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   The FDA's Plan B The Washington Post reports that more than 60 bills concerning "Plan B" emergency contraception have been filed in state legislatures in 2006 alone, leading to a state-by-state divide that largely reflects predictable "red state/blue state" lines, with some of the... [ Continue reading: ] Liberal Media v. Liberal Media AP religion writer Richard N. Ostling continues to do his part to dismantle the secular/liberal-media myth by using his own elite pulpit to rail against the secular/liberal book publishing industry: comparing the reviews of two recent books by and about... [ Continue reading: ] Moses and Awards Season There are just six shipping days left before the Oscars to show Hollywood what you think of gay cowboys. Wow your Oscar party guests with this zinger T-shirt from Second Coming Clothing Co., "The Original 10 Commandments Broke Back on... [ Continue reading: ] Cartoon Controversies Lite When the (cartoon) image is of Jesus, well, then it's not quite the same issue, there being no prohibition of images of Jesus as there is of Mohammad. But that doesn't stop the tempests in teapots, as Scott Jaschik of... [ Continue reading: ]  California Communion On the Episcopal Diocese of California's short-list for bishop are two openly-gay priests, the Rev. Bonnie Perry of Chicago and the Very Rev. Robert Taylor of Seattle. If either of the two are selected, it would be in contradiction to... [ Continue reading: ] Love Your Mother Love your mother: Church of England Bishop of Bolton, the Rt. Rev. David Gillett, has called upon Christians to recognize the "motherhood" of God, and to de-masculinize the divine by remembering that a "mothering" God isn't a feminist heresy, but... [ Continue reading: ] The Deathtoll After the anti-Mohammad-cartoon riots in Nigeria turned into an ugly mob attack by Muslims on Christian communities and churches -- killing at least 25, torturing a bishop's family, and burning between 11 and 30 churches -- Christian mobs retaliated with... [ Continue reading: ]  The Spotless Mind of the Assassin Religion-beat implosion. Robert Ferrigno, author of the newest in apoco-fiction, Prayers for the Assassin -- a novel depicting a dystopian future wherein the U.S. is under Islamic rule, and Superbowls are punctuated by calls to prayer -- talks to Henry... [ Continue reading: ] Mothers, Don't Let Your Children Grow Up To Be Subgenii On February 3, Rachel Bevilacqua, a member of the satirical religion/performance art group, The Church of the Subgenius, was stripped of custody of her son, Kohl Jary, after New York State Judge James P. Punch reviewed pictures of Bevilacqua at... [ Continue reading: ]  Biblical Objectivity Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of the evangelical World Magazine and author of Prodigal Press: The Anti-Christian Bias of the American News Media, which argues that the media persecutes public Christians more than other public figures, revives his call for journalists on... [ Continue reading: ] WWBD? What would Buddha do about unflattering cartoons? Practice non-attachment? Hope that the cartoonist is sent to a special, Buddhahood-less hell? Or recognize that, with the news of a Buddhist-issued death threat, "Buddhism, like Islam," can easily become "another weapon in... [ Continue reading: ] Islam Is the West Why the "Clash of Civilizations" is the wrong way to approach the cartoon controversy. By S. Brent Plate [ Continue reading: ]  The Union Forever "The haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor": Idealists of different stripes will tell you that the similarities between religious and labor-rights language should come as no surprise, despite the many attempts over the past... [ Continue reading: ] Christian Iran The Church of England Newspaper investigates reports of abuses of Iranian Christians, who have lately been subject to temporary arrests, seizures of their property, beatings by police and secret service members, and infringements on their religious freedoms, including barring open... [ Continue reading: ] Season's Ratings XXtreme Religion Reporting!! For anyone who thinks Christianity is most comprehensively represented by a Scottish Geraldo whimpering, "the pain, the pain," this is your Easter: Scottish journalist/persona, Dominik Diamond, is trolling for viewers by publicly weighing the question of whether... [ Continue reading: ] Hollywood Houses of God When is a house of God a by-the-books house of worship? A federal lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice against the city of Hollywood once again confirms that real estate is becoming one of the hot-button areas of... [ Continue reading: ]  33 11 "When they finally executed Gacy, I must admit to totally losing it for several weeks both before and after. I sent him a FedEx at Joliet reminding him of our encounter, and of my sign, and telling him I was... [ Continue reading: ] Church of Scouting An appellate court case in California is currently underway to determine whether the Boy Scouts of America is a religious organization and thus barred under federal law from leasing public property and facilities from the City of San Diego under... [ Continue reading: ] Cal Thomas's Revelations When it comes to evangelical activism about the environment, vastly syndicated columnist and Fox News host, Cal Thomas, counsels his fellow Christians to keep their politics in their pants -- err, their hearts -- and to not mind the mandates... [ Continue reading: ]  Air Force Friends What's the proper balance between the two constitutional references to church-state relations? If you ask Ted Haggard, it's a 2:1 cocktail, heavy on the protection of majority religions. After intensive lobbying by the Air Force's "'evangelical friends,'" the military branch... [ Continue reading: ] Old Time Evolution As far as media coverage and attracting the invaluable ire of one's opponents is concerned, Evolution Sunday was a success, ranking national publicity and a deliciously-juvenile rebuttal from the staff of Intelligent Design headquarters, the Discovery Institute. In a statement... [ Continue reading: ] Wall Street Shamans The Washington Post's Laura Blumenfeld visits a New York CEO-turned Virgin Islands shaman and finds a crowd of "aging boomers and the urban spa class" who can't cry in the boardroom but can when