Religion

Latest Articles

Local musical sends up gay-hating, gay culture

Theatrical exposures
Reverend Jonathan Fisher (Michael Tobin), founder of Straight and Narrow, an evangelical congregation meant to "cure" homosexuals, has a problem.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 12, 2011

Ferraro, a photo, and a legacy

Tribute
Geraldine Ferraro's photograph stands proudly in a silver frame, inscribed to my daughter with the words, "You are my hero."
By MARY ANN SORRENTINO | March 30, 2011

Review: R. Crumb illuminates the Bible at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Biblically speaking
The Book of Genesis seems like inherently good fodder for R. Crumb's satirical debasement.
By ANNIE LARMON | March 16, 2011

Grace Zabriskie on Big Love and marriage

Lynch's lady
Through the course of 80 films and countless television guest spots, actress Grace Zabriskie has worked with directors as varied as David Lynch, Werner Herzog, and Michael Bay.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | March 16, 2011

Review: Of Gods and Men

Thoughtful true story about the search for peace and purpose in a chaotic world
Xavier Beauvois co-wrote and directed this thoughtful true story of a small Trappist monastery situated in a poor Algerian Muslim village overrun with fundamentalist mercenaries.
By PEG ALOI | March 17, 2011

Start your own Westboro Baptists franchise today!

Big Fat Whale
Free speech free-for-all!
By BRIAN MCFADDEN | March 09, 2011

Will the Catholic Church kill gay marriage?

Inside the high-stakes battle over same-sex nuptials in Rhode Island
Rhode Island’s gay marriage moment has finally arrived. And the Catholic Church just might kill it.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 23, 2011

I was a teenage Sandinista

Deb Olin Unferth left college in the '80s to become a Communist Freedom Fighter. It didn't quite work out that way.
As a freshman philosophy major at the University of Colorado, Deb Olin Unferth fell in love with a junior named George. A pious Evangelical, George felt it was his duty to help his Communist brethren in Central America fight against their capitalist oppressors. So he did, and Unferth went with him.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | January 31, 2011

Diva down!

Babysitting the Bish; nautical talk; dissing discourse
Phillipe and Jorge rushed to the home of our close pal and confidante Bishop Tommy Tobin last weekend with cold compresses and fistfuls of Valium in an effort to tend to our well-accessorized dogmatist in a time of trouble.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | January 12, 2011

Review: Cappella Clausura in Ordo Virtutum

Cappella Clausura tames the Devil at the First Lutheran Church on November 12, 2010
Sex and the single (it’s the only one we have) 12th-century opera? That’s what an early-music outfit was promising at the First Lutheran Church of Boston this past Sunday.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 18, 2010

Cinematic excess

Matthew Barney's seven-hour Cremaster Cycle descends in the Portland Museum of Art
Eight years after its completion, The Cremaster Cycle , Matthew Barney's interminable multi-media opus, continues to befuddle and intrigue audiences.
By ANNIE LARMON | November 10, 2010

By | January 01, 0001

Children of Eden's entertaining Bible stories

Family feuds
The team behind Children of Eden have plenty of creative cred; that's one thing in its favor. And then there's the backhanded compliment that the show isn't likely to turn you into a whooping, fundamentalist Bible-thumper.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | October 19, 2010

Review: A. Cemal Ekin's 'Touching the History' at PC

See the light
In June 2009, A. Cemal Ekin, a marketing professor at Providence College, found himself in Istanbul, Turkey, atop scaffolding rising some 16 stories high inside the historic dome of Hagia Sophia.
By GREG COOK | October 12, 2010

'Sorry' was the wrong word

Diverse-city
I’ve waited a long damn time for this state to become less white. Now, I can see at least a few people of color every day without breaking a sweat, when nearly nine years ago I could go days upon days without seeing a single non-white face.
By SHAY STEWART-BOULEY | September 16, 2010

The Protestant Picnic Pack

Toontime
Guaranteed: No Fun.
By DAVID KISH | September 09, 2010

Review: Thy Will Be Done

Sara Herwig becomes woman, minister
There is a marvelous, understated juxtaposition here between Sara Herwig's journey to becoming a woman and her journey to becoming a minister.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | September 08, 2010

By | January 01, 0001

The POW myth

Letters to the Boston editor, August 27, 2010
Peter Kadzis, you should know better!
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | August 25, 2010

Cafeteria Americans

The mosque malarkey; constitutional showdown in Cranston
Congratulations to the national Republican Party. Dismissive of the Constitution and thoroughly addicted to whipping up fear and ignorance, they've now managed to get a rise out of the "booboisie" — H.L. Mencken's term for the clueless public — with their demagoguery on the New York "mosque" non-controversy.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | August 18, 2010

''Holy war'' holes

Letters to the Boston editor, August 13, 2010
I’m as liberal as the next guy, and I’ve been bothered for years by the distorted values and activities of the religious right in their pursuit of enforced conformity.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | August 11, 2010

The family is society’s glue

Letters to the Portland editor, July 9, 2010
Mr. Inglis's article in the June 25 edition of that paragon-peddler of urban vice, the Phoenix , launches a journalistic battle in his article on the war on "progress" by the unholy alliance of the conservative right.
By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS | July 07, 2010

Deval Patrick and the mosque

Letters to the Boston editor, July 2, 2010
I was extremely disappointed to read your close-minded, ignorant, and bigoted position on Governor Deval Patrick’s meeting with Muslims at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Roxbury.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | June 30, 2010

Theology class

Letters to the Phoenix editor, July 2, 2010
My religion teaches me that I have a responsibility to work to create a better world for humanity and for all living beings in the world that God created.
By PHOENIX LETTERS | June 29, 2010

Review: Ondine

Mysterious mer-woman takes up with a fisherman
Love in a Neil Jordan film is almost always impossible: a guy falls for another man’s wife, or for his own mother, or (unwittingly) for another guy, or for the Blessed Virgin Mary.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 24, 2010

Checking in with the Westboro Baptist Church

Idiot Box
I went to a picketing of a "pervert-run" high school by the infamous Westboro Baptist Church ...
By MATT BORS | June 26, 2010

Holy war

How an unholy alliance of Catholics, Mormons, and evangelicals seeks to control our lives
And so it came to pass, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and evangelical Protestants have banded together to battle, well, the rest of us — the heathens, the godless liberals, the Hitchens-reading progressives.
By JEFF INGLIS | June 28, 2010

Pulling political churches' non-profit exemptions

By JEFF INGLIS | June 23, 2010

The keys to Heaven can make for good fundraising