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Famous Atheists, Fat Ministers, Papal Tweets, and a Mega-Hoax

By Michael J. Altman

…eeted—from an iPad, no less. It’s all part of the Vatican’s new multimedia news portal, news.va. Biblical criticism is getting high-tech. A new computer program uses an algorithm to discern various writers in the biblical text. Kudzu Jesus: “You can’t spray Jesus with Roundup.” Oh, and a giant Jesus in Peru. The FBI invited Westboro Baptist Church to be a part of its domestic terrorism training program. The goal was to give officers a chance to se…

The Birth of Glenn Beck’s Nation

By Kelly J. Baker

…med. Yet this mantle, or even legacy, does not solely belong to him. The struggle to reclaim the nation, or “restore honor,” began long before he, the John Birch Society, Joseph McCarthy and the like joined it in the mid-twentieth century. Americans, from the Reconstruction Klan in the 1860s, the Know Nothings of the 1890s to the second Klan of the 1910s and 1920s, to home-grown Christian fascists of the 1930s, sought to protect a nation in peril…

Fun with Facts, or, Yes Virginia, The UCC is still a Trinitarian Denomination

By Daniel Schultz

…ning in his glory. They have a credibility problem, to put it mildly. The truly egregious thing about it is that Mattingly passes on the BWF press release as true without bothering to do, as Grossman notes, any other kind of fact-checking. (As it happens, I know something about what happens when you do this. It ain’t pretty.) Any journalist worth his or her salt knows not to accept press releases as gospel. When Chuck Currie posted on the subject…

Did Billy Graham Really Tell Romney He’d ‘Help’?

By Evan Derkacz

…hat.” Got that? Romney’s campaign aides are the source of the quote. Yahoo News’ Holly Bailey attributes the quote to Romney’s senior adviser Mark DeMoss, while RNS’s excellent Adelle Banks attributes it to the Romney campaign’s Rick Gorka, with confirmation from Graham spokesman A. Larry Ross. Others, like HuffPo blogger Sabrina Siddiqui and Wall St. Journal blogger Sara Murray dispensed with attribution altogether and just reported it as though…

Newt Gingrich’s Apocalypse

By Sarah Posner

…it will — actually because he thinks it will — bring about the end of the world. Perhaps of the newer sort of news variety (although possibly less sexy because it only involves a member of Congress, not a presidential candidate — but wait, there’s definitely more on that, so keep reading) is Alexander Carpenter’s report in the Seventh Day Adventist magazine Spectrum, about the bizarre survivalist theories of Maryland Republican Roscoe Bartlett. C…

Christian Pol, Attacked for Opposing ‘In God We Trust’ in School, Talks Church and State

By Frederick Clarkson

…, the experience and example of State Senator John Marty (D-MN) may be instructive. Marty was smeared on Fox News after he opposed a legislative amendment that would allow for the display of In God We Trust in the public schools. The bill’s sponsor, Republican Senator Dan Hall, described Marty as part of an “anti-faith movement” that seeks to “suppress” religion and “wipe it out of government.” Hall went on to say it was a matter of “religious fre…

Notify This! Vatican Bungles Response to Sexual Ethics Book

By Mary E. Hunt

…h husbands or lovers” (p. 236). I am confident that this came as unwelcome news to many of the men gathered. But the fact that they would dwell on it speaks volumes about their ethics and their rapidly eroding power. Sexual power is power, and more and more women have it. Apparently the struggle to wrest it back is high on the agenda of those who live on the 110 acres called the Vatican. A more adequate understanding of Farley’s theological projec…

Love the Scholarship But Hate the Scholar’s Sin?: ‘Himpathy’ for an Academic Pedophile Enables a Culture of Abuse

By Stephen Young

…sinner, hate the sin. Yes, Cook opens by being “appalled” over “the recent news about Prof. Jan Joosten” and urges “compassion … to the innocent children.” But then the paths of sympathy flow to Joosten, not his thousands of victims who vanish behind the strangling shadow of empathy for a man who facilitated their abuse. This response is not a recipe for interrupting the culture of abusive men. It instead relies on a commonsense emotional posture…

New Gallup Poll Finds Only 34% Correctly Identify Obama as Christian

By Sarah Posner

…wed by stories on a former pastor who is sought in a bank robbery, accusations that pastor and his wife gambled with church funds, the conviction of Mgsr. Lynn, and the news that the Vatican has hired a Fox News correspondent and Opus Dei member as a communications consultant. …

An Obituary for Right-Wing Evangelicalism?

By Becky Garrison

…hool massacre in Newtown, CT should be blamed on the gays. Following this news, Jesus of Nazareth left the building. Just last month, as the movement struggled for breath, other far-right pastors blamed the gays for Hurricane Sandy. And just recently evangelicals kicked sand in the Supreme Court’s face after these sissies dared to question their biblical understanding of family. (Justice Scalia and Rick Warren joined in this sandstorm by equating…