Mark Tooley is the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and a prominent commentator on the intersection of religion and public life. He was a prolific contributor to The Weekly Standard from 1997 to 2015, writing extensively on Christianity, church politics, and the role of faith in American culture. His work frequently covered mainline Protestantism, evangelicalism, and religious trends in contemporary society.
Most church groups and prominent religious voices speaking to the Iran nuclear deal are supportive. Most notable among them is the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops.
Thomas Oden is a Methodist, ecumenist, evangelical, and patristics scholar who was dissuaded from liberal modernism by a Jewish conservative, becoming himself a theological paleo-orthodox and devoting the last half of his life to the reaffirmation of Christian orthodoxy rooted in the early church…
This new biography recalls George Whitefield, the 18th-century English evangelist, as probably the most recognizable celebrity of his age. He was certainly the most traveled, crisscrossing the Atlantic countless times and preaching to audiences, sometimes in the tens of thousands, up and down the…
Father Gabriel Naddaf, a Greek Orthodox priest in Yafia, near Nazareth, made news in 2012 when he publicly urged Israeli Christians of Arab descent to join the Israel Defense Forces. Since then, he’s become a lightning rod for encouraging Christians to integrate themselves into Israeli society…
It is often claimed that conservative religious voters, especially white evangelicals, are going the way of the dinosaur, consigned to demographic irrelevance. But they were a key component of the Republicans’ 2014 midterm victories. According to exit polls, Conservative religious voters made up as…
Senator Ted Cruz’s vigorous defense of Israel at a recent conference for persecuted Middle Eastern Christians in Washington, D.C., provoked jeers from a loud minority in the audience, made up largely of Catholics and Orthodox, many of them from the region or of Middle Eastern background. In June,…
A century before the Declaration of Independence, Virginia colonists, mostly from the frontier backcountry, rebelled against their imperious royal governor and his privileged Tidewater elites, forcing him into exile and burning the capital of Jamestown. Their revolution collapsed when their young,…
Josephus Daniels was a North Carolina newspaper mogul, Democratic party kingmaker, Prohibitionist, progressive leader, ardent Methodist, equally ardent segregationist, friend to William Jennings Bryan, and counselor to Woodrow Wilson. He was an anti-imperialist who conquered and ruled parts of six…
A new Presbyterian study resource is being condemned by Jewish groups for its harsh anti-Israel rhetoric. But the controversy over the booklet could actually help defeat anti-Israel divestment, which the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly will consider once again in June, after defeating it…
William Alexander Percy (1885-1942), of Greenville, Mississippi, was the cousin and adoptive father of the Southern Catholic novelist Walker Percy. He was himself a lawyer and man of letters, a poet, literary mentor, scion of a great family, friend of William Faulkner, and author of a bestselling…
Although not widely noticed, Mitt Romney seems to be on his way to capturing as much of the white evangelical vote as George W. Bush famously did in 2004. Bush got 79 percent. A Pew poll conducted before the first presidential debate had Romney getting 74 percent of white evangelicals versus 19…
Was young George Washington a slightly inept and self-serving martinet who helped to blunder the British Empire into the otherwise avoidable French and Indian War? Seemingly so, according to this account of Washington’s early military adventures.
For much of the last decade, international anti-Israel activists have targeted U.S. mainline Protestant denominations with pleas for divesting from firms doing business with Israel. There was reason: Official mainline Protestantism, pro-Israel during Israel's early decades, became sharply…
Just in time for the nearly 2 million member Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly this week, which will consider anti-Israel divestment, some prominent Christian activists have released a new anti-Israel salvo, called Kairos USA.
Last Sunday, CBS’s 60 Minutes broadcast “Christians of the Holy Land,” by Bob Simon, largely blaming Israel for an exodus of Christians from the Holy Land. The showing coincides with a growing international campaign to portray Israel as anti-Christian, showcasing Palestinian Christians as evidence.
The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) on November 8 released a new policy that falls just short of urging total nuclear disarmament while surmising that reliance on nukes might be idolatrous.
On Sunday, the Episcopal Church’s National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. will host “A Call to Compassion” to commemorate 9/11. President Obama will attend and speak at the concluding “Concert for Hope.” Patti LaBelle will sing. CNN’s Anderson Cooper will host. After the recent earthquake and the…
Right after Easter, the irrepressible evangelical-left activist Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine announced a new “spiritual battle” against cuts to sacred federal programs in the 2012 budget. Enlisting the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the…
Over two dozen Democratic members of Congress and Moveon.org have joined the religious left in a fast coinciding with Lent to protest federal budget cuts. Moveon.org executive director Justin Rubin announced earlier this month that he and other “progressive” groups were joining religious leaders to…
Over the last several years the old religious right reputedly has been melting down, with younger, more liberal evangelicals in the ascendency. But exit polling from the 2010 midterm election indicate no major political shift among evangelical or Protestant voters.
