Religion

 After ABC’s World News ignored the March for Life pro-life event last week, the January 30 World News Sunday did find time to run a report highlighting complaints by gay rights activists over Chick-fil-A -- a family-owned restaurant chain known for its Christian-based social advocacy -- supplying food to a socially conservative group in Pennsylvania that promoted a ban on same-sex marriage in…

It's not often that a CNN anchor declares America a "very Christian nation," but that's what new host Piers Morgan did on Thursday while debating atheist comedian Ricky Gervais. Morgan chided the entertainer for a joke he made while hosting last Sunday's Golden Globes. Morgan critiqued, "...I know American culture quite well now and they're a very Christian nation here in America." During…

NewsBusters was the first to find Katie Couric proposing a Muslim version of The Cosby Show to fight American "Islamophobia." Many found that entertaining. Chicago Tribune columnist (and McLaughlin Group regular) Clarence Page endorsed the idea in his column, since Muslims are the new blacks: Okay, let's clear the air on that one: A group of Muslim SOBs did kill Americans on 9/11. They have…

"Holy Cross gets nod for new MoCo hospital: Women's advocates concerned." That's how the Washington Post's online "On Faith" feature teased a Metro section front-pager in the paper's January 21 print edition. [see screen capture below page break]

The Washington Post on Friday took on Seymour Hersh's outlandish conspiracy theory that "neo-conservative" members of Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta inside the military "overthrew the American government" and are waging a "crusade" against Muslims. The newspaper reported that, contrary to Hersh's claims, General Stanley McChrystal was not a member of either organization, and that there was "…

Liberal columnist Michael Kinsley made light of the Catholic Church's process of recognizing a saint in a Wednesday column for the Los Angeles Times, while simultaneously blasting the Church's opposition to embryonic stem cell research, claiming that the religion was a "main impediment" in developing a cure for Parkinson's disease.

Liberal journalist Seymour Hersh unleashed on President Obama in a speech in Qatar on Monday, voicing his extreme disappointment with his foreign policy: "Just when we needed an angry black man, we didn't get one." Hersh also revealed his Dan Brown-style conspiracy theory about how "neo-conservative radicals" in the military's special operations community "overthrew the American government…

To publicize his new memoir, MSNBC hosted Rev. Albert Cutie on its Friday afternoon news programming. Fr. Cutie is a married priest in the Episcopal Church, having abruptly left the Catholic priesthood in May of 2009 after his secret love affair was made public. Cutie used the segment to criticize the Catholic Church's position on priestly celibacy and homosexuality. "I can tell you that…

On Friday's CBS Early Show, correspondent Mark Phillips declared how the beatification of Pope John Paul II to sainthood was moving "at break-neck speed" and noted that "Groups protesting the Catholic Church's child abuse scandal are urging the Vatican to slow down the process." Despite the protests, Phillips remarked that "the current pope, Benedict XVI, seems determined to charge ahead…

Call it a libel squared . . . Ed Schultz has suggested that Sarah Palin employed the term "blood libel" to describe the way her critics have tried to hold her responsible for the Arizona shootings "as an appeal to an extreme Christian conservative base for 2012." Citing no evidence for his grotesque allegation, Schultz first floated it during his opening monologue on his MSNBC show this…

On Tuesday's Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos highlighted and promoted a new book by Albert Cutie, an ex-priest who left the Catholic Church after being caught in a relationship with a woman in his parish. An ABC graphic blasted, "'Father Oprah' Lashes out, Calls Church 'Misogynistic.'" Stephanopoulos gently introduced Cutie, who was photographed by the paparazzi with his then-…

"The press... just doesn't get religion." That quote by William Schneider is the motto of GetReligion.org, a blog devoted to critiquing the media penchant for biased, erroneous, or incomplete media reporting on religious news developments. USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman seems to illustrate the wisdom of the quote in her January 3 Faith & Reason blog post linking back to none other than…

The metaphor “The War on Christmas” can be mocked – as if Santa and his reindeer are dodging anti-aircraft fire. But many of our public schools have church-and-state sensitivity police with an alarming degree of Santaphobia. Anyone who's attended a school's “winter concert” in December with no traditional Christmas music – not even “Frosty the Snowman” – knows the drill. The vast Christian…

 On Monday’s Tavis Smiley show on PBS, during a discussion with author Robert Putnam to discuss his book American Grace, after Putnam recounted the central thesis that various religions in America - and even non-religious people - tend to tolerate each other well compared to other countries, host Smiley made known his view that tolerance is "decreasing" in America and cited attitudes toward…