Filmmaker Lucy Walker directed Devil’s Playground, an award-winning 2002 full-length documentary film about the culture of Amish teenagers as they reach their sixteenth birthday by Stick Figure Productions. Walker later went on to direct Waste Land, the documentary that followed artist Vik Muniz to the world’s largest dump in Brazil.

Devil’s Playground is now available in its entirety at SnagFilms for online viewing:

Amish doctrine requires every teenager to choose their own spiritual fate. On the day of their sixteenth birthdays, each child is given free rein to explore all the conveniences and temptations of life in the outside “English” world, during a crucial period in their lives known as Rumspringa. In an unprecedented documentary, DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND offers an unflinching look at the effects of this culture shock on such previously guileless Amish teens.

The Zen Of Steve Jobs is an 80-page graphic novel authored by Caleb Melby that tells the reimagined story of Jobs’ relationship with Zen Buddhist priest Kobun Chino Otogawa. Produced by Forbes and JESS3, The Zen of Steve Jobs is a fully-illustrated book that was inspired by “a documentary in 2009 that touched on Jobs’ study of Buddhism and how its teachings affected the aesthetic of Apple products” viewed by JESS3′s CEO and founder Jesse Thomas.

A behind-the-scenes short of the making of The Zen of Steve Jobs:

An illustrated depiction of Steve Jobs’ friendship with Zen Buddhist Kobun Chino Otogawa and the impact it had on Jobs’ career.

Apple cofounder Steve Jobs (1955-2011) had such an enormous impact on so many people that his life often took on aspects of myth. But much of his success was due to collaboration with designers, engineers and thinkers. The Zen of Steve Jobs tells the story of Jobs’ relationship with one such person: Kobun Chino Otogawa.

Kobun was a Zen Buddhist priest who emigrated to the U.S. from Japan in the early 1970s. He was an innovator, lacked appreciation for rules and was passionate about art and design. Kobun was to Buddhism as Jobs was to the computer business: a renegade and maverick. It wasn’t long before the two became friends–a relationship that was not built to last.

This graphic book is a reimagining of that friendship. The story moves back and forward in time, from the 1970s to 2011, but centers on the period after Jobs’ exile from Apple in 1985 when he took up intensive study with Kobun. Their time together was integral to the big leaps that Apple took later on with its product design and business strategy.

Told using stripped down dialogue and bold calligraphic panels, The Zen of Steve Jobs explores how Jobs might have honed his design aesthetic via Eastern religion before choosing to identify only what he needs and leave the rest behind.

images via JESS3

Brooklyn-based couple, Rob Corso and Meg Sheehan, have developed a heavenly electronic grilled cheese sandwich press that imprints an image of Jesus on the outside of the bread, of course calling it, the Grilled Cheesus. They recently launched a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter to fund its manufacturing. In a similar vein, earlier this year, we posted about an awesome Jesus Waffle Maker by artist Alisa Toninato.

We are Rob and Meg, a young couple from Brooklyn, NY that LOVES grilled cheese and are pretty sure Jesus was an awesome guy… Now we’ve been working to bring the GRILLED CHEESUS™ to life for 3 years. When an episode of the hit Fox TV show ”GLEE” titled ‘Grilled Cheesus’ aired in October of 2010, we knew we had something special. This serendipitous event (or miracle!) brought our trademark into the cultural lexicon and provided the spark we needed to bring GRILLED CHEESUS™ to life. After a lot of research and design (that included pounds and pounds of cheese and many loaves of bread), we finally feel ready to launch GRILLED CHEESUS™

image via Canvas

via Gamefreaks

The Israel Museum has partnered with Google to bring the Dead Sea Scrolls online as interactive, searchable, high resolution documents (see Google’s blog post and video on the project). The scrolls were discovered in caves near the Dead Sea from 1947 to 1956 and include the oldest known biblical manuscripts. So far five of the scrolls are online of the 972 texts recovered from the caves.

Kirby Ferguson of Everything is a Remix created a fascinating special report for CNN on The Language of Christianity.

Christianity is like a language with different dialects, and over time some terminology may lose its essential meaning.

Austrian Niko Alm successfully applied for a religious exemption in order to appear on his driver’s license photo wearing a pasta strainer, a traditional head covering of his religion, Pastafarianism, aka the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The request was approved after nearly a year delay, and only after Alm obtained a psychiatrist’s note affirming his mental fitness to drive.

