Religion

The Mafia, in its heyday, ran lucrative protection rackets. Pay them and your business would be kept safe from "unforeseen" threats. Don’t pay them and your business might go up in smoke with you inside.

The episode title "#TeamLucifer" tells you all you need to know about where Fox's devil-themed crime show Lucifer wants your sympathies to lie. Yes, they are literally pushing a hashtag that glorifies being on the same side as the devil.

John Heilemann: self-appointed avenging angel and scourge of lies and liars? Earlier this month, Heilemann accused Dan Senor to his face of "lying" about Paul Ryan's presidential ambitions. Heilemann was back at his accusatory beat on today's Morning Joe, this time making the affable Willie Geist, of all people, his target. To introduce a feel-good segment congratulating Willie on his new gig,…

On Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, host Maher ended the show with a commentary against religion as he demanded that churches in the U.S. be taxed. The HBO comedian compared taxing religion to taxing destructive habits like smoking by suggesting a tax on Sunday school so children "don't get stupid." Conveniently ignoring that the Nazis and communists who mass murdered tens of millions…

Media coverage of Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia typically noted that it reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s opposition to gay marriage. Slate’s William Saletan acknowledges the literal truth of that reporting, but suggested in an April 8 article that the document contains seeds that will sprout into Vatican acceptance of same-sex unions, though he admits that process “might take centuries.”…

Sí pero No.

Okay this was actually funny. On Wednesday night’s edition of Modern Family, titled ‘Man Shouldn’t Lie,’ Cam (Eric Stonestreet) and Mitch (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) resort to unorthodox measures to generate income, by renting out their upstairs room to a rock band. A Christian rock band.

On Wednesday's New Day on CNN, co-host Michaela Pereira sympathetically gave country singer and gay rights activist Chely Wright a forum to complain about religious freedom initiatives in several Southern states, with Wright deriding the bills as "very bigoted" and "ridiculous."

Fox's Lucifer is a show that takes the Biblical concept of Heaven and Hell and turns it on its head. The main character Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis) is literally the devil experiencing life on earth, but outside of Hell he is actually pretty good while his angel brother is very bad outside of Heaven.

Kurt Eichenwald deemed himself an authority on the Bible and Christianity in a Monday item for Newsweek, as he lectured Mississippi Christians on their new religious liberty law. Eichenwald blasted the "the rogues' parade of Bible-thumpers who know nothing about what the Bible actually says" in the state, and contended that orthodox Christian theologians had gotten it wrong about sexuality and…

On Monday's New Day on CNN, co-host Michaela Pereira hosted a segment that slanted in favor of those on the left who are opposing current initiatives like the bathroom bill in North Carolina and the religious freedom bills in Georgia and Mississippi, with Pereira at one point fretting that the boycotts by businesses and entertainers will not be enough to thwart the measures. Speaking to Sarah…

If judicial review means that the U.S. Supreme Court is a de facto super-legislature that can in effect supersede actual legislatures, that’s fine with Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman. In a Wednesday post, Longman acknowledged that certain SCOTUS rulings over the past several decades have been politically motivated, but argued that those were appropriate remedies for the “deplorable and…

On Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS, host Zakaria began his show by touting what he viewed as President Barack Obama's accomplishments as evidence he has been a "transformational" President, while also giving some "passive" credit to Obama for a Republican party "implosion."

Two weeks ago, yours truly posted on a very inadequate March 26 U.S.-distributed Associated Press story out of Glasgow the previous day (since expired) about the murder of Asad Shah. Despite the fact that far more information was known at the time, the wire service would only acknowledge that "the killing of a Muslim shopkeeper who wished Christians a happy Easter is being investigated as '…