“If a life can have a crystallizing moment, for Jim Graham that 1993 meeting was it, discovering that his father might have been a Catholic priest, rather than John Graham, the distant man who raised him with scarcely a kind or comforting word.”
Ricky Rodriguez was born in the role of the messiah. His father was David Berg, the leader of the polygamous/incestuous cult The Children of God, which published a book documenting his early life:
In 1982 a shop in Spain printed several thousand copies of a book that was then distributed to group members around the world. Bound in faux leather, illustrated with hundreds of photographs, the 762-page tome meticulously chronicled Ricky's young life and was intended as a child-rearing manual for families. Its title, The Story of Davidito, was stamped in gold. With its combination of earnest prose and unabashed child pornography, it is perhaps the most disturbing book ever published in the name of religion.
Eventually, he left the cult and found work as an electrician. But revenge called him back.
A religious order funded largely by the founder of the Cheesecake Factory announced plans to build a temple in a small California town. The town wasn’t thrilled.
How a missionary group covered up decades of sexual abuse.
In the ’50s and ’60s, the Reverend Will Campbell marched with MLK Jr. and worked to desegregate the University of Mississippi. Later, broke, he took a job as Waylon Jennings’ roadie and occasional spiritual guru. Afterward, his ministry grew even stranger and more itinerant.
What former NBA coach Monty Williams learned in the wake of losing his wife.
Inside a megachurch started by Procter & Gamble brand managers.
Young people who leave strict Jewish communities face a bewildering, lonely new world. One group helps them navigate it.
The American students hopped across the border for a night of partying in Matamoros. One didn’t return and was found later in a shack with 14 other corpses.
The Vice President’s days in Indiana.
Raheel Siddiqui was a young Muslim who dreamed of becoming a Marine. At twenty, he started basic training at Parris Island, where barking drill sergeants transform callow recruits into elite killing machines. Less than two weeks after he arrived, Siddiqui suffered a mysterious and fatal fall. The Marine Corps says he committed suicide, but some think more sinister forces led to his death.
The night America elected Donald J. Trump president, 38-year-old Richard B. Spencer, who fancies himself the “Karl Marx of the alt-right” and envisions a “white homeland,” crowed, “we’re the establishment now.” If so, then the architect of the new establishment is Spencer’s former mentor, Paul Gottfried, a retired Jewish academic...
How the woman who brought Westboro Baptist to Twitter came to question the church’s beliefs.
The director of The Exorcist visits the Vatican’s 91-year-old in-house exorcist in Rome.
The Southern Baptist church, which has its origins in a split over slavery, at an election-year crossroads.
When Larycia Hawkins, the first black woman to receive tenure at Wheaton College, made a symbolic gesture of support for Muslims, the evangelical college became divided over what intellectual freedom on its campus really meant.
A lifelong Jehovah’s Witness moves to China to proselytize.
A bus tour through Israel with a conservative radio host and 450 of his biggest fans.
An ancient document suggests that Jesus had a wife. But an investigation into its origins leads to … Florida.
What happened when two guys set out to convert their Colombian megachurch to Orthodox Judaism.
Decades after the body of beauty queen Irene Garza was pulled from an irrigation canal, there is still only one suspect: John Feit, the priest who heard her final confession.
Defensive end Shawn King was the 36th pick in the 1995 draft. His career with the Carolina Panthers didn’t turn out as planned.
Rabbi Barry Freundel said he would help dozens of women convert to Judaism. In the process, he secretly videotaped them naked.
On the quarterback everyone loves to hate.
Inside “a surreal world of pseudo-scientific methods and jargon, traumatizing psychodramas and nude cuddling with counselors.”
