President Barack Obama might have known better than to have picked a fight with Catholics. History would tell him that they rarely lose. During the 1920s, Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles found that out the hard way. As this year’s historical epic For Greater Glory shows, Catholics don’t give up without a long and bloody…
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It’s no wonder that Mitt Romney won plaudits from evangelical bigwigs for his commencement speech at Liberty University on Saturday. It showed he’s learned how to talk to them–or at least, learned to listen to the people who know how he’s supposed to talk to them. When he was running for president last time, Romney…
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In the past week, I’ve been called a bigot, a hater, had people wish I died, and had people wish Christians had died, been rounded up and killed, or experienced their own personal holocaust. All this came from proponents of gay marriage. The media won’t cover most of this. The media sees most stories as…
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Is displaying the Ten Commandments alongside copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Star-Spangled Banner, Magna Carta and other documents at a Virginia public high school an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion? Or is it part of an educational exhibit of historic documents? Those questions are at the heart of a long-simmering legal fight in…
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Long a lightning rod for conservative criticism, the Girl Scouts of the USA are now facing their highest-level challenge yet: An official inquiry by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. At issue are concerns about program materials that some Catholics find offensive, as well as assertions that the Scouts associate with other groups espousing stances…
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has spent much of his career praising the socialist ideas of famed atheists such as Karl Marx and Fidel Castro. Now in the thick of a prolonged battle against cancer, however, the leftist leader is drawing inspiration more than ever from a spiritual leader: Jesus Christ. Chavez has been praying for…
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In back-to-back victories in the culture war on traditional marriage, Colorado’s civil union bill died in the Colorado House on Tuesday and North Carolina voters decided to uphold the biblical one woman-one man marriage definition. By a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent, North Carolinians voted to become the 31st state to pass a…
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One of the biggest growth areas in political activism around religion is coming from an unlikely source: the nonreligious. And it’s happening far from the marbled corridors of power in the nation’s capital. The Secular Coalition for America, an umbrella organization that represents 11 nontheistic groups including American Atheists and the American Humanist Association, is…
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The conventional wisdom about Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential short list, according to a handful of Romney insiders, may be wrong. Instead of picking a straitlaced Midwestern senator such as Ohio’s Rob Portman, or an outspoken northeastern Republican governor such as Chris Christie, there is a chance Romney will tap an evangelical from the South. And the…
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Now backed by a parliamentary supermajority, Benjamin Netanyahu has tremendous room to maneuver on Israel’s most pressing issues: peace with the Palestinians, possible war with Iran, and the growing rift at home between religious and secular Jews. The stunning partnership with the opposition Kadima party, announced overnight Tuesday just as the nation was expecting him…
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