Christianity

It's not often you see an obituary as snarky and bitter as the one written by British columnist Johann Hari announcing what he called the "slow, whining death of British Christianity" in the UK edition of GQ and online at The Huffington Post. Citing an unlinked ICM study, which is not available on the organization's website, Hari called on reader to "put your hands together and give thanks, for…

On Sunday morning in northern Virginia, a drunk illegal immigrant -- who had previously been convicted twice on DUI charges --  allegedly crashed head-on into a car full of nuns, killing one, Sister Denise Mosier, and injuring the rest. The Benedictine Sisters have since come out to say they are "dismayed and saddened" that the crime "has been politicized and become an apparent forum for the…

Shirley Sherrod's now-infamous March speech before an NAACP audience is recognizable to practicing Christians as a "testimony." That's the spin that Syracuse journalism professor and former Washington Post staff writer R. Gustav Niebuhr brought to Newsweek/Washington Post's On Faith feature in a July 26 Under God blog post:As she said to members of the Georgia NAACP back on that March day, she…

For all the daily talk on the Daily Kos that conservatives are dictatorial, their cast of bloggers isn't without grand designs for social control. Take this post: "Time to begin working for the death of religion (a rant)." The diarist "BlueMoon" expressed no attempt to disrupt free speech, but the "end of organized religion" must be attempted: However, the time has come to begin work to actively…

Here's a slimy journalistic tactic with which most conservatives are all too familiar: note that two people or groups agree on one point, and then suggest that consequently they must agree on all other points. Chris Matthews (among many others) used this tactic to smear Tea Parties as tantamount to militia groups - both share a distaste for big government, therefore they must agree on all other…

Time magazine's Tim Padgett, who claims to be a Catholic, used the rose-colored glasses of his leftism to mercilessly bash his own church in an article on Monday where he compared Catholic bishops to "white Southern preachers [who] weren't ashamed to degrade African-Americans," labeled the Church "misogynous," and accused the institution of an "increasingly spiteful bigotry" against homosexuals.…

Joy Behar is no stranger to anti-Christian sentiments, except in her own mind. On "The Joy Behar Show" July 15, the host railed against Christians who defended actor and director Mel Gibson in the wake of drunken anti-Semitic comments in 2006, but are silent about his recent racist and sexist comments. Moments later, however, Behar claimed she doesn't hate Christians. Guest Rebecca Dana, a…

"Where would Jesus drill?"  That sounds almost like it could be the opening of a tree hugger's bad joke, but instead it's the lede in a recent Associated Press story written by John Flesher about a so-called "Green religion movement." Efforts to make environmentalism its own sort of religion have been underway for some time now. But the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has sparked a new push to…

It must be difficult to offend a company that makes its money off pictures of naked women (to be fair, there are also articles ... apparently). The folks at Playboy Portugal managed to do just that.On Wednesday, news broke that the Portuguese edition of Playboy magazine published several photographs depicting Jesus Christ observing pornographic scenes.On Thursday, the parent company, which…

AOL News contributor Paul Wachter launched an inflammatory attack on Pope Benedict XVI in a Thursday post where he also defended recently-fired CNN editor Octavia Nasr for her eulogy of Hezbollah's spiritual leader. After hinting that the network "overreacted," Wachter suggested that CNN should also fire "anyone who speaks highly of the pope, who...has contributed to the deaths of millions from…

Author Frank Schaeffer, son of the late prominent theologian Francis Schaeffer, can't seem to find anything good about evangelical Christians. In his latest blog on the Huffington Post, Schaeffer criticized evangelicals' support of Israel. "Some of the nuttiest American religious leaders today (and in the past) have latched on to one form or another of Christian Zionism," he said. "To put it…

Marking the death of an atheist by depicting Jesus Christ in sex scenes might seem like a non-sequitur. Somehow, it made sense to the Portuguese edition of Playboy magazine. The magazine features an actor portraying Jesus in at least four pornographic photos, including the cover, where he cradles an apparently dead - and bare-breasted - woman. Another photo depicts Jesus watching a lesbian kiss…

It's a curious phenomenon to see what the minds at The Huffington Post deem funny, and at least this one wasn't filed under the category "HuffPo Religion," but a series of images depicting Jesus Christ making unhinged statements wins the HuffPo's "Comedy" classification. In a June 30 post, Katla McGlynn wrote that mocking Tea Party protestors by "juxtaposing" "hateful, ignorant, or otherwise…