Search

Glenn Beck’s efforts to become a religious leader for Tea Party America has a lot of commentators discussing the feasibility of a Mormon convert leading a wary evangelical and Catholic right in a faith-driven cause.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, while he was a senior official for Pope John Paul II, envisioned a leaner, meaner church, one with conservative doctrine and compliant faithful. Now that he is Pope Benedict XVI, his dream is coming true.

An afternoon with credential-free expert William Federer and his fact-challenged “What Every American Needs to Know About the Koran.”

Why are conservative churches thriving in the “spiritual wasteland” of the Pacific Northwest, while liberal churches struggle? Author James Wellman explains what’s going on in the region, and how this plays out across the United States.

The Lambs of Christ founder’s lifetime example of “nonviolent” protest is now being invoked by the Catholic Bishops, according to the Thomas More Society. But for abortion providers Weslin’s nonviolence is just violence by another name.

Beyond a growing distaste for the rancor around hot-button issues like human sexuality, gender equity, and reproductive choice, people seem to be put off church because they are able to do the kind of work—tending the sick, advocating for the oppressed, caring for the earth, comforting those in trouble or need—that was long the stock in trade of local churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples, but which, through the modern corporatizing of mainstream religions, was largely outsourced to separate agencies. This is why you’ll probably find more people volunteering in any given week at Martha’s Kitchen food pantry in downtown San Jose, California than at Sunday services at the church across the street. If Facebook is killing the church, that is, it’s probably more accurate to call it an assisted suicide.

The language of faith has been so debased in the current economy, that it no longer seems worthy of credit. The current president, and his allegedly Palin-fueled base, have a lot to do with that.

A social movement comes into being when a group of people come to see themselves as sharing a common identity, a common story, and a common destination. How did Dr. King’s rhetoric inform the consciousness of the civil rights era?

Powell and Obama share a perspective, born of an experience, that the rest of us should heed well: the deployment of religion in the cause of race- or other-baiting is an especially dangerous game.

A round-by-round analysis of the final debate. McCain had to score a knockout, and Obama had to stay off the ropes…how did they do?