their shaman cleanses their energies and... [ Continue reading: ]  EU Press Code The E.U. commissioner for justice, freedom and security, Franco Frattini, yesterday announced plans for a media code of conduct when reporting on Islam and other religions in attempt to find a balance between "'two fundamental freedoms, the freedom of expression... [ Continue reading: ] Disowning Fred Phelps As military families and those seeking to curry their favor gear up to fight the attention-starved activists from the "God Hates Fags" Westboro Baptist Church, with bills pending in 14 states that would outlaw the sort of funeral protests Westboro... [ Continue reading: ]  The World is Mine "I've got a Mercedes, my wife has a Mercedes, my daughter has a Mercedes. It all belongs to God and he's letting me use it." Bartholomew's Notes on Religion reports that Charisma magazine has announced its dog in the race... [ Continue reading: ] Culture Cringe The BBC's otherwise invaluable digest on Religion and Ethics has been accused of having an "evident cultural cringe," when it came to explaining Islam. The site's page on Islam, charged a former executive, reads like it was written by a... [ Continue reading: ] NAE Service: Whether You Want It or Not Who's the National Association of Evangelicals going to save, if not the environment? When it's not busy finding excuses not to join the centrist evangelical coalition that's taking on global warming, the NAE is directing its salvation energies closer to... [ Continue reading: ]  Death Squad Morality The New York Times' Benedict Carey reports on the innate human capacity for "moral disengagement," an adaptable "moral compass" that allows people to act in contradiction to the personal convictions and code of ethics, whether in the commission of their... [ Continue reading: ] Free Blasphemy Just days after the British parliament dealt a blow to the "Racial and Religious Hatred Bill," long contested by an unlikely coalition of free speech advocates and conservative religious groups claiming that the bill would criminalize their faith and arguing... [ Continue reading: ] Caterpillar Divestment The Church of England's general synod, backed by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has voted to disinvest from the U.S. Caterpillar company as part of its decision to disinvest from corporations that profit off Israel's occupation of Palestine. The Church... [ Continue reading: ]  Megachurches Today A new report written by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, Leadership Network, "Megachurches Today 2005," has tallied the number of U.S. megachurches at 1,210: double the number of churches with 2,000 or more congregants that existed five years ago,... [ Continue reading: ] Political Cartoon Juan Cole takes a sober look at the Mohammad cartoon crisis, which led this weekend to the burning of Danish and Norwegian embassies, and attacks on Iraqi and Turkish Christian churches, and sees more politics than pure religion in the... [ Continue reading: ] Proselytize, Evangelize Attorneys defending the Air Force against charges of religious discrimination at the Colorado Springs Air Force Academy have asked the judge presiding over the lawsuit to dismiss the case on the grounds that plaintiff Michael Weinstein and his co-plaintiffs haven't... [ Continue reading: ]  In Defense of Relativism Austin Dacey, in one half of a pair of New York Times op-ed responses to Pope Benedict XVI's new God-is-Love encyclical (the second written by Father Lorenzo Albacete), takes up an idea missing from "Deus Caritas Est": Benedict's pre-papal statements... [ Continue reading: ] JPIICC Joe Feuerherd of the National Catholic Reporter, always astute at following the money trail, investigates the John Paul II Cultural Center: a $75 million white elephant in Washington, D.C., intended to be a "presidential library of sorts," that's been largely... [ Continue reading: ] The Revolution That Wasn't A short year and a half after the first hopeful buzz surrounded the National Association of Evangelical's "revolutionary" new manifesto, "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," which promised a shift in evangelical priorities from... [ Continue reading: ]  Sam Brownback Is A Fruit Jeff Sharlet: On biblical literacy, "Beavis and Butthead," bigotry, the price of grain in Kansas, real estate in Tbilisi, the well-being of cheetahs, and the secret work of committees. [ Continue reading: ] Evolution Sunday Superbowl Sunday, Justice Sunday -- when o when will the evolutionist Christians have a Sunday of their own? Next week, as it turns out. February 12, which also marks the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin, more than 400 churches will... [ Continue reading: ] David v. Goliath: the Study The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's National Religious Leadership Roundtable has released a new report this week, taking inventory of all LGBT-friendly churches and religious groups, in hopes that the gay community can find ways to mobilize these progressive... [ Continue reading: ] Middle God The Washington Post's Peter Slevin profiles John Danforth, Episcopal priest, former senator, and current naysayer to the Christian right. Danforth's recent and vocal criticisms of his fellow Republicans for falling too much under the influence of conservative evangelicaldom has focused... [ Continue reading: ]  Banning Contempt Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper which prompted world-wide Muslim protests after publishing cartoons criticized as blasphemous, in which the Prophet Mohammed was depicted wearing a bomb-shaped turban or telling suicide bombers he'd "run out of virgins" with which to reward them,... [ Continue reading: ] Religion-Free Alito David Waters of The Scripps Howard News Service defends blind, religion-free reporting when it comes to the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito, taking the trepidation of the Senate Judiciary Committee to ask Alito about his religious beliefs as proof that... [ Continue reading: ] U.K. Religious Hatred Bill Fails Britain's "religious hatred bill," which has been criticized for over a year by an unlikely coalition of Christian and Muslim groups, civil libertarians, atheists and comics, suffered a major defeat yesterday as absenteeism and abstentions on the part of Labour... [ Continue reading: ] |