New Religious Movements

Latest Articles

Dane Cook does suck

Letters to the Boston editor, January 22, 2010
In "Dane Cook Is Funny," the author says that to say “ 'Dane Cook is not funny' is an extreme oversimplification.” Not really.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | January 20, 2010

Scientology defector tells all

Many's Rivers to Cross Dept.
If every last allegation that Church of Scientology (CoS) defector Nancy Many charges in My Billion Year Contract is true, then her book should inspire several FBI raids and a Lifetime mini-series to rival any Charles Manson documentary.
By CHRIS FARAONE | January 13, 2010

Losing our religion

Diverse City
All those pretty churches. So many of them white clapboard buildings with tall steeples and stained glass windows. The kind of thing that makes you think Mainers are a hardy, God-fearing, churchgoing lot.
By SHAY STEWART-BOULEY | January 06, 2010

Review: Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America

Imagine if Ingmar Bergman had made The Blair Witch Project
Tony Stone’s “love letter to the Vikings’ discovery of the New World, pagan iconography, brute manliness, and simpler times” is set in the simpler (?) time of 1007 AD.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 04, 2009

Dangerous slurs

Gay rights in prison
A heavily tattooed, self-described Satanist serving a life sentence for savagely murdering two people in Augusta in 1998 — his 16-year-old stepdaughter and his 87-year-old former landlady — inmate John L’Heureux, 39, is probably not the man Maine’s gay-rights groups would choose to represent their cause in the state prison, if they were inclined to choose anyone there.
By LANCE TAPLEY | October 01, 2009

Less than equal

State officials, including prejudiced human-rights commissioners, block inmate complaints
This story has a bias. It’s in favor of human rights for all people.
By LANCE TAPLEY | October 02, 2009

What's the scam?

Trying to bilk the Scientologists
Back on the morning of June 7, 1982, a man walked into the New York branch of the Middle East Bank on the 25th floor of a Madison Avenue office building and tried to deposit a $2 million check. The man, a native of the United Arab Emirates, left without completing the transaction.
By JIM SCHUH | September 28, 2009