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Religious Music & Entertainment

2016-04-26T20:54:37-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Story of God: The Devil Inside

Last updated on: April 26, 2016 at 8:54 pm By Paul Asay

My favorite scene in “Evil,” the May 1 episode from National Geographic’s series The Story of God, involves a bunch of 6-year-olds. The kids are part of an experiment. They’re split into two groups and tasked with the same job: Each child will stand in an empty room and throw Velcro balls at a cloth dartboard, with the winner receiving a fabulous (but unnamed) prize. Simple enough, right? But this contest has a few rules attached to it. One, the... Read more

2016-04-21T11:57:38-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Faith of Harriet Tubman, New Face of the 20 Dollar Bill

Last updated on: April 21, 2016 at 11:57 am By Paul Asay

Amongst all the remarkable items in the Smithsonian’s collections—from the Hope Diamond to the Spirit of St. Louis, from Ben Franklin’s cane to Abe Lincoln’s hat—visitors might run across a modest, yellowed hymnal. It doesn’t look particularly impressive. But the hands which held it belong to the same person who will reportedly replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill: Harriet Tubman. The hymnal was one of Tubman’s dearest possessions, even though historians suspect she couldn’t even read it. It’s a... Read more

2016-04-19T19:44:29-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Can the Big Bang and Genesis Both Be True?

Last updated on: April 19, 2016 at 7:44 pm By Paul Asay

In National Geographic’s April 24 episode of The Story of God, “Creation,” host Morgan Freeman explores the supposed divide between faith and science—and gives us a hint of one of the reasons why, perhaps, he drifted away from his own traditional Christian upbringing. Freeman goes back to his old church in Mississippi and shares that he found Christianity’s own creation story to be a “profound mystery.” He stresses the apparent disparity between the Big Bang Theory—how most scientists currently think... Read more

2016-04-17T15:51:19-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Terrible, Awful, No-Good Generosity of ‘The Lady in the Van’

Last updated on: April 17, 2016 at 3:51 pm By Paul Asay

In an episode NBC’s Friends—“The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS”—sage theosophist Joey Tribbiani argues that there is no such thing as a selfless act of charity. Good deeds inherently make the good-deeder feel good, “so that makes it selfish.” I thought about that episode while watching the quirky, delightful English comedy The Lady in the Van (coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray April 19). If there was ever a good deed to feel bad about, it might be helping the... Read more

2016-04-15T12:49:23-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

That Dragon, Cancer Isn’t a Game: It’s a Prayer

Last updated on: April 15, 2016 at 12:49 pm By Paul Asay

The definitive scene in That Dragon, Cancer, is its most frustrating. I’m in a hospital room. My “son,” Joel, is crying. And the objective … what is the objective? To make him stop crying? To make him feel better? To wait for the doctor? In most video games, we know what we’re supposed to be doing. We’ve gotta kill Alduin or stop the Joker or take the checkered flag. But there’s no fold-out menu to tell me what to do,... Read more

2016-04-12T17:40:40-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

National Geographic Asks, Can We Ever Know God? Answer: Sorta

Last updated on: April 12, 2016 at 5:40 pm By Paul Asay

“What is your concept of God?” I was in high school when I was first asked this question, eating French fries at 2 a.m. with some of my friends. I was hanging with a pretty eclectic crowd that evening—wanna-be hippies and struggling agnostics and one guy who swore he could bend spoons with his mind (or he would be able to, with practice). I think I was the only traditional Christian in the bunch. But ironically, perhaps I was the... Read more

2016-04-06T21:23:40-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Curious Charm of the Apocalypse

Last updated on: April 6, 2016 at 9:23 pm By Paul Asay

When I was a boy, the first real book of the Bible I read on my own wasn’t Genesis or John or Romans. It was Revelations. It sounds odd, I know, but I’d been to Sunday School plenty. I knew my Bible stories. I knew Jesus was great. And I thought that most of the Bible was made, pretty much, of everything I already thought I knew—only with a lot more confusing words like “thy” and “thou.” But Revelations was... Read more

2016-04-04T10:20:42-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

God’s Not Dead 2: The Wrong Fight

Last updated on: April 4, 2016 at 10:20 am By Paul Asay

God’s Not Dead 2, the predictably named sequel to 2014’s surprise hit God’s Not Dead, is a better movie than the first. It again suggests that Christian movies—even at their most Christian-y—are getting better. Many of the points the movie makes are valid. And I suspect that, for many Christians, this’ll be their favorite movie of the year. But for me, this film fell short. Simply put: I think it’s hard to argue people into heaven. God’s Not Dead 2... Read more

2016-03-30T14:37:49-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Producer James Younger Talks About NatGeo’s ‘The Story of God’

Last updated on: March 30, 2016 at 2:37 pm By Paul Asay

“I leave it to the faithful to burn each other’s churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do,” Christopher Hitchens wrote in God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Hitchens, in this, is sadly right. The great world religions have not, historically, played well together. Our world is a violent one, and faith is often at the root of it. Just this Easter weekend, 72 people were killed in a suicide bombing targeting... Read more

2016-03-26T09:38:34-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

There’s a Reason Why Batman v Superman Was Released Easter Weekend

Last updated on: March 26, 2016 at 9:38 am By Paul Asay

I wanted to like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. I really did. The first superheroes I ever knew were from the D.C. stable, and back when I was 7 years old, my best friend and I played Superman and Batman until our capes practically wore out. Alas, Batman v Superman felt less like a movie than it did a cynical corporate product—a movie whose primary purpose was to launch a lucrative franchise universe (to compete with Marvel’s litany of... Read more

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