Journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall reports on religion and spiritualtiy in a multi-faith world, on books and the writing life -- and her irreverent take on the Bible.

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

The really nice thing about Easter is — you get to sing. Good and loud. And if you go to my church, you get to sing the Alleluia Chorus from “The Messiah,” which if you’re me, you learned as a kid in the Cecelian Choir at the First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, Michigan.

I was a soprano then.

I think I’m tending toward alto these days, Read More »

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

In the late 1990′s, Georgetown professor John L. Esposito was working on a book about the future of Islam. After 9/11 he put that book aside in favor of more pressing topics — “Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam” (2002) and “Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think” (2009) are just two.

Now, nearly a decade later, Esposito finally returns to his subject with the publication of “The Future of Islam”  Read More »

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

I know way too many people whose impression of Christianity has been shaped either by media accounts of the (noisy) Religious Right or by books written the (equally noisy) New Atheists.

As the saying goes, where religion in America is concerned, the loudest noise is coming from the shallow end of the swimming pool.

So many of my otherwise well-informed friends seem to be  unaware of the vibrant progressive movement that is alive and well today in America’s Protestant churches.

Open James A. Forbes Jr.’s new book, Whose Gospel? for a brisk tour of the progressive Christian take on sexuality, gender, race, justice and war.

Whose Gospel? A Concise Guide to Progressive Protestantism, by James A. Forbes Jr., with a forward by Bill Moyers, The New Press, 2010, 176 pages, $23.95.