Faith

Slactivist: The oddest thing to me about Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell’s “I Was A Teenage Witch” claims is that so much of the reaction has accepted her claim that such a thing might be possible. It is not. Her claims of “dabbling” in what she called “witchcraft” are not true. The supposed witchcraft she describes is not something that exists. Such stories of bloody altars and Satanic covens are common and they are false. All of them. That is a matter of established fact. The supposed witchery O’Donnell describes is simply the stuff of Satanic panic...

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public life released a report today on America\’s religious knowledge, and the findings were…pretty surprising? Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions. On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do...

Mark Silk knocks it out of the park: In recent years, the wise guys in the Republican Party have cottoned to the fact that the U.S. of A. has become a good deal more Latino than it used to be, and that it might not be such a good idea for the future of the GOP if it embraced (at least publicly) such anti-Latino-immigrant laws as Arizona passed a few months ago. Why not find a less politically potent body of Americans on which to vent one’s nativist animosity? I give you: The Muslims. Unlike the Latinos,...

Via TPM, we learn that Ed Martin, who seems to get his energy from the tea party movement, is afraid that the president wants to take away your freedom to worship. His logic? Well: One thing I like to say is: America is great, not because of our genetics. We’re great because we created a place and space where people can be free. And they can choose Christ, they can choose to be faithful. They can worship, and they find their way to the Lord. And — or some of them don’t. We sure want them all...

In case the article Pop linked to in today’s Morning Constitutional wasn’t enough for you, here’s video of the ridiculously huge and gaudy (and apparently enormously expensive– $250,000!) Touchdown Jesus statue in flames. As YouTube commenter THeSLoTH77 wrote, “It’s a sign… It’s a sign that churches squander away an unbelievable amount of money that could have been used for something good for mankind and not their egos.” And as the person who tipped me off to the story observed, “It’s a weird and wonderful world.” It was always pretty hilarious to drive past TD Jesus, but I’m...