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Sarah Posner

Sarah Posner is a Prospect senior correspondent and associate editor of Religion Dispatches, where she writes a blog about religion and politics. The author of God's Profits: Faith Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters (PoliPoint 2008), her work has also appeared in the Nation, Salon, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, and other publications.

Recent Articles

In Bad Faith

At yesterday's National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama revealed that he still falls prey to the idea that religious beliefs are unimpeachable -- even when those beliefs affect the liberty of others.

Sarah PosnerFeb 05, 2010
(AP Photo)

In advance of yesterday's National Prayer Breakfast, President Barack Obama was under pressure to use the opportunity to condemn the anti-homosexuality bill pending in the Ugandan Parliament. The legislation, which would criminalize homosexuality and require the death penalty or life imprisonment for certain "offenses," has been described by human-rights activists as tantamount to instigating a genocide against sexual minorities, who are already persecuted in the African nation.

Faith and the Stupak Amendment.

Sarah PosnerNov 19, 2009

The Catholic bishops have gotten a lot of attention for the role they played in pushing the Stupak amendment -- and the House health-care bill -- over the finish line. While there's no doubt the bishops applied the midnight pressure, their role is just one piece of how Democrats yearn for the godly imprimatur.

Islamophobia, From Screen to Capitol Hill.

Sarah PosnerOct 19, 2009

Last week saw the preposterous spectacle of members of Congress calling for an investigation of the allegedly seditious activities of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Republicans Sue Myrick, John Shadegg, Paul Broun, and Trent Franks, who accused CAIR of planting interns to work as spies on Capitol Hill, based their charges on the book Muslim Mafia.

If Only War Were that Simple.

Sarah PosnerOct 14, 2009

The Washington Post today profiles Lt. Carey Cash, the Navy chaplain serving at Camp David, where President Obama attends services. Cash -- a great nephew of music icon Johnny Cash -- is a conservative Southern Baptist who won't, apparently, give Obama the trouble that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright did.

If Obama is seeking some spiritual guidance as he contemplates troop escalations in Afghanistan, though, I hope to God his admiration for Cash does not lend credence to what Cash has to say about God and war.

No Abortion Shift, No Need To Cater to Anti-Abortion Activists.

Sarah PosnerOct 09, 2009

In his U.S. News and World Report column, Dan Gilgoff buys into the idea that President Obama and the Democratic Party should be mindful of voters who worry that Obama will "overreach on abortion rights," based on the new Pew poll out on abortion attitudes.

But that poll doesn't show any seismic shift in abortion attitudes, nor does it contain any warnings to Obama and the Democrats that they should be any less pro-reproductive rights. According to Pew:

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