After revelations that some American soldiers were given Bibles and encouraged to "hunt people for Jesus," the Pentagon on Monday denied allegations that the U.S. military allows its personnel to seek the conversion of Afghans to Christianity. But while the copies of the New Testament translated into Pashtun and jaw-dropping video from Bagram may seem […]

To be sure, the heated debate over expanded hate crimes legislation in the House provided yet more lowlights for that chamber. In what may have been the second most disturbing utterance ever on the subject, North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx described the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepherd which inspired the bill as a "hoax." But […]

The grandstanding over President Obama's commencement address next month at Notre Dame reached a new level with word that Harvard professor and former Bush ambassador to the Vatican Mary Ann Glendon has decided to decline the University's Laetare Medal. But while Glendon is apparently unwilling to appear on the same stage as the pro-choice Obama, […]

When it comes to conservative politics, it's a very small world indeed. Here in the United States, Pastor Rick Warren canceled an Easter appearance on ABC's This Week after his comic reversal on Prop 8 produced a firestorm of criticism from his allies in the religious right. And while Politico Friday reported a split in […]

While the trumped-up imbroglio over President Obama's invitation to deliver the commencement address at Notre Dame continues to simmer, the attitudes and voting behavior of American Catholics belie the manufactured controversy. And as it turns out, a 2003 book of the school's commencement speeches issued by the University of Notre Dame Press shows the political […]

The slaughter of three Pittsburgh policemen by an assailant who "didn't like our [gun] rights being infringed upon" has again highlighted the growing danger from incendiary Republican rhetoric spawning right-wing terror. After all, just days ago, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) announced, "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous." Fox News host Glenn Beck warned […]

Barack Obama, in the telling of some Republican leaders and their amen corner in the media, is "declaring war on Catholics." So says former Bush speechwriter turned Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson in parroting the wishful thinking and trumped-up controversy of conservatives in a diatribe this week. Sadly for the right-wing echo chamber, both with […]

Nothing, it would seem, defines the modern Republican Party more than belief in free markets and God. So it is only natural that leading lights of the GOP would find rapture at the intersection of the two. Following in the footsteps of John McCain, Sam Brownback and Bobby Jindal, with his looming conversion to Catholicism […]

Unlike John Kerry four years earlier, Barack Obama comfortably carried Catholic voters by 9% in the 2008 election. But judging from the howls and catcalls from hard line conservatives and anti-abortion activists over the invitation to President Obama to deliver the commencement address at Notre Dame, you'd never know he was the choice of Catholic […]

Ever since 9/11, analysts of all stripes have created a cottage industry in studying comparative fundamentalism across Islam, Christianity and Judaism. (In 2007, for example, CNN featured Christiane Amanpour's special report on "God's Warriors.") Now with the revelations from Israeli soldiers of atrocities committed during their assault on Gaza, new questions are being raised about […]