It’s NYT’s lead story today, portrayed as a poaching expedition: “In an extraordinary bid to to lure traditionalist Anglicans en masse, the Vatican on Tuesday announced…” Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams begs to differ: It would not occur to me to see this as an act of aggression or a statement of no confidence, precisely […]

Forgive me, but I grew up in Essex County, NJ and put in my time as a daily journalist. So I’m a little bit skeptical that the $87,000 that Gov. Jon Corzine, he of the Wall Street millions, donated last year to St. Matthew AME Church in Orange had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with […]

Defending Sen. Jim DeMint’s principled opposition to congressional earmarks, two South Carolina Republican county chairmen figured they’d come up with a pretty good analogy: There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of […]

Can’t they just go back to calling themselves Illuminati?

Americans approve the way Obama handled winning the Nobel, 54 percent to 39 percent. As against approving his overall job as president 57-40. Effectively, no difference. Sorry, pundits.

In his remarks to the ADL Saturday night, Attorney General Eric Holder, making a case for the imminent federal hate crimes law, said: I want to reflect also tonight on another group for whom race and religion are treated race and religion are treated as defining characteristics, to the concern and detriment of us all. […]

Democracy Corps’ report on the GOP base is worth some serious pondering. What it claims to show is that the conservatives who constitute two-thirds of self-identified Republicans live in a mental world separate from the one you and I and fairly conservative Independents inhabit. What’s that world like? It’s different from what has become the […]

In case anyone out there noticed, it was never my intention to equate the Southern Baptist Convention’s interventions in American public life with anything related to the Spanish Inquisition. My concern, which is clear when the remarks are reviewed in context, was about the use of inflammatory and mendacious rhetoric to poison the public discourse. […]

Rasmussen’s latest has Huckabee leading Romney for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, Palin and Gingrich trailing, with Pawlenty bringing up the rear; as in: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; […]

In response to my snarky request that Pew clarify its ways and means of counting Muslims, Brian Grim, Senior Researcher at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, has sent along the following: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; […]

For the past six years, the cheerleaders at Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School in the northwest corner of Georgia had taken to displaying Bible verses on banners such as the above, through which their football team would burst onto the field. Then, last month, the banners were banned on advice of counsel, after a local woman […]

Wayne Baker is Sparks Whirlpool Corporation Research Professor, Professor of Management & Organizations, Professor of Sociology, and Faculty Associate, Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. His first area of specialization is “Values,” and one of his projects invites those who visit  his website to help “reshape the way our leaders understand our […]

Jim Martin kind of likes Sarah Silverman’s latest video proposal. Bill Donohue, not so much.Said video, in which the lovely Ms Silverman delicately suggests that the Vatican be sold so she doesn’t have to watch starving children on her 48″ hi-def plasma TV, was shown on HBO’s Bill Maher show a few days ago, and […]

Bruce Ledewitz sends in this comment on my remarks on his Mojave Cross proposal: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; […]

I’m with Schultz in seconding First Things‘ Keith Pavlischek’s call for Jim Wallis to straighten up and tell the world what his own actual position on abortion is, and how it relates to his support of the emerging health reform bill. Following the twists and turns of Pavlischek’s account, it’s pretty clear that Wallis wants […]