Sarah Posner

Following up on Dana’s post about the Third Way Come Let Us Reason Together Governing Agenda: the Third Way is once again partnering with the organization Faith in Public Life to present a decidedly tepid, incremental agenda as evidence that “progressives” and evangelicals are joining hands to “end the culture wars.” As Dana (and Ann) […]

A coalition of 19 agnostic and atheist organizations has asked Barack Obama to decline any invitation to be the honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), as has been tradition since the presidency of William Howard Taft. The coalition, led by the American Humanist Association, focuses on the Boy Scouts’ policy of discrimination […]

Bishop V. Gene Robinson, whose consecration as the nation’s first openly gay Episcopal Bishop in 2003 ignited furor among conservatives who recently broke away from the Anglican Communion, tells his hometown Concord (N.H.) Monitor that he won’t use the Bible when he delivers the opening prayer at the inaugural kick-off event this Sunday at the […]

At the Stranger’s Slog, Erica Barnett pulls a snippet from the Rick Warren sermon, “Affair-Proofing Your Marriage:” The top five needs of most men are: 1. Sexual fulfillment 2. Recreational companionship 3. An attractive spouse 4. Domestic support 5. Admiration The top five needs of most women are: 1. Affection 2. Conversation 3. Honesty and […]

Over at TNR, Alan Wolfe makes a silly and unsupported argument that Rick Warren’s acceptance of Barack Obama’s invitation to deliver the invocation at inauguration will marginalize the hard-core religious right and mainstream the less hard-core conservative evangelicals into the larger political culture. Wolfe writes: Warren’s decision to accept an invitation from a liberal president […]

But Warren (who admits that his natural impulse is to sleep with every beautiful woman he sees — blech) can control his. Really. Watch it here: Meanwhile, don’t miss Mike Madden’s report in Salon today, in which he confirms that it was indeed Obama, and not the Inaugural Committee, that hand-picked Warren to give the […]

Via Michelle Goldberg and the Episcopal Diocese of Washington comes some not very flattering insights into Rick Warren‘s much-vaunted international work. Goldberg, author of the essential book on the Christian right, Kingdom Coming, has a new book coming out this spring about the impact of religious fundamentalism on reproductive freedom worldwide. On Religion Dispatches, she […]

Paul Weyrich, one of the early architects of the religious right, died this morning. Although he’d been in ailing health for a number of years and quite frail the last time I saw him speak publicly, he was still considered an icon to conservatives generally, and to religious right activists in particular. Weyrich, who co-founded […]