For some, apocalyptic anxiety is in the air (along with a fall chill). Washington Post writer Joel Achenbach set out to explore the latest doom and gloom in “2012: Eh, It’s Not the End Of the World: Film & Internet Rumors Fuel Doomsday Babble.”
LAT uncovers California megachurches
Mr. Natural’s Bible
Cartoonist Robert Crumb went to San Francisco in 1967 and published his first issue of Zap Comix in 1968, introducing underground comic fans to Mr. Natural, an unstable holy man whose motto was: “Keep on Truckin.’”
God on the boob tube
Let us now praise the men and women of the PBS newsmagazine “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly,” who have been covering religion on the tube since 1997.
Obama’s (almost) pastor
After Barack Obama moved into the White House he needed to find a dog and a church. The search for a dog ended in April with Bo, a Portuguese Water Dog. But whatever happened to the church search? And who would become the president’s pastor after he split with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright last spring?
All praise to Oprah! In Dallas?
When it comes to God, Oprah Winfrey and Dallas — the city that many consider the evangelical capital of America — I am sure of two things.
The great omission
I’m not sure GetReligion has ever highlighted a gap in religious coverage before. But I think I’ve find just the occasion. And my blind hope is that the reasoning behind this omission was a collective decision to ignore the problem — in this case, Jon Gosselin, the former co-star of “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ and a fallen hero for American evangelicals — and pray he will just go away.
Mormon America
When I first saw the painting here by Jon McNaughton, I thought it was one of the best distillations of civil religion I’d seen. While most American civil religion focuses on generic Jewish and Christian themes, I wondered if this painting didn’t reference some particularly Mormon doctrine.
Scientology vs. angry web trolls
There have been many stories about the ongoing battle between Scientology and a loose-knit, Internet-based gang of anti-Scientology anarchists known as Anonymous.
