Every now and then, someone sends your GetReligionistas the URL for a story that is simply too good, too interesting to post right away. The problem is that it’s hard to know what to write, when dealing with one of those stunning long reads that reads like the summary of a 12-hour documentary series, with all of the imagery playing on a big screen in your head.

That was certainly the case with the recent Smithsonian piece by Mike Dash that ran under the double-decker headline that certainly didn’t...