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Harold Camping admits he was wrong, but only in the most technical way. He wasn’t really wrong, he is saying, because he trusts God, and was just passing God’s false prophecy along. It’s not that he’s wrong, that’s not the point, and not that he’s sorry. This, Camping says, is just “how God brings His messages to mankind.” Apology and repentance this is not.

I call this campaign “theocratic” as a Baptist minister who holds all human life to be sacred. But issues around human life are not as simple as the “personhood” proponents believe.

The desire to translate events like Qaddafi’s death into video games is an attempt to simplify complex issues into patterns that we can recognize and make sense of, with predictable rules, defeatable “bad guys,” and the hopeful celebration of an “epic win.”

In a move not widely reported outside of Michigan, the Michigan State Senate passed the country’s first pro-bullying bill on November 2. At first, it was an anti-bullying measure not unlike the laws passed in many other states. But under the perverse influence of a few far-right opportunists, legislators led by State Senator Rick Jones (R, of course) became convinced that the law would somehow persecute those noble enforcers of Christian—I’m sorry, “Judeo-Christian”—values in our nation’s high schools: bullies.

When I heard the goals for this year’s massive prayer rally—healing America in a time of crisis, accomplishing racial reconciliation, repairing Detroit, and (here’s the part where I come in) bringing Jesus to Muslim hearts—I figured a Muslim in the crowd could be a nice twist. My plan was to report from the inside, to talk to the attendees as one among devoted thousands. I’d try to understand how such Christians understand Islam, for Lou Engle’s world is alien from my New England roots and New York life. I’d attended churches before, but nothing like this.

This week, a pair of anti-abortion bills were fast-tracked for passage through the Ohio legislature, drawing attention to the surprising success of Ohio’s increasingly divided anti-choice movement.

Left or Right, the market always seems to win. This is actually where I would locate the greater threat to Arab democracy, and the temptation to slide into some form of authoritarianism, older or newer. As the people of the region confront the reality that they have little say over economic policy, and will be forced to accede to the contingencies of global capitalism, they may well become immensely frustrated by the scale of change and demand something different. Considering how volatile European and American politics have become, and how frequently we now see street protests and even supposedly stable and demure countries, how much more so these new democracies?

Russell is continually, even post-mortem, called “ provocative,” “ controversial,” and “ iconoclastic.” And at least a few of these obits have noted his conversion to Roman Catholicism all those years ago, though he was never quite settled in his faith. Certainly there was religious content in his films—the nuns and priests in a sexual standoff in The Devils (1971), Anthony Perkins’ creepy street preacher in Crimes of Passion (1984)—but it was the human experience that Russell so strangely charted that leaves me thinking of his “religious” nature. He portrayed the depths of human depravity and desire, of lust and liking.

Where Bush would sign something because anti-choice was his base, Perry actively instigates. A report from the frontlines of the kinder, gentler scorched-earth campaign against abortion and birth control in Texas.

Should the Family Research Council president be banned?