A crust of gods

The temples of India stand as nexi among several crafts. As shelters, they house worshipers and their priests. As art, they are crusted with sculptures of gods, animals and humans. And as theology, they represent the cosmos, a mandala, even the deity itself.

TempleNet -- created, interestingly, by a musician -- comes close to a canonical list of these astonishing structures, along with stunning photos, although most are too small.

The site lists temples all around India, classifying them by region and their major deities, including Ganesha and Skanda. And it explains important architectural differences between north and south, as well as border states like Karnataka.

Along the way, we get some "hmmmm" details. One is that architectural styles were influenced more by different regions than religions, such as Jain or Hindu.

There's also a thought-provoking piece on the Indian sense of time -- from kaashta, or 18 eyeblinks, to the purported 309.6 trillion year life cycle of the creator Bhrahma.

Like other enormous sites, TempleNet has a few flaws. Some links are broken. The quality of information is uneven. And the articles often assume prior knowledge. The latter problem is partly fixed by a glossary, but not all the terms are defined.

One glaring problem: Finding an explanation of the overall concept of a temple. There is, in fact, an article about that, but it's buried in the archives. A search engine would help find it, but that's one of the broken links.

Don't leave TempleNet without clicking the "special music feature" link. It leads to a page of "Indo-Celtic" music, blending instruments from east and west. The idea sounds weird, but the nine samples are nice.

A library of sacred texts

Wisdom from 268 holy books is at your fingertips in World Scripture. This monumental work has 4,000 scripture bits, compiled over five years by 40 scholars on several continents.

World Scripture gathers pronouncements on 164 moral, ethical and spiritual matters -- everything from Addiction to Hypocrisy to Repentance to War. The topics are available via pulldown menu; browsing them is even easier than leafing through a hardcover encyclopedia.

Beyond specific issues, the site tackles overarching matters such as the purpose of life, the spirit world, the search for knowledge, eschatology and ultimate reality. Well, maybe it doesn't tackle them. But it does give them a good chase.

Message of the site is "The Truth in Many Paths," as one section is titled. Comparing other beliefs and scriptures, the site says, will confirm the oneness of God and promote respect and tolerance.

One puzzling lack: the full texts of the scriptures. Surely the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, etc., could have been added without much extra space. Especially with the low-graphics nature of this site.

For the more Web-challenged, a physical book is available for $40 hardcover, $22.95 softcover.

While on the site, hit the homepage button for the parent United Communities of Spirit, a 10,000-member world interfaith alliance. You'll be rewarded with some idealistic essays on world oneness, plus descriptions of 11 traditions -- not only the usual world religions, but also Wicca, Taoism, Sikhism, the Bahai Faith, native American spirituality, even the esoteric thought of Alice Bailey.

Geography of faith

Florida: Land of oranges and Baptists. Right? Only partly. Coastal Florida is predominantly Catholic, although the interior and the extreme north are Baptist.

That's one of several surprising facts you can nail down with a massive study, done every decade by the Glenmary Research Center of Cincinnati. The full study for 2000 is $110, too pricey for most of us. But Glenmary's Web site offers some great freebies.

The most eye-catching are eight color-coded maps, posted from the 24 in the book. The Florida surprise is there. Another one: Minnesota is more religious, percentage-wise, than Ohio.

While you're on the site, poke around a little for other useful tools. One is the link to the Web site of the Church of the Nazarene, which lists the 15 largest religious groups in every metropolitan area -- from Abilene, Texas, to Yuma, Ariz.

The data have some limitations. Some church groups, like the Southern Baptists, seem overcounted; some, like Catholics, seem undercounted. But the lists can still help churches, schools, even businesses pitching to religious groups.

This site may not inspire you to buy Glenmary's full $110 package. But it might tempt you to start saving for the new edition, due out in less than two years.

Give without being taken

Americans are famously generous, and famously gullible. Charity Navigator packs powerful tools to show you which groups are spending their benevolence dollars well.

