At Religion Dispatches, Johnny P. Flynn reflects on a recent disaster in a white-run sweat lodge in Arizona.

At Georgetown/OnFaith, Katherine Marshall explores similarities between the "robust yet complex" faith communities of Sant'Egidio and Baha'i.

At the New Yorker, Anthony Lane finds much to fault in Ricky Gervais's The Invention of Lying, including Gervais's treatment of religious faith in general and Christianity in particular.

In the National, Clay Risen probes the perplexities of contemporary Germany's relation to its forsaken national mythos, which are coming to a head this autumn with the 2,000th anniversary of the Hermannsschlacht, the Germanic tribes' improbable and once celebrated defeat of the Roman legion in 9AD.

In the Guardian, Inayat Bunglawala addresses the recent decision by a  British asylum and immigration tribunal to allow Geert Wilders, an extremist Dutch politician facing trial in the Netherlands for discrimination and inciting hatred, to enter the UK.

At Religion Dispatches, Sarah M. Pike explores the significance of New York City Council candidate Dan Halloran's Neopagan faith.

With the twentieth anniversary of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc upon us, Timothy Garton Ash reviews a spate of recent books chronicling the events of autumn 1989.

Jacqueline L. Salmon reports in the Washington Post about the pastor of President Barack Obama's private chapel at Camp David, a controversial critic of Islam and a successful proselytizer to American troops.