The Making of a Catholic President
Left-wing groups convened the “One Nation Working Together” rally on the National Mall on Saturday, October 2, hoping to counter Glenn Beck’s well-attended “Restoring Honor” gathering in August. They also wanted to energize their base before the November elections, hoping to counter Tea Party…
For nearly 30 years Richard Cizik represented the National Association of Evangelicals in Washington, D.C. During the George W. Bush administration, he tilted increasingly left and embraced global warming as his iconic issue. A Vanity Fair magazine spread admiringly portrayed him walking on water,…
U.S. church officials are voicing objections to the continuing violence against Iraqi Christians, by sending letters to Defense Secretary Bob Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor James Jones. But the church prelates are declining to name Islamists as the…
U.S. church officials are complaining about the continuing violence against Iraqi Christians, including letters to Defense Secretary Bob Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor James Jones. But the church prelates are declining to name Islamists as the perpetrators.
For most Christians, Lent is a season of penitence and devotion in remembrance of the events leading to Christ’s crucifixion. For Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP), Lent is an organizing tool for rallying U.S. Christians against Israel.
Trying to persuade usually pro-life Democratic Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson to back Obamacare, Pennsylvania Democratic Senator Bob Casey offered a so-called compromise on abortion funding that Nelson initially rejected. But liberal evangelicals and Catholics who profess to be pro-life publicly…
Christianity in Action
Evangelicals organized by Southern Baptist leaders are pushing for more U.S. pressure against Iran's nuclear program while also offering solidarity to Iran's suppressed domestic opposition.
Turning Christians against Israel. In May, the Carter Center in Atlanta, with patron Jimmy Carter presiding, hosted liberal religious officials to talk about the Middle East, releasing a statement effectively calling for a more neutral U.S. stance towards Israel. In June, in between meeting with…
Not many outside the evangelical world have yet heard of him, but 37-year-old Donald Miller is one of the Evangelical Left's fresh faces. His 2003 spiritual odyssey Blue Like Jazz, a sort of evangelical version of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, sold over a million copies, launching Miller as a leader…
The Bishop's Daughter
A bit of a ruckus among British evangelicals and Anglicans has arisen over charges of accommodationism toward radical Islam. The latest controversy flared up in January when a British evangelical group, Fulcrum, negatively reviewed a new book by Anglican priest and critic of jihadist Islam Patrick…
The March issue of the Atlantic features a lengthy and largely glowing review of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, comparing his nuclear freeze activism of the 1980s to his campaign for conciliation over homosexuality among the world's 80 million Anglicans.
Having rejected anti-Israel divestment of its pension funds last year, the 7.9 million United Methodist Church is courting new controversy involving anti-Israel bias again this year. Starting February 3, the Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, from which the denomination conducts its political…
Seemingly none of the recent obituaries of Avery Dulles, a renowned theologian and Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, has mentioned his crisp, theoretical defense of capital punishment. The Cardinal's careful explanation of his church's teaching responded to the popular impression of blanket…
Jesus for President
National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) chief lobbyist Richard Cizik has won plaudits from the New York Times and criticism from his own constituency for shifting NAE to the left, on global warming and other issues over the last 6 years. But endorsing same sex civil unions on National Public…
Levels of religious practice remained a key indicator of voting preferences in 2008, with the religiously observant strongly still favoring the Republican, if slightly reduced from 2004. Evangelicals remained the strongest voting bloc for Republicans, giving 74 percent to John McCain, according to…
The evangelical left, still stung by 70-75 percent evangelical support for George W. Bush in 2004, has been insisting that more evangelicals will vote Democrat if steered away from same-sex marriage and abortion and towards Global Warming and poverty. Leading the charge for this redirection has…
IN A FOURTH encounter over two years, American church officials shared an Iftar meal with the visiting Iranian president on September 28 in New York City. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier in the day had delivered his usual rant against Israel and the United States at the United Nations. But hosting…
PRIMARILY ORGANIZED BY the Evangelical left, a summit called "Religious Faith, Torture and Our National Soul" convened in Atlanta on September 11 to inveigh against the Bush administration's allegedly pro-torture policies.
