This question demands a scrupulously specific answer, not some vague blather about our "Judeo-Christian heritage." That's not a sect. Read more

Theory: Kids raised in white evangelicalism tend to find playing chaotic good characters weirdly liberating. Read more

Some negative good news, plus: defining the Christian Right, more Republican voter fraud, and a scandal with my name on it. Read more

Some of us are quite clever by the standards of finite, mortal, time-bound cleverness, but still reality is bigger than we are. Read more

From April 6, 2016, “Don’t waste time trying to please people who are determined never to be pleased by you”: This exchange of letters is from the 1960s, but fundamentalist gatekeepers haven’t changed — even now that they’ve been rebranded as evangelicals. They still love to catechize everyone about everything, constantly asking just the sort of hostile and pretentious questions that Barth’s interlocutors sought to trap him with. Asking questions is usually a Good Thing but, as Barth realized, these... Read more

I’ve studied enough about Great Awakenings to realize they’re really not that great. Read more

From April 4, 2012, “Friday the 13th: A Ghost Story“: It’s not widely discussed. Those who have witnessed it firsthand are, for obvious reasons, reluctant to talk about it. You’ll never see them publicly recounting their tales in front of the cameras and the microphones. These aren’t stories they are eager to tell. But one hears whispers, rumors, stories told by the friends of friends. And those whispers, rumors and stories are too numerous and too eerily similar to be... Read more

So many cruel machines, so few monkey wrenches. Read more

The Manhattan Declaration — a 2009 anti-gay manifesto — collected half a million names and addresses. That mailing list is a money-making machine. Read more