LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. — Along with about 20 million other Americans who’ll do the same this summer, my family just moved house. It’s the biggest relocation of my life — 2,016 miles to be exact — from a bohemian suburb of Chicago to a groovy beach town in Southern California. It’s been said that moving […]

Corners of the blogosphere have been atwitter with a remark made yesterday by House minority whip Eric Cantor to the annual conference of John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel; to wit: Reaching out to the Muslim world may help in creating an environment for peace in the Middle East, but we must insist as Americans […]

(UNDATED) After reading reports from the Episcopal Church’s recent General Convention in Anaheim, Calif., I was reminded that church conventions aren’t “the church,” any more than Congress is “the nation.” At church conventions, a handful gather to conduct institutional business, tackle two or three hot-button issues, vote on budgets, hold elections, and pass a few […]

A couple of days ago, the Israeli daily Haaretz broke a story about a booklet being distributed to Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers asserting, among other things, that the pope and the cardinals of the Vatican “help organize tours of Auschwitz for Hezbollah members to teach them how to wipe out Jews.” Purporting to tell […]

By writing about his decade-old departure from the Southern Baptist Convention in an Australian paper, Jimmy Carter has caught the attention of people who may have missed the news the first time. What’s a little curious is that, the first time around, Carter gave as his reason his sense that the SBC’s ”increasingly rigid” doctrines […]

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Back in 1954, when “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance and Congress required all U.S. coins and paper currency to bear the slogan “In God We Trust,” the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments held hearings on proposal by Sen. Ralph Flanders (R-VT) to amend the Constitution to recognize the authority and […]

From time to time, academics have noted the religious role performed by the news media in American society, and if there was anyone who emblemized that function it was Walter Cronkite. At the final moment of Mainline Protestant ascendancy, he was the Mainline presence on television par excellence–providing the comfortable, paternal, embracing, and morally serious […]

WaPo’s Dan Balz profliles Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour today as the new-old face of Republican revival. Barbour’s taken over as head of the Republican Governors Association, having assumed that high office after SC Gov. Mark Sanford took a hike, and he’ll be hosting the National Governors Association in Biloxi, where religion takes a back seat […]

Dan Gilgoff holds that “churches most open to homosexuality are shrinking fastest.” Pastordan counters with his UCC, than which no mainline denomination is more gay friendly and whose numbers are (by some measure) up. Partnered gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire Gene Robinson says his own diocesan head count has risen by three percent. My […]

(UNDATED) If respectful treatment of the dead (especially celebrities) is a test of a society’s values and mental health, I give the United States failing grades in both categories. Many Americans have difficulty mourning the massive slaughter of innocents in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Darfur, Cambodia, Rwanda and other killing fields. Yet whenever a celebrity icon […]

With the emergence of The Family as a subject of public interest, Religion Dispatches has posted a roundtable discussion on Jeff Sharlet’s book of the same name (now out in paper), featuring Sharlet, Anthea Butler, Diane Winston, and Randall Balmer. The discussion is somewhat musty: It was conducted last summer, and so lacks references not […]

Limply.

(UNDATED) The Obamas went to Rome the other day. And while Mom and the girls spent quality time admiring Vatican art, Dad had a half-hour sit-down with Pope Benedict XVI. Rome’s openness to Obama raises eyebrows (and blood pressure) among conservative Catholics who wish the pope would take Obama to the proverbial woodshed. The president, […]

What lies ahead for the Anglican Communion? Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, England,  writes in the Times of London that schism is now inevitable. Wright is, to be sure, a leading conservative, but there’s no doubt that, having decided, Luther-like, to take its stand on behalf of full inclusion of gays and lesbians, the […]