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.
Feast your eyes on this addition to the (sub)urban landscape: According to Topekasnews.com, “prayer booths” like these have been placed all over Kansas City, Kansas in recent months. Since the booths were put in throughout town several months ago, Kansas City data tracking confirms that on average, the prayer booths receive over 100,000 callers per week. “It is therapeutic, that is how we lobbied them through city council,” local pastor Reverend Miles Collier reports. ”We said these prayer booths are not just for Christians, but for any person to take a break to close their eyes, ask out loud for what they need in life and just take a break from it all. It is like having a free counseling session.” The account is confirmed by media outlets as varied as Democratic Underground, Mediabistro, and India Today, if by “confirm” you mean “copied.” Read more
Max Lucado is a Texas preacher and writer with 80 million books in print, including Just Like Jesus and When God Whispers Your Name. Rick Santorum is the über-Catholic former Senator from Pennsylvania who, after losing his bid for re-election in 2006, made a failed presidential run, and then announced he would start a film company to make good old-fashioned, pro-Christian, family-friendly fare. He’s on record as calling Hollywood “the devil’s playground.” Let’s see if these two were made for each other. (No, not that way.) Santorum produced a treacly Hallmark-meets-Dickens period movie, in theaters now, based on Lucado’s The Christmas Candle. Here’s the trailer: The critics have shown themselves somewhere between lukewarm and ice cold. Read more