The New Jersey-based organization uses a four-star rating system for more than 5,300 charities, grading for efficiency, donor privacy and other standards. The info takes the shape of easy-to-grasp numbers, pie charts, bar graphs and clearly written evaluations.

The site uses Flash for more than splash. Hover your mouse pointer over a pie chart or bar graph, and up pop the numbers. Flash also powers a world map: Click South America, then Peru, to find the 17 four-star charities working there.

One caveat: The data may lag a couple of years because of reporting lead times. Also, to get some facts, you have to register with Charity Navigator, but it's free.

Want a shortcut? Click the list of "Slam-Dunk Charities," each of them rating four stars. Or try "Charities Worth Watching" -- top-rated groups that run on less than $2 million a year.

The lists include not only good groups, but also "Inefficient Fundraisers" and "Charities Drowning in Administrative Costs." One surprise: The American Cancer Society -- a charity giant, spending more than $940 million a year -- gets a mere two stars.

Yet another resource: Several sets of valuable tips, like "Six questions to ask" and "What to do when a charity calls."

Vasiliyness

For the last in our weeklong series on holy humor: Don’t get incensed, but we’re venturing under . . .

The Onion Dome

This is an Eastern Orthodox takeoff on The Onion, a secular fake online newspaper. That makes it a lampoon of a lampoon, which is kind of like making fun of the way someone makes fun of something else.

There’s alleged coverage of a beard-growing contest, a mild snicker on the Orthodox taste for facial hair. There’s a short story about one “Philothea” who is frustrated when people call her “Philthe.”

Another tells story of a new pet food that’s repellent to humans, to curb temptation during the faith’s four annual fasting periods. At an online store, you can buy a coffee mug with “Is Outrage!”, an epigram by the fictional mascot Father Vasiliy.

All this is probably funnier if you’re Orthodox, especially Russian. It’s gentle and mannerly, but do manners get laughs?

OK, that’s my list of religious humor sites. Do you have any favorites? Let me know.

I'd also like to know your views on religious humor itself. Some people think it's all a joke. Others think "religious humor" is an oxymoron -- that people hold their faith so closely, the risk of offending them is too high.

Your thoughts?

Kosher yocks

Still looking at holy humor sites, let's raise a glass of Manischewitz for . . .

A Word in Your Eye

Such a Web site, this is! A Word in Your Eye, based on the 2007 book Oy! The Ultimate Book of Jewish Jokes by David Minkoff, comes close to a canonical list of the genre.

More than 2,000 jokes are posted here, on classic themes from bar mitzvah boys to doting Yiddishe mamas to retorts against anti-Semites. Not unusual for a Jewish humor site, but this one seems especially easy to get around.

A very basic chart, almost mid-'90s style, groups the jokes under more than 90 text-based links -- and growing; the last bunch was added just this year. Others, with sexual themes, are grouped under "Naughtier Jewish Jokes." And a few dozen are just for children. (Don't mix 'em up!)

Minkoff shows a helpful side with sample speeches for wedding toasts and 60th birthdays. Also helpful is a glossary of Yiddish terms. At last, you'll know when to kvell and when to kvetch.

Other sections are more serious. One offers some kosher-themed brain teasers. Another reports on the healing power of laughter. But you may wish to skip the boring, 1,870-word essay on Freud's psychoanalysis of humor.

Buddha belly laughs

Continuing our weeklong trek through religious humor sites, we hoist a prayer flag for . . .

A Lighter Side of Buddhism

Who would laugh at Buddhism? Plenty of people, it seems. Enough to fill several Web pages.

Part of Writings on Buddhism -- at 13 years one of the oldest Buddhist Web sites -- A Lighter Side has jokes as cryptic as a koan, going far beyond the usual "What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?" (although that one is here, too).

Example: A young Buddhist wonders how to cross a river. He sees a sage on the opposite bank and calls: "Oh wise one, can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river"? The sage calls back: "My son, you are on the other side."

