Most Recent Articles:

Obama in Lynchburg: The Faith-versus-Works Debate

Here’s a photo I took this weekend while driving through Lynchburg, the central Virginia town where religious right leader Jerry Falwell ministered and built Liberty University. The sign outside this small church reads, as you can see: “USA TELL OBAMA JESUS CHRIST NEEDED FOR SALVATION READ ACTS 4:12.”
Part of the reason this sign caught my […]

Andrea Useem | July 23rd, 2008 | Continued

Most Recent Articles:

What the Heck Is the Emerging Church? A “Velvet Elvis” Answer

I always like new ideas, and I relish nothing more than watching big, paradigm-shifting movements overturn the status quo. (This probably has something to do with my birth-order position as a “rebellious” second child, but anyways.) Emergent Christianity has tickled my interest recently because it is just that: a completely new way of doing things. […]

Andrea Useem | July 16th, 2008 | Continued

Most Recent Articles:

When God Goes Bad: Shalom Auslander’s Memoir of Rotten Religion

Here’s something I don’t like doing: Writing frankly about my own life. Here’s something I love doing: Reading other people write frankly about their lives. As a result, I love Shalom Auslander’s book, Foreskin’s Lament, in which he writes with a hilarious, tragic clarity about his life as a recovering Orthodox Jew.
Luckily, Auslander is funny […]

Andrea Useem | July 9th, 2008 | Continued

Most Recent Articles:

God and Forgiveness on the Bathroom Floor: Immaculee Ilibagiza and the Rwandan Genocide

Some books are so powerful, so disturbing, I almost hesitates to recommend them or pass along a copy to a friend. Left to Tell, a spiritual autobiography written by a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, is one such book. A friend who read it at her church lent it to me, and the book spent […]

Andrea Useem | June 17th, 2008 | Continued

Most Recent Articles:

When Orthodoxy Is Good for You: Making Sense of the “Hajj Effect”

Headlines about Islam usually write themselves: A Muslim blowing up innocent people is dog-bites-man. A Muslim acting thoughtful or funny or anything besides angry is man-bites-dog. The obvious headline from a recent academic study, “Estimating the Impact of the Hajj: Religion and Tolerance in Islam’s Global Gathering,” fell into the latter category: Three economists […]

Andrea Useem | June 10th, 2008 | Continued

About this Site

What is ReligionWriter.com? Is it a blog?
ReligionWriter.com is an online micro-publication meant to showcase new ideas on religion in whole-grain journalism format. It is a blog in the technical sense that it has regular postings in reverse-chronological order. On some topics, ReligionWriter offers an opinionated, personal outlook; on others it offer a more objective, journalistic […]