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The Christian Legal Society has sued Hastings College of Law for its refusal to recognize their group as an official campus club, claiming their freedom to practice their faith is being challenged. An expert on church-state separation law says the case is more about the religious right’s “political moxie” to claim religious persecution than about religious liberty.

What can the strange juxtaposition of Warren and Robinson teach us about the current state of the religion-and-culture wars?

As Congress holds hearings on overturning the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, the Family Research Council hosted a live webcast.

It’s always about Palin.

One of the strange aspects of broadcaster Glenn Beck’s recent moves to transform himself into a religious leader as well as entertainer and “educator” has been his intense attacks on President Obama’s theology of salvation, which he has called “evil” and “satanic.”

On July 2, still glowing from the national media spotlight, Personhood USA issued a press release, “Personhood Leaders Suffer Violent Attacks From Pro-Abortion Terrorists Following Newsweek Feature,” with photos and description of shattered front-door glass, spray-painted coat hangers and “F— You” with a backward F across the front of their Denver-suburb house. The release said the Newsweek profile led to physical threats and the posting of the Masons’ home address in comments—and implicated The Daily Beast’s “notoriously liberal” readers and “pro-choice criminals” in the alleged vandalism.

Tyler Perry’s Madea franchise is part of a collective of black, fat drag, comedy-dramas. These films bear six distinguishing features: 1) they are considered “successful” because they gross more than their production costs; 2) they are accompanied by an R&B/gospel soundtrack, and 3) include casts of popular black actors and actresses who are well known within African American communities. Also characteristic of these films are 4) the use of multiple and arguably watered-down Protestant messages about the importance of faith in God, couched in comedic performance, to appeal to mass audiences. An additional feature is that 5) the black church is the space where a significant turning point and/or the film’s resolution occur. Most notably, these films are characterized by 6) the donning of intricately designed fat suits by black men (Tyler Perry, Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy) to parody black women.

Penance, a new iPhone app, gathers its sacred power through agnosticism. While existent applications for socially-networked religion like Prayer Wall or Manistone facilitate shared reflection on sacred realities beyond the crowds they attract, Penance draws instead upon the growing faith that social networking can miraculously generate spiritual orientation, evading with sacrilegious humor where one expects guidance. Behold: crowdsourced Catholicism.

The documentary serves as a good illustration of the gradual and subtle influence of R. J. Rushdoony’s work in the broader culture—often in places where his name is completely unknown.

RD talks to a Ugandan LGBT-rights activist about the effect of the US religious right on Ugandan attitudes toward LGBT people.