Texas Faith is our weekly discussion of matters of religion, politics, and culture. Read about our panel here. Our question this week spins off of a couple fo recent intersections of faith and politics involving President Barack Obama. At a...
Seriously, what's up with that? The invite to Obama to deliver what is likely to be a news-content-free commencement address at Notre Dame has been roiling these here Internets for weeks. Catholics who object to Obama's policy about abortion say...
The governor of New York didn't want her in the U.S. Senate, and, now, it appears, the pope doesn't want her as U.S. ambassador. The BBC, citing "reliable sources in Rome," reports that the Vatican has rejected Caroline Kennedy and...
From the prepared text of President Barack Obama's speech today about the economy: There is a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men. The first built his house on a...
GOP chairman Michael Steele gave an extremely wide-ranging interview to GQ. It's a Q&A transcript and very hard for me to find a nugget that carries the sense of it. He talks about his prayers, his sense of what it...
A sampling of comments from our readers: "This should not surprise anyone. Even the most casual Bible reader knows that the road to salvation is 'narrow and cramped' and that 'few are the ones taking it.' " -- "Terry," on...
Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va., the Christian school founded and run by televangelist Pat Robertson, has long had an active student Republicans' organization. This is hardly surprising; Robertson sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, and has long been...
A sampling of comments from our readers: "The Communists and Socialists of China and the Soviet Union admitted in the '80s that they could not destroy America all at once. But, instead, they said they had contrived a plan to...
In these brief excerpts from an interview with Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News & World Report, televangelist and religious right icon Pat Robertson says that while he's disappointed in President Barack Obama, it's goofy to wish, as Rush Limbaugh did,...
America, the Jesuit magazine, has a series of online articles looking at the roles Catholic voters can and should play on the political landscape under President Barack Obama. Here's a blog item that summarizes the articles, and provides links to...
As a candidate, Barack Obama said he would reverse a policy of the Bush administration, which said it was OK for religious groups receiving federal money to hire only people who shared their beliefs. Essentially, the Bush rules said, it...
Despite the Vatican's opposition to the war in Iraq and to capital punishment, relations with the Bush administration were exceptionally warm. W, after all, is an openly devout Christian, an admirer of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI,...
Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress will be lobbied hard by opponents of federal programs that promote sexual abstinence -- and only abstinence -- as the means to reduce teen pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. However, the...
A sampling of comments from our readers: "I always figured that if he wasn't gay, he would have gone to the ladies room to try and pick up some action. But that's just me. Hopefully his book will be a...
William Lawrence, dean of Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology and a professor of American church history, writes that long before Jeremiah Wright and Rick Warren entered the spotlight surrounding Barack Obama, preachers have been causing political difficulties for...
"An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind." -- Texas Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, quoted in a Wayne Slater column about potential infighting in the state House...
By picking Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, Barack Obama pretty well guaranteed that both men would draw heat from their respective poltiical opponents, says conservative commentator David Aikman. "Gays on the left of the spectrum hate...
Dan Gilgoff, formerly politics editor at Beliefnet and now a religion writer at U.S. News & World Report, interviewed the Rev. Jim Wallis, the left's favorite evangelical, on how Barack Obama is going to approach the task of providing government...
The New York Times has a profile of Tom Riner, the Kentucky state representative who has made it his mission to inject religion into the public arena whenever he can -- writing God into the state motto, supporting the construction...
A sampling of comments from our readers: "Pope Benedict has warned again and again against seeking a political solution to religious (and moral) issues. The proper sphere of action for the Church is preaching, prayer and the Sacraments. This includes...
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