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Shroud of Turin: Should You Believe It is Real?

For 20 years I believed it. I changed my mind. Let me explain.

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Date: December 16, 2010Author: Dan

Shroud of Turin

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Two Episcopalians Walk Into a Bar. One is a cradle churchgoer whose faith has wavered but never quite failed. The other is a scientist who spent his adult life as an atheist and has only recently, reluctantly, begun to believe. They order oysters. They start talking.

What follows is a conversation that lasted more than a year — about God and hiddenness, about miracles and what the word almighty actually means, about the Resurrection and whether it happened in the ways we imagine, about N.T. Wright and John Shelby Spong and Rowan Williams and why three bishops and scholars of the Anglican Communion can hold such strikingly different views about the same empty tomb.

Two Episcopalians Walk Into a Bar is not a theology textbook or a devotional. It is the kind of conversation that happens when two ordinary people — neither of them experts, both of them serious — decide to follow the hard questions wherever they lead. The Episcopal tradition has always made room for exactly this kind of inquiry: faith held with conviction and curiosity, doubt treated as a companion rather than an enemy.
Our Hunger for Signs, available at Amazon, sets aside the carbon dating and the image analysis — not because those questions are unimportant, but because they are smaller than the question beneath them. What does it reveal about our faith that we want the Shroud to be real? What would it mean for Christian belief if it were authenticated tomorrow? And what does the long tradition of the hidden God — from the Hebrew prophets through the medieval mystics through Pascal and Kierkegaard and Tillich — say about a faith that needs a sign this badly? This is not a book about whether the Shroud is authentic. It is a book about what the hunger for its authenticity tells us about ourselves, and where that hunger, honestly followed, is trying to take us.
Available at Amazon: This book isn't about the Shroud, but it wrestles with the same questions that drew me here. If you've found the Shrouud of Turin interesting, you might find it worth a look.

My name is Dan Porter. After studying the Shroud of Turin for nearly 25 years—much of that time arguing it was probably Jesus' burial shroud—I undertook a rigorous reexamination of the facts. This process compelled me to change my position. Though I no longer believe the Shroud is authentic, I respect it as though it were.

In the world of Shroud research, there’s no shortage of contested evidence and speculative science—some of it bordering on science fiction. It’s a bit of a cafeteria line: you can pick and choose the pieces that support your view, whether for or against authenticity. I get it. All I can do is invite you to read what I’ve written—and comment if you feel inclined.

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  1. Teddi Pappas on Farey Takes On Gregory Referendarius and Teddi PappasJune 12, 2026

    Hi, Dan, I'm glad to know that you think that we should not depend too much on A.I. But, that…

  2. Dan on Farey Takes On Gregory Referendarius and Teddi PappasJune 12, 2026

    This is not what AI thinks. It is what AI regurgitates. This is a great example of why we should…

  3. Hemraj Fernando on Farey Takes On Gregory Referendarius and Teddi PappasJune 11, 2026

    This is what AI think: The Shroud of Turin remains one of the most scientifically frustrating and deeply fascinating artifacts…

  4. Hemraj Fernando on Farey Takes On Gregory Referendarius and Teddi PappasJune 11, 2026

    Yes, I know that, Hugh. Any idea how the image was formed? That is the most important thing to understand?…

  5. Hugh Farey on Farey Takes On Gregory Referendarius and Teddi PappasJune 10, 2026

    Hi Hemraj! How the image was created or formed is a constant, regular, continuous topic of blogs, interviews, discussions and…

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