Television president, Martin Sheen, narrates this video, produced by People For the American Way, about the history of separation of church & state and efforts by the Religious Right to undermine it. It was produced some years back.
By Colby Buzzell – Imagine that you graduated from college, and a couple years afterward your alma mater contacts you and says, Sorry, you didn’t graduate from college. In fact, you have five weeks to drop everything that you’re doing–quit your job, get out of your lease, put all your stuff in storage, cancel your Netflix, etc.–and report back to campus so that you can redo all the schooling that you’ve already done. And not only that, here’s a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver with only one round in the chamber–spin the chamber, point it at your head, and pull the trigger. If you live, you live. If you don’t, you don’t.
Seven years have passed since the planes hit the World Trade Center. Here is an unvarnished scrapbook of events that took place on that day and how these events led to a war in the Middle East and what happened there.
“Governor Sarah Palin did attend Wasilla Assembly of God since the time she was a teen ager. She and her family were a part of the church up until 2002. Since that time she has maintained a friendship with Wasilla Assembly of God and has attended various conferences and special meetings here.”
Hitchens: “I cannot wait to see Obama and Biden explain how this isn’t the case or how it’s much worse than, and quite different from, Obama’s own raving and ranting pastor in Chicago or Biden’s lifelong allegiance to the most anti-“choice” church on the planet.”
This year, the candidates’ religious leaders and their own beliefs are getting a lot of attention. Here is a round-up of some of the videos that have made news in recent months.
Although McCain has won the GOP nomination, some evangelical leaders such as James Dobson have expressed that they will not vote for him because he is too “liberal.” Can Pawlenty, a dedicated evangelical Christian, bridge this gap?
Author and professor R. Gustav Niebuhr argues that tolerating people of different faiths is not enough; that in order to live in a safe and cohesive society, we must go out and interact with them.
For all practical purposes, it resembled an interfaith worship service. In a move designed to appeal to religious voters, the Democrats opened their convention in Denver last night with prayer, a gospel song, and a Torah recitation by a rabbi. A Catholic nun and Muslim women in headscarves also made appearances. (You may recall that Obama received some criticism when his staff asked two Muslim women wearing headscarves not to stand behind him at an appearance.)
By Jonathan Gallagher, Ph.D. – “For a country to move from general tolerance to extreme intolerance in just a few short years speaks of the power of religion, and its ready exploitation by those seeking political authority and control. The fuel is human competition. For where there is enough food, land, water and other resources, the need to fight other communities is much reduced. But as the world becomes increasingly overpopulated, then such scenarios can only increase. Religion is so close to the heart of how any society defines itself that those seeking political power and worldly goals will readily use such a potent weapon. The exploitation of religious belief is not new—witness the jihads and crusades from history—but its greatly increased impact and extent will be the dominant factors for the foreseeable future.”