popular culture

Newsweek actually gets religion, writes the author of the recent gay marriage issue. It’s the Christian Right culture warriors who claim that God possesses their prejudices who are mistaken.

The winner of Old Spice’s “Art of Manliness” competition isn’t just any Conservative Christian—he’s a card-carrying member of the theocratic Christian Reconstructionist movement that encourages women to submit to their men and to abstain from voting. Does this war on “metrosexual pretty boys” mark the beginning of a political career for Matthew Chancey?

In his zeal to appeal to all, the president-elect chose a pastor to give the invocation at his inauguration who has compared gays to pedophiles and abortion to the Holocaust. Why did he do it?

Thou shalt not ignore the Top Ten list. We, the editors, rank the top of the tops, including The Onion’s list, comparisons between Religion and Dentistry, Reality TV’s Most Memorable Christians, Top Intellectuals, and many more. Six more to be precise.

The film adaptation of this Pulitzer Prize-winning play, set in the midst of Vatican II, pits the age-old male hierarchy against the secrecy of the recent molestation scandals. And the winner is…

The numbers are in and you, the reader, have chosen your favorite RD stories of the year; from Rick Warren to AIPAC, Sarah Palin, Creationism 2.0 and the fabled “death” of the religious right.

A brand new investigation of the Bush family reveals a religious narrative that strays from the official story circulated to supporters and the press. How many conversions did George W. actually have and why? How did a blue-blooded Episcopalian family come to represent the evangelicals of America?

“Emerald”-level member uncovered fraud and deception before being kicked out; Charles Colson and “Redemption”; Americans United’s Top Ten Church-State stories; and more.

John Travolta’s 16-year-old son is found dead and our celebrity culture is quick to blame the religion of his parents, Scientology. So much harder to face the fact of death, to look beyond the spectacle of someone else’s tragedy and toward our own frailty and error.

Rolling with the atheists in the UK; rich men, camels, and needle’s eyes; Jews, Christians, and Gaza; the Obamas on Sunday mornings…all this and more on the religion writer’s beat as the year begins.