Religion

On Thursday, Mollie Hemingway of the GetReligion blog pointed out CBS's "major mistake" on the March 31, 2013 edition of Sunday Morning. On the Easter Sunday broadcast, Martha Teichner confused two biblical figures with the same name when she stated that "only one of the Gospels places Mary at the crucifixion, alongside the so-called 'beloved disciple' – possibly John the Baptist." Actually,…

Last week, I gave 12 examples of how religious liberty has been assaulted in just the past two years in the U.S. Here are about two dozen more instances just for good measure, as reported by the Family Research Council, the office of Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., and various media outlets. —The following public institutions recently have joined the growing ranks of those that have banned the use…

The recent murders of local prosecutors in a north Texas county -- possibly at the hands of white supremacists -- was the news hook for MSNBC's The Cycle to bring  Heidi Beirich of the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on to the April 2 program. In introducing the guest and justifying her expertise, co-host Ari Melber merely described the SPLC as "a group that documents that state…

Who says the New York Times is ignorant of religion? Elisabetta Povoledo is a Rome-based reporter for the paper's international edition, but either she or her copy editor made a mortifying mischaracterization of the meaning of Easter in an online story on Pope Francis posted Monday: "Pope Calls for ‘Peace in All the World’ in First Easter Message."

At the Weekly Standard's blog today, Daniel Halper relayed a pool reporter's notes from the Easter service President Barack Obama and his family attended this morning. The highlights from the Rev. Dr. Luis Leon's sermon" included the following statement: "It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back ... for blacks to be back in the back of the bus ...…

As religious people are bludgeoned with secular views by America's media practically 24/7, it would be nice if they could be given a break on their holiest days. George Stephanopoulos clearly doesn't feel that way for on Easter Sunday he invited an atheist on ABC's This Week to join a panel discussion about - wait for it! - religion (video follows with transcript and commentary):

If your child is religious, he or she may be mentally ill. That's the long and short of a TIME magazine item, "Can Your Child Be Too Religious?" published on March 28, Holy Thursday. Sure, "Religion can be a source of comfort that improves well-being," writer Francine Russo noted, "But some kinds of religiosity could be a sign of deeper mental health issues" (emphasis mine):

Maybe we should take to ironically nicknaming Sally Quinn as "Scoop" for this: On March 27, in a column headlined "Does Ben Carson Have a Prayer?"  the Washington Post On Faith editor attacked Dr. Ben Carson for his National Prayer Breakfast speech delivered on February 7. That's 48 days between the speech and Quinn's holding forth on why Carson, in her view, improperly politicized a…

The Catholic League has clearly had enough of Bill Maher's regular anti-religious tirades on HBO's Real Time. On Tuesday, League president Bill Donohue sent a letter to Time Warner CEO Glenn Britt saying, "The time has come for someone in a position of responsibility to sit down and have a serious talk with this man":

Out: Using Holy Week to push gun control.That's so 2012. In: Using Holy Week as a news hook for pushing same-sex marriage. Last April, I noted how liberal theologian and Washington Post "On Faith" contributor Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite used the week leading up to Easter as an opportunity to shame Christians towards getting rid of their firearms, twisting and contorting Christian Scripture to…

The debauchery at the Huffington Post knows no bounds. On Monday, the website actually offered readers a slideshow of the best places to lose one's virginity in San Francisco, and coming in seventh was under the Mount Davidson Cross, one of the city's most beloved religious landmarks:

Monday's CBS This Morning brought on only liberals for a panel discussion about the recent success of The History Channel's new miniseries, The Bible. One panelist, Michael Hogan of the left-wing Huffington Post, erroneously asserted that "biblical films have been kind of out of favor since 1965, when 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' came out and was a huge flop. 'Last Temptation of Christ' was…

On Morning Joe today, the Reverend Al Sharpton agreed with Mike Barnicle  that anti-Semitism explains the opposition to Mike Bloomberg in his gun control campaign. H/t NB reader cobokat. If ever there were an expert on anti-Semitism in America, it could be Al Sharpton, he of Freddie's Fashion Mart and Crown Heights riot infamy. The spectacle of Sharpton lamenting the supposed anti-Semitism…

In a report for Friday's NBC Today, correspondent Jim Maceda seized on an account in a 2012 book in which Pope Francis, then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, recalled being attracted to a woman when he was a young seminarian preparing to enter the priesthood: "Well, it turns out that Francis...came to the priesthood rather late, at age 32, and not before he had his own moments of doubt and temptation…