Anti-Religious Bias

In 1966, Time magazine's April 8 cover story famously asked "Is God Dead?" Forty-five years later the magazine is still hard at work attempting to discredit traditional Christian faith, with former Newsweek writer Jon Meacham exploring the question  "Is Hell Dead?" Meacham doesn't answer the question definitively but used the raging controversy over Michigan pastor Rob Bell's new book "Love…

On February 24, Washington Post reporter John Wagner sympathetically covered leading Maryland Democrats (and Catholics) for crossing their hierarchy to lobby for "gay marriage" -- without seeming to contact this hierarchy. So when Wagner sympathetically profiled House Speaker Michael Busch -- again -- at the top of the April 11 Style section, the primary question was: How was this "news," a…

If Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite actually believed in Hell, she'd probably preach that Tea Partiers were headed there unless they repented and backed higher taxes and more government spending. The liberal seminary professor and Washington Post/Newsweek "On Faith" contributor last Wednesday lashed out at the "fundamentalism" of Tea Party calls for fiscal restraint, insisting that conservative…

On Friday afternoon, Time magazine religion reporter Amy Sullivan briefly blogged her complaint about what she sees as hypocrisy from conservatives who oppose federal monies for Planned Parenthood but support federal support for faith-based initiatives. "Money is Fungible," blared her April 8 Swampland headline. Well, "[o]bviously," she agreed, then carped that:

"Evangelical Liberty University received half a billion dollars in federal aid money: One conservative college got more government cash than NPR last year." That's the misleading headline for Alex Pareene's April 5 War Room blog post at Salon.com. Adding insult to inaccuracy, Pareene slandered the late Jerry Falwell -- without a link to corroborating evidence -- as an apartheid supporter…

Burning a copy of the Koran is morally equivalent to flying a plane into the World Trade Center and equally eternally damnable. That's essentially the fatwa of Time magazine's Joe Klein in an April 1 blog post at the magazine's Swampland blog. Klein was condemning Florida pastor Terry Jones's "trial" and subsequent burning of a Koran which allegedly have sparked a murderous rampage against…

On April 2nd, The New York Times published a piece by Ethan Bronner titled, "In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out." In the piece, Bronner discussed various aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including statehood, violence, peace talks, religion, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Muslim Brotherhood. But while Bronner spent many paragraphs detailing the difficulties in establishing…

A best-selling book recounting a four-year-old child's claims to have briefly visited Heaven while under anesthesia for an appendectomy has "On Faith" contributor Susan Jacoby on a tear. "There really is such a thing as American exceptionalism: we are more gullible than the public in the rest of the developed world," Jacoby groused in a March 30 "The Spirited Atheist" post, part of the "On…

Never let it be said that Showtime ignores Christianity. In fact, the network that aired "The Tudors" is getting into the spirit of Lent and gleefully calling to mind some of the Catholic Church's centuries-old sins. "The Borgias" is Showtime's new 10-part miniseries about the infamous 15thCentury Italian family of that name, and about a dark period in the history of the Church. Rodrigo…

This post has been modified from its original version. After discussing with my colleagues the subject of this article, which claimed Mother Jones's David Corn and MSNBC's Chris Matthews engaged in an anti-Semitic conversation on Monday's "Hardball," I have decided that I do not stand by my allegation. I apologize to Corn and Matthews for my misinterpretation. The original article has…

As we've noted time and again, "On Faith" -- a Washington Post/Newsweek-run religion news and discussion website -- is biased against, if not outright hostile to traditional religious belief, particularly traditional Christian theology. This weekend's "Discussion" section topic provided more evidence of that. Examining the controversy over Michigan pastor Rob Bell's book "Love Wins: A Book…

While all decent people demand compassion and justice for victims of clergy abuse, there is compelling evidence to believe that portions of the recent high-profile Philadelphia grand jury report have unfairly maligned the Catholic Church. No media outlets have taken note of the report's glaring contradictions, notable omissions, and unfair characterizations of Church officials. (Maureen Dowd…

Last Sunday, Frank Rich filed his last column for the Week in Review, “Confessions of a Recovering Op-Ed Columnist.” Rich is joining his friend and former Times Magazine editor Adam Ross at New York magazine. Rich’s farewell is typically self-indulgent: "My own idiosyncratic bent as a writer, no doubt a legacy of my years spent in the theater, is to look for a narrative in the many…

As NewsBusters reported in February, vulgarian comedienne Kathy Griffin was cast to do a guest stint on the hit series "Glee" portraying a Palinesque Tea Partier. The advanced billing turned out better than the reality, for on Tuesday's show, Griffin mocked Palin and Christine O'Donnell while depicting Tea Party members as homophobic birthers (video follows with transcript and commentary):