The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission (CADC) is a not-for-profit 501(c) (3) Education Corporation whose purpose it is to become the first-in-mind champion of Christian religious liberty, domestically and internationally, and a national clearing house and first line of response to anti-Christian defamation, bigotry, and discrimination.

As America slides down the slippery slope into secular abyss, Christianity itself has come under attack. Nowhere is the assault on religious liberty more ruthless than in our schools. Just last month, a malicious little atheist forced a Rhode Island high school to remove its students' inspirational prayer from the wall of the gymnasium.

But one brave man refuses to stand by as the secular state annihilates our childrens' religious liberties. Rev. Gary L. Cass, president of the celebrated Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, has recently launched a new organization called DefendStudents.org, which is dedicated to defending religious liberty in our schools. [Read more]

Last week, blogger MuddyPolitics wrote a piece that took a swipe at Mitt Romney for his Mormon faith. The article provoked a passionate debate, one that is likely being repeated in various forms across the country this election season.

The question is this: Should we consider Romney's religious beliefs when assessing his fitness for the presidency? [Read more]

Mitt Romney used to be Governor of Massachusetts, a commonwealth which has at various times been A) the closest thing to a theocracy America has ever had and B) the poster child for tolerant secular liberalism. Many vocal religious conservatives now insist that the tolerant secular liberalism is an infringement on their religious liberty, and that they can only fully exercise their religion when the state actively endorses and promotes their religious values for them. [Read more]

It's Christmas time, which means "War on Christmas" time, which means a whole bunch of bizarre complaints about persecution by members of an overwhelmingly privileged religious majority group. This bad behavior is often understood as part of the most intense and fire-breathing American Christianists' fire-breathing intensity. But that's only half the story, or maybe less. [Read more]

On Christmas Day, 1914, only four months into the brutality of World War I, a spontaneous miracle happened on the Western Front.  On that day German and British soldiers laid down their arms and gathered together in No Man's Land to share food and cigarettes, sing Christmas carols, and play a few games of football.
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I'm not one to laugh at the plight of others, especially at elderly ladies whose family makes a request for meals on wheels, and I'm certainly not going to do it now, but can I at least laugh at the picture in my mind of people delivering those charity meals to limousines that will then whisk them off to a millionaire's mansion?
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As a non-religious person I have faith that religion will always be with us.  It's the way of the world, and if I'm baffled by its constancy, by its influence, by the sheer numbers of people involved, I'm even more befuddled watching the successful move away from any pretense at goodness and mercy by the Religious Right in favor of a peculiar form of public, political bullying.
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For research purposes, I subscribe to a newsletter from the Christian Anti-Discrimination League.

The organization's title is a deliberate imitation of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League. Its stated mission is to combat "anti-Christian defamation, bigotry, and discrimination."

But its actual mission is very different. The CADL employs a common hate-group tactic by offering a veneer of "anti-discrimination" to rationalize its intolerant objectives. Another example is David Duke's National Association for the Advancement of White People. (I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what organization it purports to imitate.)

I used the word "rationalize" rather than "mask" because groups like the CADL do not deliberately misrepresent their motivations. Dr. Gary Class, president of the CADL, very likely sees himself as a righteous defender of Christian civil rights, as do many of his subscribers. They really believe that they oppose discrimination.

That belief is not a lie for the general public. It's a delusion--a lie to themselves. It allows them to feel comfortable with their own bigotry by projecting those feelings onto the people they hate. By imagining that they are defending tolerant Christians from intolerant Muslims, for example, they cast themselves as innocent victims rather than predatory bigots.

If you look, you can see this tactic employed over and over by the right wing, and I have written extensively about it in Blowing Smoke.

Below the fold, please find the latest newsletter from the so-called Christian Anti-Discrimination League. The subject line is "Islam's Secret Strategy to Destroy America Exposed." [Read more]

So, for most of May Christianity has been in the news. Or rather, a tiny splinter of Christianity has. The leader of a tiny religious organization predicted the Rapture on May 21, and there was lots of news coverage.

