Mark Oppenheimer on the World Wide Web

I am the author of two books, Knocking on Heaven’s Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture and Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America.

For The New York Times Magazine, I have written about Scientology, New Age diva Louise Hay, an evangelical Christian college’s first dance, and the renunciation of atheism by the philosopher Antony Flew. For The Forward, the country’s finest Jewish newspaper, I write book reviews. For the online magazine Slate, I have written many articles, including an evaluation of Christian sex manuals, a discussion of the Catholic utopian vision of Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, a suggestion for atonement not just on Yom Kippur, another piece on Scientology, (one of Slate’s ten most e-mailed pieces of the year), and a reminiscence of the great preacher William Sloane Coffin Jr. I have written about gay priests for Details and about U2 and Madonna for The Wall Street Journal.

Recently I began writing the Critical Faculties column for The Boston Globe; recent work has included a profile of philosophy blogger Brian Leiter, a skeptical look at Maoist narcissist Bob Avakian, and a discussion of the challenges faced by Mormon historians.

I have also written for The New York Times Book Review, Salon, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Beliefnet, The American Scholar, Yale Review, and Southwest Review. I think I am the only living writer to have contributed to both The Christian Century and Playboy.

I am currently writing a book about high school debate, drawing on my own past as a doughboy in the oratorical trenches.