Alm now intends to petition the Austrian Government to officially recognize Pastafarianism as a religion.

via The Telegraph

Once confined to landing on tortillas, apparently Jesus Christ is now getting up for breakfast. It’s a case where religious pop meets delicious practicality and style. Artist and sculptor Alisa Toninato’s cast aluminum Jesus waffle maker is part of her ongoing Breakfast of Champions series and is now for sale on her Etsy store, MaidenFE, for $800. Also for sale in her online shop is an Annie Oakley waffle maker and cast iron skillets in the shape of the Midwestern states.

photos by Alisa Toninato and Cortney Heimerl

“We Stand Tall” is an internal Scientology music video from 1990. The video’s morale boosting song is reminiscent of the eighties charity single “We are the World,” and the Scientology leadership, including long time leader David Miscavige, is seen singing the chorus in unison. The video also includes footage of the Religious Freedom Crusade, a 1985 pro-Scientology protest spurred by a 39 million dollar fraud verdict against the organization.

via The Village Voice

photos by Shane Mielke

photo by Bruno Furnari

Salvation Mountain is a huge folk art installation in Niland California dominated by a vibrantly painted hill covered in Christian messages and iconography. It is the work of eccentric folk artist Leonard Knight, who has been working on the installation for 25 years.

Writer Walter Kevin Eubank has spent the last two years assisting Knight at Salvation Mountain, and is working on a book about the experience entitled Time With Leonard. Eubank is raising money for the book project on Kickstarter.

via The Kickstarter Blog

Why you ask?   Art!  Think about the awesomely uninhibited art we’d lose!

As featured on postcards in evangelical bookstores and outsider art collections everywhere, this depction of the Rapture just outside downtown Dallas is the one that started it all back in early ’80s.

More gleeful mayhem with the accidental 911 foreshadowing just a little more obvious.

Rapture rockets.  The inscription to the right refers to 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, the primary biblical source for the notion of the Rapture.

There’ll be plenty of Wonderbread for everyone up there!  Looks like this artist missed the date by at least 50 years.

Ever seen those “Car Vacated in Case of Rapture” bumperstickers? Clothes are traditionally not part of the uptake either, but this artist’s modesty caused a bit of a compromise. Let’s call this one “Going Topless.”

This week’s 5 day weather forecast includes some rain and a change of judgement on Saturday.

via Jesus Needs New PR & Blame It On The Voices

Unless you’ve been living under a billboard (without ever looking up to see what’s on the billboard), you probably know that an evangelical Christian group based in Oakland, California has predicted end times are nigh, beginning with the Rapture occurring on May 21st. The actual end of the world is due a little later this year on October 21, 2011. Mark your calendars, you won’t want to miss it.

Seems like high time to pull out this great mashup that brings The Doors’ Riders on the Storm together with Blondie’s tune Rapture. Blondie’s song is not actually about super-nice people flying up to heaven; it tells the tale of an urban rampage by an ET who consumes cars, bars, guitars, etc. It is also both the first #1 rap song in the US and was the first rap video played on MTV. Seriously. In an interesting numerical coincidence Rapture hit #1 30 years ago and Riders just turned 40.

Music history is full of great tunes about the world ending, and often a good bit of day-seizing in the face of it (see: Prince’s “1999″). Some variations on this theme, include of course R.E.M.’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), Armageddon by Prince Far-I, Waiting For The End Of The World by Elvis Costello, and my personal fave Train to Doomsville by Dub Syndicate featuring Lee “Scratch” Perry from 1988.

A fellow who goes by the moniker The Real Tuesday Weld even made a whole album on the concept of a final night out at a nightclub on Armageddon-eve, “as both performers and audience prepare themselves to say goodbye and to face an uncertain future realizing that only heaven knows what tomorrow will bring.”

Here’s Sun Ra‘s entry in this category, “It’s After The End of The World” from the 1974 film Space Is the Place:

The Church of John Coltrane, or more formally the St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church, is a San Francisco church which recognizes the late jazz saxophonist John Coltrane as a saint. Their services transcend typical church ceremonies, and are typified by passionate musical performances that inspire a kind of group communion with Jazz. Turnstyle News, based in Oakland, made a great video feature that really captures the spirit of their ebullient, idiosyncratic services and the vibe of the congregation. It is one of a series of videos they’ve made on Bay Area subjects.