Many of the jokes are charmingly self-deprecating, as with the Theravada computer virus that can't infect "female" machines. Some are long stories -- one takes 24 paragraphs to set up the punchline. Who knew that Buddhist and Irish jokesters would have something in common?

And some items make you wonder if they're really joking. One recommends downloading a Tibetan mantra -- Om Mani Padme Hum, or "The Jewel in the Lotus of the Heart" -- in effect, turning your computer's spinning hard drive into a prayer wheel.

The most mind-bending joke may be this one-liner: "A Zen master once said to me, 'Do the opposite of whatever I tell you.' So I didn't."

Spoofing the self-righteous

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine,” as the Bible says. But in religion, the medicine doesn’t always go down easy.

On our second day for religious humor sites, we’ll get down to the fundamentals at . . .

Landover Baptist Church

The caustic boundary of religious satire is always pushed at the fictional Landover Baptist. Just about every racist, sexist, isolationist, homophobic, self-righteous blemish of fundamentalism comes under the gun here. FAIR WARNING: The site often gets crude, even R-rated: There's even a caution -- a well-earned one -- against letting anyone under 18 read the site.

Like many fundamentalists, the site obsesses over sexuality. It calls breastfeeding a "gateway sin'" and sees lisping as a sign of homosexuality. And it naturally picks out alleged sexual references in just about every feature film -- even Speed Racer and Chicken Little.

Creator Chris Harper posts frequent messages as Pastor Deacon Fred Smith, including a video of his famous fire-breathing sermon at a 2002 gathering of American Atheists. He also urges his flock to speed up global warming, so that Jesus will come back sooner.

Another regular feature is Betty Bowers, "American’s Best Christian [tm]," casting stones at us in an animated picture. Her ramblings are equal parts conceit over her looks and fashions, and condescension toward nonbelievers.

The “church” highly recommends controlling members’ lives. One article reports the expulsion of several members for texting gossip during worship services – an offense intercepted by network surveillance.

There's more -- Bible quizzes, a Junior Vacation Bible Gun Camp, a sound file saying merely, "Scientists is stupid" -- but here’s a quick test: Do you think a picture of Jesus on a thong -- offered as a sale item -- is clever or offensive? That will help you decide if Landover Baptist is for you.

Laughing at religion

"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it," the British writer G. K. Chesterton said. This week we'll see how good -- or bad -- the jokes are.

First we set sail on . . .

Ship of Fools

For a spot o' tea with your holy humor, try this breezy offering from across the pond. The England-based Ship of Fools, celebrating its 10th anniversary, twits with a broad array of tools:

• Gadgets for God, including a chair shaped like a sitting Jesus and Jewish-style beer called He'Brew.


• A monthly Caption Contest, posting a picture -- perhaps an old engraving or a photo of skateboarding vicars -- for readers to supply descriptions.


• Volunteer scouts called "mystery worshipers," who write reviews of church services around the world -- from Liverpool to Sydney to Islamabad to Milford, Pa.


• The Fruitcake Zone, surveying lunacies like The Bible Answer Machine and a group that says UFOs are piloted by fallen angels.


• Signs and Blunders, with readers retelling gaffes from church signs and bulletins.

But this so-called Magazine of Christian Unrest doesn't merely smirk; it also carries searching, sometimes outraged essays.

A recent column by cofounder Iwan Russell Jones reflects on Martin Luther King's life. Religion reporter Mark Pinsky fumes at how much Paul Crouch of Trinity Broadcasting Network gets away with. And church historian Stephen Tompkins gives some backhanded praise -- after a slap in the face -- to atheist ideologue Richard Dawkins.

Snickering at saints

Continuing our weeklong series on religious humor sites: Don’t come unhinged, but today we’re walking through the . . .

Wittenburg Door

A pioneer in Christian satire, starting in 1971, The Wittenburg Door has changed hands from a whimsical youth ministry in California to the edgy Dallas-based Trinity Foundation – whose chief, Ole Anthony, is best known for helping ABC News bring down Robert Tilton.

One result: Fewer laughs, more “important” stuff.