It was all actually very standard: a strange fringe belief held by a small minority of Christians dominated the news, mainstream Christians were left out of the discussion entirely, there was a lot of joking and teasing about the strangeness of the strange belief (I'll admit to doing some), and then there was the inevitable complaint that the teasing amounted to persecuting of Christians. To this I say: no one likes being teased but, hey, it's not the end of the world.
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Saturday, May 21, 2011: Judgment Day

At least that's what Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping has predicted. According to Camping, the Rapture will occur at 9pm ET / 6pm PT. For those who are rusty on their Biblical prophesies, that means that all the good Christians will rise directly to Heaven, body and all. The rest of us schmucks will stick around on Earth for a few months to suffer the horrible tribulations that precede the Apocalypse--earthquakes, plagues, war, and the finale of The Glenn Beck Show.

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SALT LAKE CITY – The Rapture came and went three weeks ago, say researchers at Brigham Young University. The entire episode took five hours and 45 minutes, and few if any took notice.

“Yeah, Christ was here, he looked around, played a round of golf at Pebble Beach and split,” said one researcher. “It’s a little disappointing really. We expected serious fireworks.”

Many Christians have long believed that the Rapture would include the “vanishing” of millions of loyal Christians around the globe, leaving the rest of the world’s population to die in hellfire. The return of Jesus was supposed to usher in high times for loyal Christians as the doors of heaven would open for them. [Read more]

ROME (April 28, 1) — Emperor Tiberius Caesar Augustus has announced there will be no investigations into the purported torture and crucifixion of convicted heretic and enemy of the state Jesus Christ. In a statement from the Emperor’s office, Tiberius stated that Christ’s crucifixion did not meet the empire’s definition of torture, and that it was time for Roman’s to begin focusing on the future. [Read more]

In 2011, showcasing someone's blood is usually left to the likes of eccentric celebrities or psycopaths. But when it comes to religion, blood lust is not just a hobby, it's part and parcel of the whole thing. Which explains why Pope John Paul II's blood was on display at the Vatican.

Blood taken from Pope John Paul II before he died is to go on display at his beatification on Sunday. [Read more]

HARRISBURG, Pa — After years of fielding complaints that he had not taken a hard enough stance against Westboro Baptist Church and its hate speech, Almighty God today unleashed what onlookers have described as a “shitload of smiting” against the controversial group that just won a Supreme Court case on free speech.

“Guess God don’t much care for Supreme Court cases,” said the onlooker, Jim Thompson of Dubuque, Iowa. “Because God just WENT OFF!” [Read more]

The protest movement in Egypt has suddenly alerted many Westerners to the existence of the Muslim Brotherhood, a newish group who did not emerge in Egypt until almost the end of the Coolidge Administration. Furthermore, this fast-breaking development has alerted Western pundits, bloggers, and politicians to the urgent need to say something about the Muslim Brotherhood. [Read more]

  "And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not."  2 Peter 2:3

Apparently it's nothing new, using God's name to make one's fortune. [Read more]

VATICAN - Pope John Paul II will be beatified on May 1, after Vatican officials judged that the deceased pontiff's ability to make child molestation and sexual abuse charges seem like no big deal was officially a miracle.

"You'd think people would care that the Pope knew full well that Catholic priests who were molesting kids were protected," said Vatican spokesman Father Oliver O'Grady."Turns out, no one seems to care. It's a miracle!" [Read more]

Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s episode of “Answering the Stupidest Questions.”

(Applause)

Today, Time Magazines dares to ask the question ringing in hardly anyone’s mind: “Does the Death of 200 Cows in Wisconsin Confirm Biblical Prophecy?”

Regardless of the outcome of those necropsies, plenty of people find the herd’s mysterious death somewhat apocalyptic, especially in the wake of events that claimed the lives of thousands of birds and fish in Arkansas, and hundreds of birds in Sweden, Louisiana and Kentucky. [Read more]

We've been talking a lot lately about civility, for obvious and painful reasons. And our public conversation on that topic tends to go astray pretty quickly, because we don't all mean the same thing when we say "civility," and often aren't even sure what we mean by the word ourselves.
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So, in my last post, I talked more specifically about my Christian beliefs than is my blogging habit. I doubt I'll do it more often; I don't think that you should believe something just because I do, and so I try to write from the assumption that you don't. But I did mention my own beliefs, and it's Christmas, so let me come clean a bit, because it's an important holiday for me, and because it's such a bitter season:

I believe in the basic dignity of human being. I believe that other people's suffering is real, and deserves our attention. I believe that everyone deserves protection from hunger, illness, and the killing December cold.

To make it more doctrinally specific, I was raised to believe that everyone is Jesus, and should be treated accordingly. [Read more]