Christianity

Latest Articles

Rapture, ruptured

Diverse-city
May 21 came and went, and nobody got lifted naked skyward into Heaven.
By SHAY STEWART-BOULEY | May 25, 2011

Drat, it's the 21st already?

Failure
Make sure your date this Saturday night is with an atheist.
By KARL STEVENS | May 17, 2011

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

The Twelve Aposticles

Hoopleville
Sample all 12 flavors!
By DAVID KISH | April 20, 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

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: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Kind of like looking for the Horcruxes in The Deathly Hallows , only less fun
How are the kids going to take to preachy C.S. Lewis after the pagan Harry Potter and the titillating Twilight ?
By | December 07, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

The keys to Heaven can make for good fundraising

By JEFF INGLIS | June 23, 2010

Review: 8: The Mormon Proposition

Sheds a sad light on Prop 8
While we were getting decriminalized weed in Massachusetts, a large segment of the population was reeling from the devastating passage of Proposition 8 in California.
By CHRIS FARAONE | June 18, 2010

Bully pulpit

Letters to the Boston editor, April 23, 2010
While I understand, appreciate, and respect the First Amendment and our right to speak freely, in the case of bullying, Harvey Silverglate makes a dangerous assumption that “civilized people, even teenagers can intuit the difference between protected speech and criminal harassment.”
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | April 21, 2010

The Church and abuse

Plus, the Republicans' dark soul and the Bay State's education failure
If the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church is to regain secular respect, and if it is to reassure its troubled communicants that it is worthy of their devotion, it must reconcile itself to the reality that child abuse is not just a horrendous sin requiring penance and spiritual absolution, but also a vile crime that demands civil prosecution.
By EDITORIAL | March 31, 2010

Marriage activists get closure, look forward

Moving on
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree expressed what many in the room were feeling at Equality Maine’s annual dinner celebration on Saturday night: the function room at the Holiday Inn by the Bay on Spring Street elicits “a little bit of PTSD” for Maine’s gay-rights supporters.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | March 31, 2010

Return to sender

Challah Back Dept.
Sure, we've all gotten an unwelcome fruitcake or fluorescent sweater in the mail, usually from a well-meaning and slightly out-of-touch relative. But few New England Jews could have been prepared for the surprise "gift" that recently arrived on their doorsteps courtesy of Georgia-based messianic former businessman Sid Roth.
By KARA BASKIN | March 22, 2010

Seeking humane treatment

State and national efforts well under way
Some Maine people are taking moral responsibility for the way supermax inmates are treated.
By LANCE TAPLEY | February 17, 2010

Anti-solitary campaign expands

Stopping Supermax Torture
As the February 17 State House public hearing approaches on the bill to restrict solitary confinement at the Maine State Prison, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), which sparked national debate about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, has announced its support.
By LANCE TAPLEY | February 03, 2010

Priestess | Prior To The Fire

Tee Pee (2009)
Now Priestess are back in Indieland, rubbing denim-clad elbows with the likes of Nebula and Black Math Horseman.
By MIKAEL WOOD | January 27, 2010

Dane Cook does suck

Letters to the Boston editor, January 22, 2010
In "Dane Cook Is Funny," the author says that to say “ 'Dane Cook is not funny' is an extreme oversimplification.” Not really.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | January 20, 2010

More than Mormons

The big love that dare not speak its name
Despite the comparably juicy family dysfunction it offers, Big Love hasn't achieved the iconic status of its HBO predecessor The Sopranos . Maybe viewers relate better to the mob than to Mormons.
By JOYCE MILLMAN | January 06, 2010

Sin tax

Letters to the Boston editor, December 11, 2009
Among other things, your editorial calling for the Catholic Church to be punitively taxed for its anti-abortion lobbying suffers from a breathtaking lack of inconsistency.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | December 09, 2009

Over the coals

Letters to the Boston editor, December 4, 2009
Not so fast, Mike!
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | December 02, 2009

Continuing homophobia

Letters to the Portland Editor, November 27, 2009
Deirdre Fulton's and Shay Stewart-Bouley's comments and Seth Berner's letter on the Marriage Equality Act repeal are insightful. I would add another perspective.
By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS | October 27, 2010

Kennedy, Catholic Church, and Politics of Compromise

Reform Dept.
US Representative Patrick Kennedy's confrontation with Providence Bishop Thomas J. Tobin over abortion and health-care reform has soaked up quite a bit of ink.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | November 18, 2009

Taxing Catholics

Should the Church lose its exemption?
Should the Roman Catholic Church, and the various subsidiary groups and organizations that exist under its umbrella and operate at its direction, be entitled to state- and federal-tax exemptions?
By EDITORIAL | November 18, 2009

Harvard ‘ACT UP’ show gets rise from right-wingers

Tea Baggers Meet the Tea-Baggers Dept.
Taking a detour from directly bashing President Obama, right-wingers are now hot and bothered by a Harvard art exhibit. And they have an Obama administration foil toward whom they can channel their bile.
By GREG COOK | November 02, 2009