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Amanda and I took the day off today from church in order to get a head start on Halloween decorating. Which means that I ducked into our home office to escape the chaos of three kids unpacking styrofoam spiders to, uh, touch bases with my favorite readers of irreverent religious crapola. Thanks for being here…

Each week, Amanda and I visit a different church, sitting quietly, taking notes and—if granted permission to do so—discreetly taking a few pictures. As journalists, we tend not to participate in their rituals, maintaining an (ahem) “objective” distance from the service. We’re just flies on the wall. Okay, cynical, atheistic flies who know where all…

This is how it began: over a month ago, I informed Joel that I’d Googled “2011 Jehovah’s Witness Memorial” and that the smackdown was happening on Sunday, April 17th. “Good. But let’s go somewhere well out of the way, so I can partake without anyone seeing me.” I honestly had no idea what the hell…

This was my childhood Kingdom Hall. Originally it had windows through which I could watch airplanes leaving contrails in the sky during the meeting. Since then, Kingdom Halls have been required to seal up their windows, one of dozens of changes they’ve made over the years to isolate their members from society. From an early…
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