A lot of the more prominent evangelists these days seem more like motivational speakers. Some of the more popular—the Joel Osteens of the world—hardly mention Jesus until the end of their sermons, and many never mention Hell. But Jeffress believes that End Times are coming, and that there will be a reckoning for all eternity. […]
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The early origins of separation of church and state in America. Williams was a Puritan minister, banished from Massachusetts, before creating the settlement Providence: He bought the land from the Narragansett Indians and wrote that “having, of a sense of God’s merciful providence unto me in my distress, [I] called the place PROVIDENCE, I desired […]
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A history of sprawl and escape routes in a Central California town, from the perspective of one family searching for its own escape: As I started high school my mom became convinced my dad had ruined her life. They’d married quickly, and for superficial reasons. Two immigrants from the same country, raised in the manacles […]
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Radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted the world would end on May 21, 2011. It didn’t. A look at what happened to some of Camping’s followers: I was struck by how some believers edited the past in order to avoid acknowledging that they had been mistaken. The engineer in his mid-twenties, the one who told me […]
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A look at the rights of same-sex parents after a mother abducts her daughter and heads to Nicaragua after a civil union dissolves: Isabella’s tumultuous life has embodied some of America’s bitterest culture wars — a choice, as Ms. Miller said in a courtroom plea, shortly before their desperate flight, ‘between two diametrically opposed worldviews […]
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Faith, technology and Christianity in Silicon Valley: The internet and social media present a conundrum for Chuck DeGroat, the pastor at City Church. With a congregation of hip modern professionals, from architects and financial advisers to programmers and venture capitalists, he can’t afford not to have a Facebook page, Twitter handle, or website. And yet, […]
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Adapted from Witchel’s forthcoming memoir All Gone. A daughter adjusts after her mother develops stroke-related dementia: Mom faced me. ‘I want you to kill me,’ she said solemnly. For decades, she insisted that if she was mentally compromised in any way, her children were to pull the plug. But the situations we’d imagined never included […]
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Mary Gaitskill Recommends Saul Bellow
recommendedreading: Vol. 8, No. 3 EDITOR’S NOTE Years ago I had a conversation with a friend comparing John Updike and Saul Bellow. At the time I liked Updike a little better, but she said something on Bellow’s side that nearly changed my mind on the spot. “Updike sees,” she said. “He sees the world and […]
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Longreads Member Pick: Baghdad Follies, by Janet Reitman
This week, we’re excited to feature Janet Reitman, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and the author of Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion. “Baghdad Follies” is Reitman’s 2004 story on what it was like to be a war correspondent in Iraq. As we approach the 10-year anniversary of the war, Reitman reflects on her early […]
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What Life Was Like for an Executioner’s Family in the 16th Century
Joel F. Harrington | The Faithful Executioner, Farrar, Straus and Giroux | March 2013 | 15 minutes (3,723 words) Below is an excerpt from the book The Faithful Executioners, by Joel F. Harrington, which was recently featured as a Longreads Member Pick. Thanks to our Longreads Members for making these stories possible—sign up to join Longreads […]
