Free Republic

Rob Bell, who once enraged many evangelicals by questioning hell, is back with a new book that could re-ignite their fury. It’s called “What is the Bible?” And in it, Bell calls for the Bible to be read “literately, not literally.” In these polarized times, many Christians who claim to read the Bible are really more interested in cherry-picking verses to support their political or social points of view, Bell said in a phone interview with the Observer. “You can pull a verse out to justify almost anything,” he said. “When you read the Bible fuller and in-depth, suddenly you...

The U.N. address by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has had an unexpected impact — on the best seller lists of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. At the start of his talk Wednesday, during which Chavez referred to President Bush as "the devil," Chavez held up a book by Noam Chomsky, "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance," and recommended it to everyone in the General Assembly, as well as to the American people. "The people of the United States should read this . . . instead of the watching Superman movies," Chavez later told reporters. As of Thursday afternoon,...