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.
I would like to think that this personal essay in the New York Times exemplifies the future for religion in America. Faith in the U.S. will become more like faith in Western Europe: Subdued, modestly and self-consciously practiced, and just a little outside the mainstream. As I drove home from church, I eyed the bright foam sign my 6-year-old daughter held. “Jesus is Alive” it read in kid scrawl. “We’re supposed to put them in our yards!” Noelle beamed, eyeing her creation proudly through pink-rimmed glasses. I imagined our wide, open yard in Pennsylvania, the green grass stretching without fences from one neighbor to the next. Our best friends in the neighborhood, secular humanists, would easily see it. I cringed. What would they think? Read more
The belief that the Earth is at the center of the universe and that the sun circles our planet went out the window in the mid-1500s after Nicolaus Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. It became completely discredited when Johannes Kepler added in his two cents a century later. Copernicus, by the way, came 1,800 years after Aristarchus of Samos, who posited a similar theory: that the Earth circles the sun, not the other way around. In that regard, there’s nothing new under the, em, sun. That is, unless you’re Katheryne Thomas, the director of The Principle, a soon-to-be-released Christian documentary that promises to turn the current knowledge of our galaxy on its head by allegedly returning to the old saw that our sun circles the Earth. Read more
A Christian couple, Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar, have been ordered to pay with their lives after they allegedly sent the imam of a local mosque a text message that a court deemed an insult to the Prophet Muhammad. The exact content of the message is unclear. Pakistani media are mum about it, as quoting the offending text would be blasphemous all over again — an inevitable Kafkaesque twist in cases like these, which means that no one but the Islamic judges can gauge how serious the so-called offense was. Whatever the words used, Kausar and Emmanuel say they are are innocent, claiming that the text was sent from a cellphone that the couple had lost some weeks earlier. Read more
What’s the difference between running a church and running a religious business? The Internal Revenue Service is happy to pretend that there isn’t one, NPR’s John Burnett found in a two-part investigation: Televangelists have a choice when they deal with the IRS. Some, like Pat Robertson and Billy Graham, register as religious organizations. They’re exempt from most taxes but still must file disclosure reports showing how they make and spend their money. Daystar [one the largest religious TV networks in America] and dozens of others call themselves churches, which enjoy the greatest protection and privacy of all nonprofit organizations in America. Churches avoid not only taxes, but any requirement to disclose their finances. And, as NPR has learned, for the past five years churches have avoided virtually any scrutiny whatsoever from the federal government’s tax authority. Read more
If some doctors like to play God, Dr. Kim Seok-Kwun is content just correcting the Big Guy’s goofs. As Dr. Kim Seok-Kwun begins surgery to create a functioning penis for a Buddhist monk who was born female, he is well aware of the unease his work creates in deeply conservative South Korea. The devout Protestant known as the “father of South Korean transgender people” once wrestled with similar feelings. “I’ve decided to defy God’s will,” Dr. Kim, 61, said in an interview… Read more