Oh, there’s still some arch wit, like a review of an fictional Amish speed metal band. And the 10 worst movies about Jesus, like the incredibly titled Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter. And a peek at Noah’s blog, revealing plans to make a recipe of dove and olives. And a gamer’s mom who says she sees the Virgin Mary on the cover of Grand Theft Auto IV.

But there’s a lot of dark matter, much it by Doorkeeper John Bloom. He catalogues Benny Hinn’s monetary and theological gaffes. He decries a church that’s raffling $10,000 worth of fertility treatments. He does a scalpel-like analysis of the push for school prayer, which has lasted five decades thus far.

Televangelists get some gleeful savaging, but it seems a bit trite and true. How hard can it be to mock The Golfer’s Bible, by Rod Parsley? Or to ridicule a couple like Creflo Dollar and his wife, Taffi?

Still, there are also less-militant, more-thoughtful items. The “Door Interview” series has dialogues with the likes of Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright, and religious journalist Phyllis Tickle (not a made-up name!).

Special mention goes to “Signs of the End Times,” apparently a non-fiction collection of astonishing stories. Examples: General Motors is now smaller than Bed Bath & Beyond; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined the KISS Fan Club; fighting spam costs $140 billion per year; it is now possible to sear artwork onto bologna slices; the U.S. national debt will hit $10 trillion this year. Not laugh-inducing, but it’ll likely make you go “What??”

Birds in dockers?

Welcome back to our week-long look at the risky world of religious humor. Today we take wing with . . .

Lark News

Right from the trademark – a bird in belted Dockers slacks – Lark News shows a birds’-eye sharpness for faith-based foolishness. The Denver-based monthly uses satire in the best tradition: taking odd trends to ridiculous extremes.

This week’s lead spoof has congregants praising a pastor for having supernatural insights into their lives, when he's actually just reading their social networking sites. Another piece tells of a college group starting a ministry to men with ponytails, considering them an “unreached” group.

Check out the past stories, too. They include a man losing friends for constantly asking forgiveness. In another, a pastor turns his church into a coffee bar after finding the frappes got more raves than his sermons. Still another headline: “Small Group Members Decide to Stop Feigning Interest in Each Other.”

Lark News even makes fun of Internet conventions. A giant-print version serves the visually impaired; a computerized voice reads stories for the hearing impaired; and a high male voice recites for the benefit of eunuchs.

The free site gets money partly by selling cheeky T-shirts. They bear slogans like “I Love Cheeses,” or “I Worship Better than You Do,” or “Jesus Loves You! Then Again, He Loves Everybody.”

Obvious target audience for the column is the evangelical world, and much of the humor would be classified as gentle or “cute.” But for others who want to see evangelicals laugh at themselves – or who may want to load up on ammunition against them – it’s a worthwhile read as well.

Either way, take advantage of the pull-down menu at the upper right-hand corner. It’ll yield back issues of Lark News all the way back to January 2003.

Crystalline Jewish wisdom

Kabbalistic knowledge -- or at least a tasty sample -- is offered on Bas Ayin, Hebrew for "the center of the eye." In this occasional online magazine, Israeli rabbi Eliezer Shore snips and pastes nuggets from "the great Masters of the Jewish tradition."

The simple, clean Web pages serve up well-focused insights on God -- or Hashem, "The Name" in Orthodox Judaism -- and the human response to the deity.

Some are expositions of scripture, as with Shore’s own essay "Call of the Heart."

Some are meditations on famous lives, such as the Baal HaTanya, founder of the Chabad Lubavitch movement of Hasidic Judaism.

Some are poems, including meditations on nature by Dovid Shulman. And some are parables; one speaks eloquently of the reward of serving God without expecting reward.

They all share the simple language and structure, yet the deep, crystalline insight that is typical of mystical Judaism. Here's a sample:

"According to the Kabbalah, the four colors of the eye -- white, red, blue (or brown), and black -- correspond to the four spiritual worlds. The pupil represents this world, for like the black of the eye, this world receives all of its light from beyond, from Above."

