Killing the Buddha was one of my favorite web discoveries in the years just after college–a site packed with essays on religion that combined pained skepticism with genuine desire for human renewal. There was often a real humility to the project in the best Job-like fashion–bold honesty + “things too wonderful for me to understand.” KtB helped launch the careers of co-founders Peter Manseau, author of the just-released and John Sargent First Novel Prize-nominated Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter, plus the memoir Vows, and Jeff Sharlet, now a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and Harper’s, and the author of The Family (soon to be discussed in this space). And it featured work by some of the best writers working today, including Stephen Prothero, Francine Prose, Laurel Snyder, and Rob Walker. 

Killing the Buddha is back online, with new editors, new contributors, and a forthcoming anthology of older KtB stuff, entitled Believer, Beware. (I have an essay in the anthology, I’m told, so this probably isn’t the last you’ll hear about this book!) 

The site looks like it’s already up to its old ways, in the best sense. This gorgeous, groping essay about Barak Obama’s stolen Wall of Jerusalem prayer by Religious Literacy author Stephen Prothero is precisely what makes KtB unique. Check it out.