Religion

On November 15 (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I compared how two of the leading wire services, Reuters and the Associated Press, covered the announcement by Geron Corp. of its decision to halt the first government-approved clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. Reuters fairly noted that "teams working with adult stem cells -- a less ambitious area -- are making good progress." While…

On Monday, the Daily Kos covered the Saturday night GOP debate in Iowa with a typical headline "Republicans pander to American Taliban." (Who's doing the pandering? That's also the title of the latest book by Kos bloglord Markos Moulitsas.) Jed  Lewison insisted Rick Santorum was Talibanesque when he said, in the Washington Post account: “As long as abortion is legal in this country... we will…

On his MSNBC show this evening, Al Sharpton played the audio of his radio-show interview of President Obama in which the president, commenting on the failure of the Super Committee, said "my religious faith" makes him believe at some point Republicans will agree to raise taxes. Even the Reverend Al couldn't take PBO's reference to his religious faith seriously, as he can be heard chuckling…

Marking the fifth anniversary of Washington Post's "On Faith" section with a November 17 post on the "five lessons" she's learned while serving as the online feature editor, Sally Quinn declared that she's no longer an atheist, nor an agnostic, really, because "It simply means that you don’t know" and "By that definition we are all agnostics. The pope is an agnostic." Quinn ultimately went on…

Time's Tim Padgett regurgitated just about every liberal talking point on abortion in an online column on Thursday which tried to claim that the Catholic Church's pro-life efforts in the U.S. were pointless and out of step with the laity: "Aren't they just wasting our time as well as their own?" Padgett cherry-picked from Church documents and quoted from the infamous pro-abortion front group…

To Washington Post religion reporter Lisa Miller, evangelical ministers like Rick Warren and Tim Keller should be applauded for their "clinical frankness" about God's design for sexual pleasure within the covenant of marriage in their sermons, books, and even tweets. Now if only they could just get over that silly biblical injunction against homosexuality, Miller lamented in her November 10 "…

On Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams followed a report on the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State University by drawing this comparison: "A lot of people watching this scandal unfold at Penn State, watching the human damage pile up, watching an institution get badly soiled, can't help but think of the scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in America. There are a lot of…

Initiative 26 -- which would have amended the Mississippi state constitution to include unborn children as persons protected under the law -- was rejected by Magnolia State voters last night. In response, Georgetown professor and Washington Post "On Faith" blog contributor Jacques Berlinerblau quickly hacked out a post celebrating the temporary victory over the "devastating sleeper cell of a…

Perhaps CNN’s "Belief Blog" should be renamed the "Anti-Belief Blog." Blatant scorn for Christian morality is ever-present there.  Fordham religious professor Patrick Hornbeck, in a post titled "Why good Catholics are challenging church line on homosexuality," argues that good Catholics are increasingly rejecting "official Church teaching" concerning homosexuality. He claims that "A series of…

It's one thing for your average, secular liberal not to know the New Testament.  But for the Reverend Al Sharpton not to know better? On his MSNBC show this evening, Sharpton rolled video of Michelle Bachmann, after making the case for self-reliance, saying "if anyone will not work, neither shall they eat." Even this NewsBuster, who is anything but expert in the area, realized that Bachman…

The day before Mississippi voters went to the polls to decide whether to amend the state constitution to define "person" to include unborn children as early as the point of conception, Washington Post's Sally Quinn set out to denounce Initiative 26 on the "On Faith" blog that she edits. Quinn, an atheist, groused that religious voters in the Magnolia State may make a significant change to the…

The arrest of former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky on pedophilia charges has absolutely nothing to do with the Catholic Church.  Neither does an alleged coverup by Penn State officials of repeated allegations of sexual misconduct against Sandusky. Yet religion reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman found a way to shoehorn the Church into the story in a November 6 "Faith & Reason"…

Would NPR or other liberal outlets ever suggest liberals were leading the fight for tax cuts for the rich? But on Saturday night’s All Things Considered, substitute host Laura Sullivan announced “In the small tourist town of Holland, Michigan, an unlikely group of religious leaders and conservatives are leading the fight for gay rights.” But the star of reporter Lindsey Smith’s piece was not…

At the tail end of  the second hour of the Diane Rehm Show on many NPR stations Friday, defense reporter James Kitfield of the National Journal broke out his outrage about the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which was firebombed this week. Like Time's Bruce Crumley, Kitfield saved his outrage for the "irresponsible" satirists and all his sensitivity for the Muslims of France. In the Huffington…