this has sparked a discussion about whether people ought to pray for him, my first reaction was a stupefying bewilderment. I can’t say that I’ve entirely recovered.

The week in religion, poetically.