The folks over at HuffPo made a big splash a few weeks ago with their new religion section that so far has been a mix of religion stories around the web and left-of-center commentary. Here’s how HuffPo foundress Arianna Huffington described what she envisioned at the start:

“It will also be home to an open and fearless dialogue about all the ways religion affects both our personal and our public lives. And it will do so in a way that moves beyond the pigeonhole depictions of both the faithful and the agnostic we see so frequently — and also beyond the tired assumption that God is a card-carrying member of one political party or another.”

Now the right-of-center Culture and Media Institute has some news: HuffPo is liberal, and “hates religion.” From their analysis (based on “the first two weeks of stories and columns from HuffPost Religion from its start date, Feb. 24, through March 10.”):

— 81 percent of the stories and columns (13 out of 16) that focused on Christianity either criticized certain Christian denominations, leaders or beliefs.

— Nearly 50 percent (36 out of 78) of the articles focused on atheists, agnostics, opponents to organized religion or non-Christian religions, despite the fact that nearly 80 percent of Americans claim the Christian religion

— Over 20 percent (17 out of 78) of the articles exploited religion to promote a liberal agenda, focusing on topics such as homosexuality, global warming and universal health care.

Here’s the natural follow-up question: So what? Did anyone really think HuffPo wasn’t a liberal-oriented site? The CMI’s Dan Gainor told our own Kimberlee Hauss that HuffPo masks itself as a legitimate mainstream news source, but is anything but:

“There’s a big difference between liberal and what the Huffington Post is publishing. In many cases, its anti-religious. I think most of the liberal people I know would be stunned by that. Roughly half the stuff caters to atheism or anti-religious material. We wanted to see how the left views religion. Even we were surprised how bad it is.”