Archbishop Franzo Wayne King founded the church in 1971, originally called “Yardbird Temple”, referring to Charlie Parker and also a jazz club that King ran in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood in the 1960′s. In 1982, the church joined the African Orthodox Church, changed its name, and canonized Coltrane. More specifically they canonized the Risen Trane:

The ascension of St. John Coltrane into one-ness with God is what we refer to as the Risen Trane. In dealing with the Saint, John Coltrane, we are not dealing with St. John the man but St. John the sound and St. John the Evangelist and Sound Baptist, who attained union with God through sound. From the standpoint of the biography of John Coltrane, the Risen Trane is the post 1957 John Coltrane. He who emerged from drug addiction onto a path of spiritual awakening and who gave testimony of the power and empowerment of grace of God in his life and in his Psalm on A Love Supreme, and in his music thereafter.

Things didn’t look so good for the church a decade ago as the dot-com boom forced them out of 351 Divisadero, where they were based for 30 years. Jack Boulware wrote a great piece at the time of the church’s eviction in 2000. That article covers the church’s history, but also includes great detail about San Francisco in the 1960′s and John Coltrane himself. Here’s an amazing section on the musician:

In his formative years, the shy young saxophonist from Philadelphia apprenticed under some of the best bandleaders at the time—Earl Bostic, Johnny Hodges, Gillespie, Davis, Thelonious Monk. As Porter points out, Coltrane wasn’t born a boy genius like Charlie Parker. He had to work at his talent. Friends would find him backstage in the dressing room between sets, practicing constantly for the perfect series of notes. While on tour, if hotel guests complained, he laid on the bed and silently fingered the keys. At night he fell asleep with the horn still in his mouth.

The church was without a home for several years, holding services at various locations, but they have found a permanent home once again. They are now based in the Fillmore district, an area of San Francisco which was known as Harlem of the West in the 1940s and 1950s. The church draws visitors and press coverage from all over the world.

video via Boing Boing

“The Last Breakfast” by Brian Stuckey, a sculptural recreation of the Leonardo da Vinci painting “The Last Supper” featuring cereal mascots. Prints are available through Brian’s Etsy store.

via Cultural Compulsive Disorder | Popped Culture | Geekosystem

Excentric presents “The Digital Story of The Nativity” told using social media.

via The Art of the Prank

“In The Beginning”, created by Katie Wendt as her senior year project at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

God creates the world in a week as he receives advice and feedback from the other residents of the heavens.

via Daily Animation

Flying Spaghetti Monster & Pedobear, together again! Spotted proudly on display at Nick and Rachel’s new apartment.

photo by Scott Beale

Cross Power Strip design concept by Alexander Pincus

Power/Strip is a 12 outlet cruciform surge protector that accommodates oversize adapters and provides comprehensive protection from evil, power surges, and AC contamination.

via Boing Boing

photos by Kyle Robertson

Over the last four years the New Beginnings Ministries church has been protesting in front of The Foxhole strip club in Warsaw, Ohio. The strippers have now returned the favor and setup their own protest out in front of the church.

via The Columbus Dispatch

OBJECTIVE: Ministries has some helpful advice for kids in the event that they find an atheist in their neighborhood.

via Fenchurch

photo via Comics Alliance

The fine tradition of pranking the Westboro Baptist Church continued this week at Comic-Con in San Diego, when WBC showed up to protest the event and were greeted by super hero and sci-fi themed counter-protestors.

Comics Alliance and Ryan Haylett have great photos of the Comic Con geeks’ response with their awesome signs.

Matt shot some video of the counter protest.

via The Daily What

video by TalonGodessOfHell

photo by Nick Graham

The giant 62′ tall, iconic “King of Kings” Jesus statue known as “Big Butter Jesus” and “Touchdown Jesus” located at Solid Rock Church near Monroe, Ohio just north of Cincinnati on I-75, was stuck by lightning and destroyed during a thunderstorm on Monday night. The church’s pastor says that they plan on rebuilding the statue.

photo by Rob Lambert

Here’s what Big Butter Jesus looked like before yesterday’s fire.

Comedian Heywood Banks wrote the song “Big Butter Jesus” which he performed on the radio program The Bob & Tom Show.

The website Jeeebus has been making fun of the statue for years.

via Chip Beale & David Klass

photo by Dustin Sacks

Dustin Sacks shot this great photo of “Device to Root Out Evil”, an upside-down church created by Dennis Oppenheim that was installed in Vancouver and has since been removed.

UPDATE: Several people have informed us that the upside-down church has relocated to Calgary.

photo by AndaleMono

DJ Jesus, created by Steve Yun in The Something Awful Forums.

via Nerdcore