Mormonism

Writing today at the Chicago Tribune's "Seeker" religion blog, "Friendly Atheist" Hemant Mehta explained why he's angered by admonitions to not hold a presidential candidate's religion against him or her (emphasis mine):

UPDATE AT END OF POST: O'Donnell contacts NB to clarify poll numbers. CBS's new chief White House correspondent said this weekend that Republicans are more uncomfortable with a Fox News commentator as presidential candidate than they are a Mormon. She claimed on "The Chris Matthews Show" she found this information in the crosstabs of a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (video follows…

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift said on PBS's "McLaughlin Group" Friday that the press really aren't interested in Mitt Romney being a Mormon. This amazingly transpired roughly 24 hours before her magazine revealed a June 13-20 cover story about Romney entitled "The Mormon Moment: How the Outsider Faith Creates Winners" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Is it appropriate to be focusing on a presidential candidate's religion in 2011? Newsweek certainly thinks it is, and created a cover for its June 13-20 issue prominently highlighting Mitt Romney being a Mormon in a fashion that is guaranteed to raise a few eyebrows:

Update: Joe denies judging Kyl and DeMint.  See video after the jump. Call it an episode of Short Self-Attention Span Theater . . . Mere moments after citing Matthew 7's instruction to "judge not, that ye be not judged," Joe Scarborough judged Jon Kyl and Jim DeMint to be "un-Christlike." Scarborough's strange self-contradiction came in the course of his diatribe against the two…

Monday night marks the debut of Lawrence O'Donnell's very own show, called The Last Word, on MSNBC and if his guest spots on various programs on that network and the syndicated McLaughlin Group over the last few years are any indication, he's bound to give Keith Olbermann a run for his money for over-the-top loony tirades.O'Donnell reared his bigoted side on the December 8, 2007 edition of the…

The sexual revolution always seems to have another frontier. Indeed, the very idea of a “revolution” would be negated were there no frontiers to conquer. So deeper, ever deeper, we plumb the depths. Look at television. Every new frontier is just another titillating, initially shocking plot for a fictional or “reality” show, until there's a “new normal” and the novelty and naughtiness wears off.…

Secular leftists in the media don't often have use for religion, particularly Christianity, except, it seems, when biblical passages can be isolated out of context to bash religious conservatives over the head as wicked for opposing big government or for standing up for traditional moral values. Enter Joe Klein, Christian theologian extraordinaire, who suggested in Time.com Swampland blog post…

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Viacom's Comedy Central is developing an animated show practically designed to offend Christians. But the network's handling of recent controversy over depictions of the Muslim prophet Muhammad illustrates a stark double standard in how the entertainment media deal with issues of religion. Comedy Central announced it is developing the script for an animated show…

Republicans are likely to go with Tampa, Florida, as the venue for their 2012 presidential nominating convention in part because evangelicals hate Mormons. That's the gospel truth, at least according to Chris Matthews, who yesterday went on a loopy rant that was pure bluster and completely unsubstantiated in its assertions.[MP3 audio available here; click play on the embedded video at right for…

The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of…

On Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, during a discussion of Mitt Romney’s recent altercation with rapper Sky Blu on an airplane, host Maher seemed to suggest that Romney might have been motivated by anti-black racism in confronting the rapper as the Real Time host brought up racially tinged quotes from former Mormon church president Joseph Fielding Smith – who died in 1972 at the age of…

Perhaps this was a cry out for relevancy - something she hasn't been since the Clinton administration, but comedienne Roseanne Barr is showing her social commentary knows no bounds. In a March 4 post on her blog, Barr used the suicide of Marie Osmond's son, Michael Blosil, to go on a sick and twisted anti-religion screed. According to the former sitcom star, any underlying issues that led to…

Since Friday's massacre at Fort Hood, NewsBusters has been covering the efforts of several news outlets, including the New York Times, to warn of Muslim persecution in America. This is quite a departure from the treatment offered other religious groups by the Times, particularly the paper's disgraceful coverage of Mormon persecution at the hands of rabid protestors in California. Back on…