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January 28, 2010 (InsideCatholic.com) - Of all the things I remember about the Texas March for Life in Austin last January, the memory that stands out the most is the look on the faces of the counter-protesters who followed us along Congress Avenue and down to the capitol that frosty morning. When I glanced over to see the source of the epithets that were being screamed at us, I met the eyes of one young woman wearing a black bandana over the bottom half of her face. She happened to look over and meet my gaze, and in her...

I grew up in a home where God was MIA. I don’t remember religion being mentioned except occasional references to some sort of God and a heaven. While my family was proud of their ethnicity, they didn’t practice the religion. Aside from the requisite Bar Mitvahs, they never set foot in a synagogue. My parents did worship at the altar of pleasure. They loved to party; they lived for the times they’d go out with their large, rowdy group, and dance and drink the night away. I’m not sure why my parents were such party animals. It was probably a...

John Travolta may be close to leaving the Church of Scientology, according to a new report. The actor - along with fellow Hollywood heavyweight Tom Cruise - is one of the most high-profile members of the controversial organisation, and has been for 34 years. But his faith in L Ron Hubbard's teachings is said to have been severely shaken by the death of his autistic son Jett following a seizure in January. Those close to Travolta – who only publicly acknowledged his son's autism after the 16-year-old's death – say that the tragedy has prompted the actor to question his...

A former champion surfer, Mary Setterholm suffered sexual abuse and turned to prostitution before finding a new path. Next month, she’ll begin the master’s of divinity program at Columbia University’s Union Theological Seminary. Real life stories of redemption and healing don't get much better than this. How long until Lifetime turns it into a movie? From the Los Angeles Times: It's another beautiful day in paradise and I'm out on the ocean, riding waves with a former national surfing champion and onetime prostitute who's about to join a seminary. Go ahead, try to name one other state where I could...

Do you believe in God? Really? And you're willing to admit it in public? Oops. Sorry, for a moment I slipped back into the arrogant Atheism of my youth. Before my parents had children, they decided to raise their kids in a secular home. We had gifts at Christmas time and chocolate covered matzoh during Passover, but there was no religion and certainly no God. When I was in grade school, God was just a kind of nondescript character who popped up in Little House on the Prairie books from time to time. He seemed like a decent enough fellow,...

People of all ages milled about the lobby of Newington’s Regal Cinemas at 9:30 a.m. on a recent Sunday, sipping coffee, munching doughnuts and chatting amiably. Some guests were in their 20s and arrived with friends, while others were whole families with parents and children. Some wore T-shirts that said “No Perfect People Allowed.” Rock music blasted through the sound system as a couple of hundred guests filed into one of the theaters and took their seats. The atmosphere of anticipation seemed more typical of a rock concert than a church service. And indeed, a six-piece rock band soon took...

The U.S. is a nation of religious drifters, with about half of adults restlessly switching faith affiliation at least once during their lives, a new survey has found. And the reasons behind all the swapping depend greatly on whether one grows up kneeling at Roman Catholic Mass, praying in a Protestant pew or occupied with nonreligious pursuits, according to a report issued Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. While Catholics are more likely to leave the church because they stopped believing its teachings, many Protestants are driven to trade one Protestant denomination or affiliation for another...

Imay be the most prayed-for atheist in America. Since my memoir, “Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America — and Found Unexpected Peace,” was released last week, I’ve received scores of emails and phone calls assuring me that God hasn’t given up on me and that I’ve been put on various prayer lists around the world. So far, it’s not working. “Losing My Religion” details my journey from a gung-ho evangelical Christian who became a religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times (I thought God had answered my prayers) to a reluctant atheist because...

It started out as the dream job for a passionate Christian -- reporting about religion for a major newspaper. But writing about other people's religions ended up costing William Lobdell his own. The former Los Angeles Times reporter chronicled his soul-wrenching, emotion-laden journey in the recently released book "Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America -- and Found Unexpected Peace," published by Harper Collins. Lobdell's spiritual journey led him from an uninspired Protestant childhood to agnosticism before he attended a weekend Christian men's retreat where he was "born again." Concerned with what he considered...

In 1988, 16-year-old Piyush Jindal totaled his father's new car a few weeks before graduating from Baton Rouge High School. Piyush -- who then and now prefers the nickname "Bobby" he adopted from "The Brady Brunch" sitcom -- had to assess more than fender damage with his parents. "Which God do you have to thank for your safety?" Mr. Jindal, now governor of Louisiana, remembers his mother, Raj, a practicing Hindu, inquiring after he escaped from the wreck. For the child of Punjabi immigrants who had announced his Christian beliefs the previous summer, the question was difficult. Twenty years later,...