Shore also gives away free issues of the magazine; but in this day of instant communication, that may not be necessary. This Web site has archives from a half-dozen issues, each with a half-dozen articles.

Why I left the Church

Sometimes it's a callous priest. Sometimes, it's church rules. Sometimes, just a misunderstanding.

Whatever reasons people give for dropping out of church life, Once Catholic (http://www.oncecatholic.org) is a safe place to talk it out. Created by the Franciscans, the homey-looking site is meant to say, "We understand."

The sample quotes do sound like they came from real people. Among them:

• "After my marriage failed I felt unsupported in so many ways -- by my family, people at my parish, even some of my friends."
  

• "I felt treated like I was part of an assembly-line religion, a 'fast-food' kind of faith."
  

• "Why does the Church treat abortion differently than other sins?"
  

• "Why is the Catholic Church so inflexible?"
  

The men in brown post some pre-packaged answers; there's also a so-called Living Room, a chain of discussion groups. The moderators -- Franciscan priests called "companions" -- wisely don't require real names or registration forms. As a result, users deal with real issues, like sex abuse.

Also helpful is a list of support groups and "welcome home programs," with references all over the country. A live moderated chat would have been a good flourish, though perhaps expensive for the Franciscans.

New Age smorgasbord

So you thought the New Age was dead? Rajuna's Revenge will enlighten you. With a splash page resembling a black-light poster -- two fluorescent-colored goddesses holding up the site title -- you'll feel yourself in that familiar mind-body realm.

Runes, crystals, spirit guides, Tarot, past lives, trans-dimensional travel, Earth's energy vortexes: Rajuna lays out an incredible smorgasbord. The various articles -- wrapped in the same color-on-black design -- show typical New Age eclectic sourcing, from NASA to news magazines to modern mystics.

Rajuna, aka June Kaminski, has three sections on astrologies, but mostly on the Greek version. Asian and native American systems are scanned only briefly. The Asian section does have a lot on the current Year of the Rat, but the other 11 symbols aren't detailed.

Although the basic information is free, there's a sizable marketing section: Egyptian goddess notepads, Celtic maiden T-shirts, kits and courses for readings via dowsing, numerology and other methods. Kaminski even offers her own Web design services.

If all this appeals to you, try the links to her other sites: Reincarnation Central, Visions of Adonai, and the Tarot section of BellaOnline. Rajuna also writes a blog, though it isn't often updated.

Your pastor's cheat sheet?

Plagiarism? Not exactly. Sermon Central does post a lot of messages free for the downloading. And some are written so well, it does make you wonder: Was the last great sermon you heard born in some other pulpit?

The site is billed as a resource for ministers, but it's also handy for laypeople to read as quick essays. And unlike a church, if you get bored, you can walk out without drawing attention!

But some of them really are interesting. More than 90 categories are covered -- including addiction, hardship, Narnia, marriage, dreams, racism, truth and worship -- easily searchable by several methods.

You can search by keyword, preset topic (movies, quotations, etc.) or Bible passage. You can search among the 32 denominations of the sermon contributors -- not just the usual Baptist or Methodist, but also Congregational, Disciples, Adventist, even Orthodox.

You can also sort by the contributing preachers, from a culturally diverse roster -- and see whose sermons are most viewed and highest rated by members of the site. Finally, you can find who is preaching what in your home state.

What's the catch? One is that you can access a lot of "premium" material, like church dramas, only with a paying account. Also for sale are PowerPoint templates -- crosses, candles, Communion chalices -- as backdrops for projected sermon outlines. You can also buy film loops or short videos with evocative devotional lessons. They cost up to $25.

For a stressed cleric caught short on a weekend, Sermon Central can be Saturday night salvation. But wouldn't it be fun for him to give a sermon you've read -- and see you lip-sync as he preaches!

Life amid death

Sad and beautiful, The Christian Catacombs of Rome takes you deep into the tombs where early Christians interred their martyrs -- and later hid when they themselves were hunted.

