Saudi blogger Raif Badawi with his children. Photograph: Handout The Guardian.

Here is the actual writing that gets you put in prison for 10 years and lashed 1000 times in Saudi Arabia. I call on all bloggers who value freedom...

For me, as a child in the mission, Christmas meant feeling guilty because Mom did so much and we mere mortals did so little. My childhood Yuletide question was: "Mom, who's going to...

Faith is not a set of ridiculous beliefs, it's a way of being. 

An artist is still the best theologian. In this talk given in Colorado Springs to 300 people in the stunning Pikes' Peak Library, I introduced my new book and the...

  Today's secular science of human insignificance inspires its own theology. This secular theology assigns us a contradictory groveling insignificant, significance. We have evolved to a high enough level of ethical consciousness to understand that we're guilty as charged, and are merely insignificant...

The Republican Party base is white evangelicals. So no wonder the GOP lies about the country, the economy and the president worked. The folks who base their lives on religious mythology have spent lifetimes being trained to believe lies. And if you point that out...

Can you think of a worse idea than evangelicals, who believe they are serving God by killing Muslims, fighting Muslims who think they are serving God by killing Christians?

The US government should crack down as hard on both the evangelical freelance American mercenaries going to Iraq to fight ISIS...

(Frank S hanging out back stage with the band Delta Spirit, and with my pals Jesse and Dan Russell.)

I was tired, so fucking tired! The night before last I'd been at The Paradise Club in Boston at a rock concert by Delta Spirit....

Who knew I'd write a book that would help a Jew connect more deeply with his Jewish spirituality? "I heard my rabbi better this year as I fasted and sat all day in the synagogue on Yom...

Transparent is great! Jill Soloway, the show's writer and director/creator is brilliant.

If Amazon's book-selling success scares some writers imagine what lovers of Netflix and HBO will do now that Amazon's binge series, Jill Soloway's Transparent , has turned out to be a...

Will the Tea Party/Koch/Brothers/GOP defend us from Ebola or do we need government involved in healthcare after all?

I mean it would be in we-hate-government-Texas that authorities couldn't even figure out how to clean up the contaminated bed-sheets of a man with Ebola-- wouldn't it?

Did Rick Perry see...

Why do you think so many atheists seem so evangelistic? They even sometimes speak of their moment of "de-conversion" as a flip-side to the so-called born again experience. If life teaches us anything it's that certainty is overrated.

The real life-lessons aren't found in intellectual theories much less in theology,...

What's needed to save the dwindling Church is a new paradigm: the embrace of atheism as the true religion and religion as...

"We're living in an acquisitive capitalist society that is fundamentally anti-family and fundamentally uncomfortable with just enjoying being human. We'd rather shop than live, acquire than love and stare into a screen than hold each other."

Over lunch today, my wife Genie told...

Who is actually following Jesus: fundamentalist Christians rejecting gay men and lesbians' right to marry, or atheist humanists treating men and women with love and dignity? Fact-based, enlightened atheists sometimes treat people like shit, and delusional fundamentalists sometimes treat people with compassion in...

I was just speaking at SoulFest (August 7-9). It's a music festival with evangelical roots. The band Switchfoot played. I'm several things but not evangelical. Could you imagine a more uncomfortable fit for me? I was expecting the worst. What I got was two...

It was a bright September day, clear, cool and perfect. My wife Genie, my grandchildren Lucy (age 5 and in the picture here taken that spring at Easter), Jack (3) and my daughter-in-law, Becky, were sprawled on the lawn. Lucy wandered over to the vegetable garden...

Why does prayer feel both right and normal to me and crazy, too? The best I can do is offer this analogy. In the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, people receive a vision...

(A 1984 satirical magazine cover depicting "Franky" Schaeffer as a "kid" throwing mud at Christianity Today Magazine and Billy Graham for not being conservative enough!)

Dear Evangelical Establishment,

I know you don't trust or like me and I don't blame you! Lord knows what...

(Right) Mom and Dad (Edith and Francis Schaeffer) in L'Abri 1972

"The very fabric of the universe is unknowable and stranger than we can imagine and has a message for us: climb down off that high atheist, religious or agnostic pedestal!"...

I'd been writing novels and literary nonfiction for twenty years before I dared to write a memoir about my flight from my evangelical past. That book became the bestselling CRAZY FOR GOD: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived...