Religion

A proposed "culturally insensitive" traffic law in New South Wales, Australia, could land Muslim women of good conscience in jail for a year, the Associated Press alerted readers in a July 10 story. Essentially the law requires motorists pulled over by police officers to show their faces so that officers can confirm their identity against a driver's license photo. Failure to do so could…

Want a little wisdom? Given we're a culture that tends to be self-help hungry, odds are that you and I aren't hostile to a little good advice. Who would be? Well, May and June were months populated by commencement addresses. Some were memorable; some were political; some were self-indulgent. Some need to be reread now that the parties are over, internships are being settled into, vacations…

Frank Schaeffer has gaudily departed from the evangelical Christian family he was raised in, and how writes hair-on-fire articles about the dangers of the radical religious right. Last week, we found him warning on MSNBC of how Michele Bachmann represents a “theocracy in waiting” from people “who actually hate the United States as it is.” Unsurprisingly, The Washington Post thinks Schaeffer’…

The religion section in Saturday's Washington Post spotlighted a Daniel Burke story from the Religion News Service. While reports on orthodox religions often wonder whether followers won't leave "in droves" because a church won't bend to the popular will, Burke explores why the Unitarian Universalists can't keep adherents when it tries not to have any identifiable creed at all. That's…

  On Friday’s NBC Nightly News, as correspondent Richard Engel informed viewers that many thousands of Egyptians are again protesting against the government in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, he noted that organizers of the original protests fear that the Muslim Brotherhood will have too much influence in the new government, and recounted the Islamist group’s increased power in Egypt since January. He…

Stephen Prothero, a regular contributor to CNN.com's Belief Blog, bizarrely read the hearts of American Catholics, based on a recent poll which found that the majority of them believe abortion should stay legal. Prothero, writing in a Thursday item about 20th century leftist Catholic activist Dorothy Day and her self-admitted abortion, concluded that U.S. Catholics "will forgive Day's sin...…

Jason Horowitz's July 6 piece in the Style section of the Washington Post, "Faith & Politics," was a continuation of the mainstream media's crusade against Michele Bachmann and her family. Half anthropology report from the darkest Midwest, half political hit-piece, Horowitz's article sniped at the Bachmanns' opposition to homosexuality and their strong Lutheran faith.

Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jed Babbin said Friday that there is a deep-seated anti-Catholic bigotry at the New York Times. Speaking with Clayton Morris on "Fox & Friends," the former George H.W. Bush administration official also called the Gray Lady "a hub of liberal thinking" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN asked Wednesday if a person can follow "both Ayn Rand and Jesus," pulling quotes from both a Democrat and a fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights to answer that Christianity and Rand's philosophy oppose each other. Buried deep within the post on CNN's Belief Blog was the contrary view that Christians can adopt certain tenants of Rand's philosophy while rejecting others…

There were two candidates on the GOP ticket in 2008, John McCain and Sarah Palin. Both had young daughters involved in the campaign. Both have written books about the experience. Guess which book was celebrated and which was savaged? The media's character assassination of Sarah Palin knows no bounds, as she's been smeared as everything from "evil" to "unintelligent." But "Palin Derangement…

Hollywood once eschewed making movies that openly advocated atheism. That is no longer the case. "The Ledge" is the latest in a series of recent Hollywood films that actively promote atheism. Director Matthew Chapman hopes that his movie will be the "'Brokeback Mountain' moment for atheists." "The Ledge" has a simple plot. An atheist seduces the attractive wife of a Christian fundamentalist…

Reporting on Pope Benedict XVI's first-ever tweet yesterday, MSNBC producers showed viewers B-roll of a fake Pope Benedict Twitter account while anchor Chris Jansing read off her choice for the June 29 "tweet of the day." The pontiff doesn't have an official Twitter account and has only tweeted once, on June 28, from the @news_va_en account (video posted after page break):

On Tuesday's All Things Considered, NPR's Philip Reeves lamented the supposedly "anti-Muslim" climate in Denmark, noting that the country was once "considered a model of tolerance," but now, "men...[with] beards and traditional Islamic robes....are no longer entirely welcome, because some Danes want them to leave." Reeves quoted one imam who feared "a spiral, in which anti-immigration…

"It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more." -John Adams, July 3rd, 1776 Seems like a lot of fuss over a document written to form a…