Christianity

Producer Raney Aronson is the producer, writer and director of the new PBS Frontline documentary, The Jesus Factor (April 29, at 9 p.m. on many stations). It examines President Bush's evangelical Christian faith, how he became a born-again Christian and the impact it has on his politics. Also, Wayne Slater, Austin bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News. He's followed Bush's political career, and appears in the documentary. He is also the author of the book, Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush President.

Land is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He and President Bush share the same evangelical faith.

Balsiger's film George W. Bush: Faith in the White House has been released as an "alternative" to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. Interviewees share their experiences on how President Bush demonstrates his faith. Introduced at the Republican National Convention, the film is now on DVD.

Rev. Jim Wallis is the founder of the organization Sojourners, a Christian group advocating a style of peace and justice. Wallis is editor in chief of Sojourners magazine. His new book is God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It.

Editor and writer Walter Kirn's latest novel, Mission to America, is about a fictional quasi-religious group, the Aboriginal Fulfilled Apostles, seeking new converts to help them survive. The topic is one Kirn has experience with: When he was 12, Kirn's family became Mormons.

Blurring the line between church and state threatens civil liberties and privacy, says former president Jimmy Carter. That's the case he makes in his new book, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, And the Making of a Nation by Jon Meacham. His previous book, Franklin and Winston, was about the friendship between FDR and Churchill.

Journalist Michelle Goldberg, a senior writer for the online magazine Salon, and covers the Christian Right. In her new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, she writes that Christian nationalists believe the Bible is literally true — and they want to see the nation governed by that truth.

Michael Farris is the co-founder of Home School Legal Defense Association and the president of Patrick Henry College, the first university in America for Christian home-schooled children. The school, located in Purcellville, Va., grooms its students for leadership.

Writer Reynolds Price has penned a total of 37 volumes of fiction, poetry, plays, essays and translations. His new book is Letter to a Godchild (Concerning Faith). Price has taught at Duke University since 1958, and has won numerous awards and honors for his work.

Religion professor Philip Jenkins talks about his latest book, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. The book is a follow-up to his 2002 title, The Next Christendom: the Coming of Global Christianity, which was named on of the top religion books of that year by USA Today.

Tanya Erzen is the author of the new book, Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement. It's about New Hope Ministry, a residential program for evangelical Christian men in the San Francisco Bay area who are struggling with homosexuality. It's part of a larger movement to convert gays to the straight Christian life.

Alan Chambers is the president of Exodus, the largest evangelical group devoted to converting homosexuals to heterosexuals. He himself was a gay teen and young adult before the church helped him overcome his homosexuality.

H. James Towey is the former director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He is David Kuo's former boss. He responds to Kuo's criticisms of the Bush administration's follow through on the initiatives. Towey is now president of the Benedictine Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Penn.

Julia Sweeney is currently performing a one-woman show called "Letting Go of God" at the off-off-Broadway theater in Manhattan. A Saturday Night Live cast alum, Sweeney also wrote and performed the 1996 Broadway show "God Said, Ha!" Her films include Pulp Fiction, Clockstoppers and It's Pat, based on her gender-confused character on SNL.

Tammy Faye Messner, the onetime first lady of TV evangelism, died Friday at the age of 65; she had battled cancer for years. Terry Gross interviewed the former Tammy Faye Bakker on January 15, 2004, about the rise and fall of the ministry she led with ex-husband Jim Bakker, the puppet show that gave them their start, and her surprising later life as a gay icon.

Can there be a middle ground in the debate about the separation of church and state? John DiIulio, Jr, a Democrat who spent seven months as the White House "faith czar" under George W. Bush, believes so.

Erik Reece grew up the grandson of a fundamentalist preacher, but he left his church in search of a less punitive religion. He describes his struggle with religion in his new book, An American Gospel.

In the book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, author Jeff Sharlet examines the power wielded by the secret Christian group known as The Family or The Fellowship.

A secretive fellowship of powerful Christian politicians includes some names that have recently been prominent in the headlines: Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Bart Stuck and Rep. Joe Pitts. Writer Jeff Sharlet describes the men's involvement with the Family, and discusses recent developments within the group.