The July 1st cover story in Newsweek details the pathway of Barack Obama's journey to faith. You can read the story here. Included in this story are audio clips of Barack Obama describing part of this journey. The audio is very noisy and hard to make out, as the plane is in mid-flight. Below is a transcript of the two passages for your perusal. "It wasn't an epiphany. You know, a bolt of lightning didn't strike me and Sunday, I said, "A-ha!" It was a more gradual process of...maybe that traced back to those times that I had spent in...

So much has been made about Barack Obama's religion. But what does he believe, and how did he arrive at those beliefs? In 1981 Barack Obama was 20 years old, a Columbia University student in search of the meaning of life. He was torn a million different ways: between youth and maturity, black and white, coasts and continents, wonder and tragedy. He enrolled at Columbia in part to get far away from his past; he'd gone to high school in Hawaii and had just spent two years "enjoying myself," as he puts it, at Occidental College in Los Angeles. In...

Mr. Wright, who has long prided himself on criticizing the establishment, said he knew that he may not play well in Mr. Obama’s audition for the ultimate establishment job. “If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me,” Mr. Wright said with a shrug. “I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.”

Once a Jew and now a Roman Catholic, Roy Schoeman says his spiritual journey follows much the same transition as Christianity’s development from the seeds of Judaism. “I haven’t converted to another religion,” he explains. “The Catholic Church is the continuation of Judaism. They are one and the same religion — the thing is the religion changed with the incarnation (God coming to earth in the human form of Jesus). It was always going to change.” Schoeman, author of “Salvation Is From the Jews: The Role of Judaism in Salvation History From Abraham to the Second Coming,” will speak during...

If you can't find a religion that moves you, why not invent one? America has a long history of do-it-yourself spirituality going back at least far as Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists. And that desire to "roll your own religion" shows no sign of fading away. A September 2005 Newsweek poll found eight in 10 Americans do not believe any one faith is the sole path to salvation. So it's no surprise that some are weaving together strands from a variety of faiths to create their own personal religions. Wendi Moore-Buysee, a 36-year-old motivational speaker and life coach, is...

Pop star Madonna is reportedly close to dumping Kabbalah, a mystical form of Judaism that she has rather publicly embraced recently. Friends say the singer has talked of loosening her red Kabbalah wristband as she wearies of the religion, the Independent reported Sunday. She also is tired of the financial burdens associated with being a devotee and mindful, too, of the stress her interest in the Kabbalah has put on her marriage to Guy Ritchie. "The singer's links to the version of Kabbalah that she follows are so intimate now — personally and financially — that withdrawal would be difficult,...

FINDING MY RELIGION: Former Christian Brian Flemming has made a documentary arguing that the biblical story of Jesus Christ is a myth In his film "The God Who Wasn't There," Brian Flemming questions the very existence of Jesus Christ, a premise that might leave some hard-core Christians convinced this former Christian is going to hell. In the film, Flemming argues that the biblical Jesus is a myth, a legend based on allegorical stories that were never supposed to be seen as historical accounts. It's a provocative claim but not without precedent. Many scholars have questioned the historicity of the Jesus...

Feminist icon and former Al Gore sartorian guru Naomi Wolf has found Christ "Feminist icon and former Al Gore sartorian guru Naomi Wolf has found Christ. I'm not comfortable commenting on her conversion, except to say I wish her well. But I do want to quote an account from the Glasgow Sunday Herald:" Revered as a feminist icon, then slated for being an intellectual lightweight, Naomi Wolf has experienced highs as well as lows … and then she met Jesus "'I wasn’t myself in this visual experience,” she continues. “I was a 13-year-old boy sitting next to him [Jesus] and...

Wolf first made a name for herself with "The Beauty Myth," a 1991 feminist critique of feminine stereotypes. Admired by some and ridiculed by others, Wolf has since written on everything from motherhood to promiscuity. During the 2000 election campaign, she famously advised Al Gore to work on being an "alpha male," and her most recent book, a folksy memoir about her father, left many erstwhile fans clearing their throats in embarrassment. Maybe that's what pushed Wolf toward Jesus. In an interview published last weekend in Scotland's Glasgow Sunday Herald, Wolf announced that she had been struggling with a midlife...

In the United States a growing number of white people are discovering their Native American roots. Some are doing so for financial gain, but most are just looking for the meaning of life. A few weeks, Betty Baker was still just a white housewife. But now the woman, with her piercing blue eyes, goes by the name "Little Dove" --and has jettisoned her apron for an elaborate deerskin dress. "I am an Indian and I've sensed this my whole life," says the 48-year-old Baker, who lives in a wooden house on the edge of the small town of Pinson, Alabama....