Steve Taylor and his Chagall Guevara colleagues were fired up when they arrived in Los Angeles to do the cover for the band’s first and only album for MCA Records. They also were hungry, so they promptly called Domino’s Pizza. Trouble was, one MCA executive didn’t think much of Domino’s leaders. Taylor distinctly remembers the words: “They support those pro-life Nazis.” “We did have a rather spirited argument,” confessed Taylor, describing that infamous clash in 1990. “It started in one... Read more

Bud Welch was driving his daughter Julie-Marie home from college when a radio signal drifted over the Iowa plains and started another talk about the big issues in life. It was a report about another execution in Texas. Welch said his daughter’s response was blunt: “Dad, all they’re doing is teaching hate to their children. … It has no social redeeming value.” This remark was not surprising, since this whole Catholic family was opposed to the death penalty. “I didn’t... Read more

NEW CANAAN, Pa. — The icon is coming to life in Father Paul Albert’s imagination and in the simple pen-and-ink drawings he is sharing with his bishops. The drawings show the strong face of an Arab bishop, with a thick salt-and-pepper beard and hair that contrast starkly with his Byzantine vestments. The dominant colors in the icon will be bright green touched with gold, the colors that Eastern Christianity uses to symbolize new life and Pentecost, the birthday of the... Read more

WASHINGTON — The late, great religion writer George Cornell knew a big story when he saw one — especially when people kept underlining it. It was in April 1982, that he wrote his Associated Press story about research by S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman into the moral and religious views of journalists in America’s top newsrooms. One statistic jumped out of the report and into pulpits nationwide. Half of these journalists, when faced with the “religious affiliation” blank, wrote... Read more

Way back in the 1990s, Faith Popcorn had a sports car with a driver’s seat that could be programmed to fit three different people, making each feel comfortable with a simple click. This perfectly symbolized what the hip market analyst calls “Egonomics,” which is what happens when Information Age consumers feel swamped and depersonalized and demand products that let them wallow in “me, myself and I.” “We Americans are the most self-analyzed and self-important people on the planet,” argued Popcorn,... Read more

On Sept. 18, 1793, President George Washington donned his Masonic apron and helped lay the U.S. Capitol’s cornerstone. Today, the plaque commemorating this event is in a small space just inside a door, near a stairway, across from an elevator in a maze of busy Rotunda hallways. It’s a hard place to pause for prayer, but this is always one of the Rev. Pierre Bynum’s first stops when leading Capitol Hill Prayer Alert tours. For many evangelicals, said Bynum, it’s... Read more

Holy Saturday was an appropriately solemn day at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, as the faithful prayed in side chapels, said their confessions and prepared for Easter rites that were only hours away. Down in the crypt, Kristin Kazyak paced before a life-sized color photograph of the Shroud of Turin. For hours, she answered familiar questions about the 14-foot sheet and how its lightly scorched fibers offer a negative photographic image that contains 3-D information. She discussed the... Read more

Once a week, Barrie Schwortz digs into the computer data that describe who is using his Web site dedicated to news, photographs and scientific papers about the Shroud of Turin. The report doesn’t give names, but does show where people work. Scrolling through the “dot.edu” addresses yields scores of hits from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale and numerous other campuses. Some codes in the “dot.gov” listings are tougher to decipher. Nevertheless, a trained eye can spot the Los Alamos National Labs,... Read more

Every now and then, messiahs slip past newspaper security personnel and pay visits to religion reporters, offering scoops on the end of the world and other hot stories. Guards can spot those who wear robes or offer other clues that they may not currently reside in a known zip code. Nevertheless, a prophet who looked like Elvis once reached my desk at the Charlotte Observer. The great religion writer Russell Chandler, now retired from the Los Angeles Times, has threatened... Read more

For the principalities and powers at Microsoft, these are the times that try geeks’ souls. Then again, maybe an even more serious judgment day lies ahead. Not long ago, Microsoft’s advertising team came up with a cheery slogan to assure consumers that the software giant understands the daily challenges faced by ordinary people. One of these spots features a snippet of Mozart’s Requiem, juxtaposed with Microsoft’s omnipresent question, “Where do you want to go today?” A recent issue of the... Read more