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This summer, the pope rested at Castel Gandalfo, his traditional summer retreat, urging attention to spiritual priorities, while the Vatican newspaper stayed focused firmly on earthly matters — the legal reforms recently approved in response to the current crisis in the church.

In more ways than have been understood to date, Greece has become Ground Zero of the global meltdown, the epicenter of a shock wave that will yet reveal to us the surprising extent, not just of corporate excess, but of corporations themselves, corporations that now include governments and congregations. We have yet to think through this new way of seeing some very old things: and thus what it means for the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church to be a transnational corporation today.

At the National Prayer Breakfast, Hillary Clinton fondly remembered how Mother Teresa—or perhaps God—compelled her to encourage adoption. The behind-the-scenes story of how The Family brokered a truce between the pro-choice Clinton and anti-choice nun, by moving Clinton rightward on reproductive rights.

When David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute called me out last week on a recent RD post, I decided to take the opportunity to review the history of the conservative think tank’s role in promoting the inclusion of intelligent design theory in the American science curriculum.

Mormonism, a movement that began with an outdoorsy prophet who led the Latter-day Saints to a unique Center Place in North America is now managed by a global corporation that manufactures generic, fungible, sacred space with plush carpeting and upholstery. That seems about as American as it gets.

Skepticism means having the courage to suspend one’s set of beliefs long enough to take another set of beliefs really seriously. That is, real skepticism means disbelieving. So be as skeptical as possible but as open as possible, and remember that if one refuses to investigate religion in this way, then that is known as contempt prior to investigation—and is the death of the life of the mind.

Americans Abroad The Human Rights Campaign has launched a social media campaign targeting American religious activists who promote anti-gay idea and legislation around the world. The campaign is…

I have some experience with Boyd K. Packer. I attended a BYU devotional in the early ’90s where he spoke at length about how homosexuality was “unnatural.” I was disturbed by Elder Packer’s ignorance on this issue twenty years ago—and I was disturbed by his ignorance on the same topic on Sunday morning.

There’s been a lot of talk in the American atheist movement about social justice, but why doesn’t it include justice for religious minorities like Muslims and Sikhs?

Growing up in Topeka, Kansas, wasn’t exactly Hell—not for me anyway. Then again, I spent most of my 18 formative years there hiding from Topeka’s foremost biblical authority, the infamous anti-gay funeral picketer, Rev. Fred Phelps. As a child I had a secret buried deep within…