Lisa Miller's Dumb Question About Rick Warren's Prayer
While she pronounced his prayer as a "good job" for being generally non-offensive and inclusive-sounding, Newsweek's Lisa Miller -- who earlier this month suggested ditching inaugural prayers altogether -- was nagged by the "lingering question" that "remains" from the way evangelical pastor Rick Warren closed his inauguration ceremony invocation in the name of Jesus:Warren's conservative theology…
CBS’s Smith: Obama Inauguration A ‘Sacred Event
At the end of Wednesday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith reflected on Barack Obama’s inauguration: "Politics, and patriotism, and the presidency. It is the place where the secular and the religious merge. And one of the sacraments of our national religion is the inauguration...So it was that as many as 2 million pilgrims made their way to Washington and the Mall to witness this most sacred…
CNN’s Zain Verjee: Obama Inauguration Like Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecc
CNN correspondent Zain Verjee, in a report posted on CNN.com on January 17, likened the expected large crowds for the inauguration of Barack Obama to the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca: “The coming political pilgrimage to Washington is similar to another grand event in both size and preparation -- the Hajj, the most important religious pilgrimage in the Muslim world.”Verjee has…
ABC Exclusive: Former Obama Pastor Admits to Being 'Arrogant...Evil
In a January 18 ABC News exclusive interview, former Obama pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright confessed to, but did not repent of, his inflammatory rhetoric directed at the media. Wright's excuse:"They were arrogant, they were evil, they were devious and I responded in kind," Wright said. "I just talked to you about a 500-year tradition but you don't ask me one question about that because that's not…
'Fox & Friends' Discusses Power of Prayer With Plane Survivor
On Sunday, the good folks at "Fox & Friends" interviewed a survivor of the Miracle Plane that safely landed in the Hudson River Friday. Apparently, like many of the other passengers, Fred Berretta, a private pilot, said some prayers before the plane hit the water (video embedded below the fold):
Inaccurate WaPo Headline: 'Judge Clears the Way for Prayer at Swearing
A federal judge threw out a spurious lawsuit by serial atheist litigant Michael Newdow. Yet in reporting the story in its January 16 print edition, the Washington Post made it sound like a federal judge has ended the suspsense and permitted prayers to be offered at the inauguration, as though they were seriously in danger in the first place."Judge Clears the Way for Prayer at Swearing-In,"…
CBSSports.com Columnist Slams Worship of 'False Idol
CBSSports.com columnist Gregg Doyel has had it with all the hero worship, the idolatry, the 'canonization' of the guy: This one's going to hurt. It's going to hurt you, and it's going to hurt me..... It's directed at those who would beatify the man.... Because he's just a man. No, he's not referring to President-elect Obama but rather Tim Tebow, the University of Florida quarterback who led…
Newsweek's Lisa Miller on Religious Fundamentalists and the Inaugurati
Invoking the threat of "religious fundamentalists abroad" and tacitly comparing them to religious conservatives in the United States, Newsweek's Lisa Miller advises President-elect Obama to ditch the practice of having clergy offer prayers at the presidential inauguration:Our new president might use his Inauguration then to showcase the values that have made this country great: pluralism,…
NYT Mag Predestined to Be Biased? Story on Calvinistic Preacher Skews
Perhaps the New York Times is just predestined not to get religion.Taking on Calvinistic preacher Mark Driscoll's brand of Reformed theology, writer Molly Worthen -- herself a graduate of a formerly Puritan university -- gave readers of the New York Times magazine a skewed picture of what exactly the evangelical pastor's theology teaches about sin and redemption.In her January 6 article, "Who…
USA Today's Faith & Reason 'Sticking a Fork in the Eye' of Religious C
USA Today's religion reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman apparently has little use for Christian ministers who believe the Bible's teachings on sexual ethics. Apparently already annoyed with evangelical pastor Rick Warren's stance on California's Proposition 8, Grossman took the California preacher to task for a letter offering use of his Saddleback Church to conservative Anglicans who have left the…
ChiTrib's Religion Blogger: Seminarians Need Sex Ed
A group that "celebrate[s] the inherent goodness of adolescent sexuality" and calls for clergy to "speak out against... coercive parental notification and consent for reproductive health services" has just released a study that concludes by calling on American theological seminaries to go over the birds and bees with their students. Yet in reporting on the study by the Religious Institute on…
Buchanan Accuses Israel of 'Blitzkrieg,' Creating 'Concentration Camp
I like Pat Buchanan. I do. He's wise, funny and charming. But every so often . . . Like tonight. If Buchanan wants to criticize Israel's conduct of the current war, and its treatment of the Palestinians, so be it. But in doing so, is it really necessary to employ terms associated with the Nazis? Appearing on "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," Buchanan accused Israel of carrying out a "blitzkrieg"…
R.I.P., Rev. Richard John Neuhaus
The conservative movement lost a great intellectual voice on Thursday. The Reverend Richard John Neuhaus died due to complications from cancer at the age of 72. Neuhaus, a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of New York, was a well-known pro-life advocate, and founded First Things in 1990, a periodical focused on advancing “a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.” We…
