Seattle was still reeling from the cold blooded execution of a police officer on Halloween, when the news hit on Sunday that four more officers were dead.  Monday, as I was trying to weave my way through a city swarming with blue cars and uniforms, and drenched with anxiety...

On November 5,  a Muslim US army psychiatrist, Nidal Malik Hasan,  shot and killed thirteen of his fellow soldiers on the Fort Hood military base, injuring another thirty.  In response to the Fort Hood shootings, some people blamed Islam.  Others said Islam had nothing to do with it, that the problem...

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. – Charles Darwin

Last week, as I was driving a carload of middle-schoolers to a movie, the kids started talking about their teachers.  I couldn’t help overhearing, “ ....

Dear Bishops –

In our struggle to get health care for all, you saw an opportunity to make sure that American women can’t afford abortions, a way to be the deciders for all of us.  You look at someone like me who has had an abortion, and you see a...

"I had no need of that hypothesis."

Over the course of the summer I wrote a series of articles about brain science and Christianity, and I promised a final installment that never came.  This is it. The series asked and--within the limits of present knowledge--answered a set of questions that...

As the Right Wing base sinks to new levels of insanity taking the Republican brand with it, “going stealth”  has become the campaign strategy of choice in districts where an all-out, Teabagger Town Hall, Palin-Beck, froth-mouthed feeding frenzy would just turn stomachs.  The Right’s agenda isn’t evolving, just its tactics. ...

Advice for candidates from a former fundie.

One thing I learned not long after finishing my Spanish degree was -- never volunteer to translate anything into a language you don't dream in. I was visiting Flores, Guatemala, and offered to help a small art collective. In response, they handed me...

The most controversial check I write each year is the one that goes to a small nonprofit called Project Prevention. Project Prevention pays drug addicts and chronic alcoholics to get permanent or long term birth control. Director Barbara Harris founded the program after adopting not one or two but...

Next week in King County, Washington, "nonpartisan" Susan Hutchison will be vying with Democrat Dow Constantine for the role of County Executive. The seat controls significant resources in a region that often plays a leadership role in future oriented public policy. If King County were a state, its budget...

"I don't know if it's real," my friend Laura said, "but some conservatives have decided to edit the Bible. I sent you the link." She started laughing, and I laughed too. Over the next few days more friends sent articles about the Conservative Bible Project. All asked the...

A couple of years back, I dragged my agnostic husband, Brian, to a Calvinist megachurch. Calvinist means God preselected a few humans for salvation and the rest for eternal torture. We sat there for an hour, goats among the sheep. Brian's reaction? "That was the best indie rock I've heard...

On October 2nd, The Seattle Times featured an AP article about the recent quake in Sumatra, along with a "how to help" list. At the top of that list was World Vision International.

What the article failed to mention, and many donors fail to realize, is that World Vision...

In case you missed the announcement, ShipofFools.com has published an "authoritative" list of the ten worst verses in the Bible. At a time when atheists are posting ads on billboards and busses around the world, you might assume that the Ship is an anti-religious site. But no. Ship...

Change Happens

The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue. -Antisthenes

My parents, as I've said before, were three for six in terms of producing believing children. All of us accepted Jesus as our personal savior. We all entered the...

Republicans say that Democrats fail to encourage personal responsibility. A battle in Seattle Washington over plastic bag fees provides a perfect, if minor, example. After the city council voted to require a twenty cent per bag fee for disposable grocery bags, CAMP, the Central Area Motivation Program joined the...

How Beliefs Resist Change

The Jesuits have a saying sometimes attributed to Francis Xavier, "Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man." The Jesuits were a tad optimistic, but ample research on identity formation shows that religious, cultural, and political identity...

(This article is adapted from an interview conducted by Valerie Tarico on Moral Politics Television, Seattle, June 12, 2009. Guest Reverend Rich Lang has been preaching his way through the book of Revelation this summer. Sermons on Chapters 1-12 can be found here. Special thanks to Producer Bill Alford.)

How Viral Ideas Hook Us

Did you know that Temple Baptist Church was built on land that sold for 57 cents, the amount saved by a little girl that had been turned away from her Sunday school? Did you hear about the guy who died in his sleep, killed by...

IV. The Born Again Experience.

I prayed harder and just then I felt like everything I was saying was being sucked into a vacuum. When I stood up, I felt like thin air; I had to brace myself. I felt this energy, it was a kind of an ecstasy."...

I Know Because I Know

On a warm afternoon in June, two men have appointments with a psychiatrist. The first has been dragged to the office by his wife, much to his irritation. He is a biologist who suffers from schizophrenia, and the wife insists that his meds are...