Jeff Sharlet
Jeff Sharlet is a founding editor of Killing the Buddha, coauthor with Peter Manseau of Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible (2004) and co-editor of Believer, Beware (2009). Sharlet is also the author of Sweet Heaven When I Die, (2011), C Street, (2010), and the New York Times bestseller The Family (2008).
Recent Posts by Jeff
I Am a Bowl of Porridge
I’ll be joining Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder Mikey Weinstein, a West Point scholar, and a former top Army chaplain who thinks the military needs more religion on NPR-KCRW’s “To the Point” today at 3 pm est. Mikey will warn of coup, the chaplain will carry the cross, the scholar will say, “on the one…
Takes One to Know One
Last night’s “Rachel Maddow Show” turned out to be a Killing the Buddha special. I spoke briefly on a small victory for investigative reporting — the decision by the Washington, D.C. tax office to remove most of the tax exemption enjoyed for the last 20 years by the Family’s C Street House, the heart of…
The Truth Is in Here
Religion and media scholar Lynn Schofield Clark writing on V at Trans/Missions: It would be easy for journalists to write about the popularity of the paranormal as a simple horse-race to win ratings and box office returns. But a more interesting story is how myths of the paranormal and supernatural have shifted—from a fear of…
Bart Stupak, Rupert Murdoch, and John Calvin Want You to Buy My Book
After about 3 1/3 months, my book slipped off the NYT bestseller list. But this week it’s back! And who do I have to thank? None other than congressmen Bart Stupak and Joe Pitts. See, the thing is when you become a member of the Family, as I did for a short spell, you’re like…
How To Did My Boyfriend Back In My Love
In general, it’s a bad idea to use the forum of re How To Did My Boyfriend Back In My Love latively small blogs like this one to argue with foolish columnists like this one. You don’t have the audience to make your rebuttal effective, so you just end up adding a drop in the…
Super Trooper Stupak and Brother Pitts
American women will pay the price for the Democratic dithering that allowed Saturday’s passage of the Stupak-Pitts amendment, a worm virus buy cialis online uk inserted into the House healthcare reform bill with surgical precision. But the Democratic Party will suffer collateral damage. Stupak-Pitts isn’t just “the biggest restriction on women’s right to choose in…
Jeff Sharlet in Kansas City
Overland Park, actually, a swanky suburb driven to distraction by the prospect of Senator Sam Brownback returning home to become governor. Not that Overland Park, or my hosts, the MainStream Coalition, are particularly liberal — rather, they’re refuges for Kansas’ strange alliance of fiscal conservatism, social liberals, labor lefties, and maybe even a few radicals….
Reverend Billy Remembers Brad Will
Priya Warcry asks for New Yorkers to join Reverend Billy’s Rainforest themed parade from 5:30-6:30. Tuesday Oct 27th Reverend Billy joins with RainForest Relief, NYC Climate Action Group and Friends of Brad Will for a parade through Washington Square Park to draw attention to continued and unnecessary use of tropical rain forest timber for our…
The Christian Right’s Heart for Africa
I’ll be joining African gay activists on Canada’s morning affairs show, “The Current,” tomorrow morning at 8:30 am eastern to discuss Uganda’s soon-to-be-law “Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009,” which will impose the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” — queer sex with disabled people or anyone under 18, or any sex a queer HIV-positive person engages in. Anyone…
Bono Can Kill You Just By Clapping His Hands
A friend who is an administrator at a progressive church writes me that U2 is in her town this weekend and that the buzz is making her crabby. I understand. It really is a miracle that the band has somehow maintained its reputation for righteousness even as it carts the biggest, most expensive concert set…
Elie Wiesel to Speak at Anti-Semitic Event
Activist Rachel Tabachnik writes: Tomorrow night (Sunday, Oct. 25) Elie Wiesel will be the keynote speaker at John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church for Christians United For Israel’s Night to Honor Israel. This is a devastating development which is difficult to comprehend. Wiesel has spent his life combatting racism and fighting for human rights. Bruce Wilson and…
Jeff Sharlet in Palm Beach, Oct. 26
Florida Buddha killers: Come talk fundamentalism with me this Monday, Oct. 26, 7:30 p.m, at the Kravis Center’s Cohen Pavilion, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., in West Palm Beach. I’ll be discussing my recent book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, and the impact of this past summer’s C Street affairs on…
Going Rouge
If you’re like me, there’s a big star on November 16 on your calendar. That, of course, is publication day for Sarah Palin’s “book,” Going Rogue. You’ll probably stay up all night reading; and the very next day, with only Thanksgiving and C how to teach a child phonics hristmas and Hannukah to look forward…
Texas, Are You There?
There’s been some discussion of a Killing the Buddha event in Texas. A certain former very senior employee of the U.S. government has volunteered his solar powered ranch as a venue… But the real question is: Texans, are you out there? Are you reading Killing the Buddha? Back in 2004 KtB cofounder Peter Manseau and…
Death of a Gutenberg Nation
I find the great die-off of American newspapers one of the dullest subjects imaginable, because it’s almost universally discussed in dishonest terms. They’re not simply dying off; they’re committing suicide. Perhaps it’s time. Most long ago abandoned the radical mess of democracy for polite participation in establishment consensus. Sure, the biggest papers occasionally throw a…
Obama’s Nobel: A Jewish Conspiracy to Combat Space Nazis
At last, someone presents a justification for Obama’s Nobel Prize I can get behind: Fighting Nazis on the moon.
John the Baptizer’s Second Act
The other day I received an unusual publicity letter from Alane Mason, a senior editor at W.W. Norton, enclosed with a copy of John the Baptizer, a recent novel by Brooks Hansen. “It was a long hard summer for books,” Alane wrote, and in publishing we’re all used to moving on to the next in…
God and Wal-Mart
This week I spoke with GRITtv’s Laura Flanders about the surprisingly diverse Christian Right opposition to the Obama administration. Is racism a major component of the tea party movement? No doubt. But is the broader right a lot more complicated? Absolutely. I witnessed that complexity a few weeks ago in the prayer rooms of the…