This image-rich site centers on the catacombs of St. Callixtus, one of the six in Italy that are open to the public. It offers an indepth look at the four levels of graves up to 65 feet deep, covering 90 acres.

Like all good Web sites, The Christian Catacombs imparts understanding as well as information. It gives a history of the catacombs and the persecution by Rome -- even excerpting Christian letters from the second and third centuries. It also explains the various symbols on the walls, like the anchor, the dove and the Chi Rho monogram.

"In the catacombs everything speaks of life more than death," says one evocative paragraph. "Every gallery they pass through, every symbol or painting they see, every inscription they read, brings the past to life and gives a message of faith and of Christian testimony."

The site has tools for an actual, physical visit as well: ticket prices, hours, locator maps, even bus routes. The maps are just embedded in the text, though; they would have been better as printable .pdf files.

Divine appointments?

Sure, you know the date for Christmas and maybe Hanukkah. How about Lag B'Omer or Bodhi Day? Or Holi or Ramadan?

You can track those and many more on the Interfaith Calendar, the generous work of a Methodist layman. The site not only shows holiday dates, but brief explanations of the parent religions.

You can find little-known holidays including St. Brighid of Kildare Day for Celtic Christians. You'll also learn that Diwali or Deepavali is observed by three religions: Hindu, Sikh and Jain. A sizable glossary defines each holiday and its importance.

One page groups the major holidays by religion, although this would have been more useful if each holiday were cross-linked to the glossary. Another page groups religions by types: one god, many gods, no god, or some mixture.

You can even find out about newer, more exotic religions -- like Cao Dai from Vietnam, the Middle Eastern Yezidis and Mandeans, even the alien-themed Raelian Church.

Another thoughtful touch: print-friendly versions of the list, usually keeping a month ahead.

Finally, there's a list of sites on religion and food -- not just practices like kosher, but even recipies. A tasty dessert for a nourishing site.

How women affect religion -- and vice versa

Women in Judeo-Christian traditions are highlighted in Alabaster Jars, named for the biblical story about a female who anointed Jesus' feet with perfume. The real treasure, suggests creator Jackie Kestner, was the willingness to serve -- a gift that modern women still often struggle to give away.

Center stage is an alphabetical list of women in the Bible. Some of the more fun stories are about the femme fatale Delilah, and about Jael, who drove a tent stake through an enemy soldier's head. And there's a long, hard look at the horrendously violated concubine of the Levite in Judges.

Also honored are women who lived after Bible times. The fourth-century Macrina the Younger founded one of the first monastic communities. And the 16th-century Chiyome, a Japanese widow, trained street girls as ninjas.

But the site also has puzzling gaps. There's nothing on the biblical Ruth or Esther -- or on that modern saint, the late Mother Teresa.

In the Articles section, Kestner takes on arguments of people who would make women second-class church members. Her rebuttals are precise and spirited, but weighed down with church jargon. She needs to write for the 21st century, not the 19th.

Alabaster Jars does provide a genuine public service in a fact file on domestic violence against women. There's also a section on persecution of Christians -- pointing out that in many countries, women are made special targets.

Sorry about that

"I'm sorry for all the times we've shoved God in your face."

"I'm sorry i overlooked you as a potential friend just because our beliefs were different."

"I have been critical and expected you to live according to my expectations. I am sorry."

Christians Confess rides one of the newest Web trends: confessional sites, letting people unburden themselves without shedding anonymity. With one difference: On this site, Christians apologize to the world for being, well, un-Christian.

At least one writer sees the paradox:

"I'm sorry you have to come to this site to find out how sorry we are, because we might feel too embarrassed or ashamed, or perhaps not willing enough to be weak, humble, and vulnerable to your face."

The Web site owner, Pastor John Smulo of a house church in Sacramento, admits he doesn't what else to do in order to make things right, and invites feedback from non-Christians. One response has a surprising counter-confession:

"I am sorry that I rolled my eyes when I saw the name of this site. I am sorry that I judged every Christian on the planet to be the same."