Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
After Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Judaism, what is the largest religion in the U.K.? In the 2011 census, no fewer than 177,000 Brits ticked the box next to “Jedi Knight” — more than those who checked atheism, agnosticism, and humanism combined. (It’s possible that claiming to be a Jedi Knight is very much born from the desire to poke established faiths in the eye.) Now, one of the Jedis is protesting his treatment by Her Majesty’s prison authorities. Read more
What’s it like to grow up in a cult? Flor Edwards (below), over at the website Narratively, sheds some light with a long personal story that is both fascinating and tonally flat — as if her childhood, overshadowed by apocalyptic messages that forced her to constantly think about her own impending death, left her emotionally and artistically closed off. But perhaps this apparent stuntedness conveys more about the realities of such an upbringing than reams of deeply reflective prose could. Edwards’ parents had fallen under the sway of a charismatic hippie preacher from California named David Brandt Berg, who founded the Jesus-inspired Children of God (later called the Family of Love or simply the Family). Read more
Inflict some gruesome wounds on a guy and publicly hang him from a gallows — or roast him over a fire in a park — and hardly anyone will think that’s bring-the-family fare. But put a crown of thorns on his head and nail him to a cross on public land (next to a busy multi-lane street, no less) and folks will line up to have their little kids pose with the torture victim. This has to be the best still from the Fox 4 local news video that aired on Friday: Read more
I’m going on a five-day trip today, and there’s no doubt what I’ll find in the nightstands of the hotel rooms where I’ll be staying. Just from a marketing point of view — that is, apart from the fact that I don’t believe in gods — it’s still amazing to me that hotels would provide, as a default, Bibles (or any choice of religious literature) to all of their guests. Where’s the sense in potentially irritating multitudes of customers who are Jews, or Buddhists, or Muslims, or agnostics? Read more
“I always thought I’d be seeing him on TV,” Stanley Barnard told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, referring to his son Victor. But not like this. The son, 52, seems to have been bright and athletically gifted in his younger days. Then he became a minister and began to think of himself as someone who wielded influence, even power. It brought out the worst in him. Eventually (and allegedly), the Rev. Victor A. Barnard began recruiting young girls for sex. Now he’s a fugitive from justice, and the subject of a nationwide warrant and a manhunt. Read more