Reasons to Believe
A RECENT FRENCH POLL shows that majorities of both practicing Catholics and Protestants support France's pro-American president Nicolas Sarkozy, even as his overall polling numbers have dropped.
ARE SOUTHERN BAPTISTS "dwindling"? Recent headlines about the annual meeting of the 16.27 million member Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) refer to its ostensible struggles with membership decline. Having lost 40,000 members last year, America's second biggest religious body was described as…
FEW IN THE MEDIA HAVE reported it, but the recent governing General Conference of the 11.5 million member United Methodist Church revealed some fascinating new alliances involving American evangelicals, Africans, and Jews.
THE GOVERNING CONVENTION of America's third largest religious body meets this week. And the results might be a pleasant surprise for conservatives.
SUPPOSEDLY GLOBAL WARMING IS the wedge issue that will peel evangelicals away from their conservative voting habits and their ostensible preoccupation with sexual mores. So when the president of the conservative-led 16 million member Southern Baptist Convention signed a Global Warming statement,…
ONE OF THE OLDEST Religious Left groups in America is targeting Israel for divestment. The Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) was founded in 1907 after its leaders met with President Teddy Roosevelt. It was one of the Social Gospel's chief proponents in the early 20th century, when much…
NOT ALL OF Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's encounters in New York during his recent trip were testy. The Shiite theocrat had what the New York Times called a "warm, even friendly exchange" with 150 church officials at the United Methodist Women's Church Center for the United Nations.
SEVERAL DOZEN PROMINENT evangelicals have released a letter to President Bush in an effort to distinguish themselves from ardent pro-Israel evangelicals and to urge evenhandedness between Israel and the Palestinians.
THE MOST POIGNANT MOMENT of the May 31 dedication of the Billy Graham Library was the tribute to the 88-year-old evangelist by 82-year-old former President George H.W. Bush.
NOT MANY AMERICANS are commemorating the 250th anniversary of the French and Indian War. Outside Washington, D.C., over 100 West Virginians recently assembled for their annual commemoration of their own community's role in the "war that made America." Creditably, PBS aired a documentary with that…
GERALD SHENK, who teaches at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg, Virginia, attended a theology conference on "Madhist doctrine" in Teheran last September. (For many Shiite Muslims, the Twelfth Imam is the Mahdi, or messianic savior, who returns at the end times to establish a reign of…
On May 17, 1607, English settlers landed on Jamestown Island in Virginia and created what would be the first permanent British colony. An Anglican clergyman led them in prayers of thanksgiving and in constructing the first permanent Protestant church in the Western hemisphere.
LAST SUNDAY, 13 U.S. church officials left for Iran to meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and build a "bridge of peace" between the two countries.
LATE LAST YEAR, dozens of faculty members at Southern Methodist University publicly opposed plans by President Bush to locate his presidential library on SMU's campus in Dallas.
Christmas honors the birth of Jesus Christ two millennia ago. But Providence has also employed subsequent Christmas days in historically powerful ways, not least of all in America.
ON SATURDAY, December 2, incoming-Senate majority leader Harry Reid asked Jim Wallis, the liberal religious activist, to give the Democrats' official response to President Bush's weekly radio address. It was a curious, odd moment--the equivalent of Republicans inviting Jerry Falwell to respond on…
Christianity for the Rest of Us
A CHRISTIAN PRIEST in Iraq was dismembered and beheaded by radical Islamists a few weeks ago as a reaction against Pope Benedict's August comments about Islam. But Western church groups, more focused on denouncing the U.S. presence in Iraq than on criticizing radical Islam, have said virtually…
NOW NUMBERING OVER 500 million, and probably the fastest growing religious movement in the world, Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians are transforming the global religious demographic, especially in Latin America and Africa. They comprise nearly half of Brazil's population, and 25 percent of the…
SOMETIMES there are pleasant surprises from the much-maligned Church of England. Last week, its former Archbishop of Canterbury defended Pope Benedict's remarks about violence in Islamic history.
IS AMERICA GETTING MORE SECULAR? Not according to a new survey on Americans' religious beliefs, "American Piety in the 21st Century," published this month by Baylor University. According to the Baylor survey, 82 percent of Americans are Christians, 90 percent believe in God, 70 percent pray…
DID THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION covertly blow-up the World Trade Center, ignite the Pentagon, and shoot down United Flight 93 to pave the way for a new American empire? The answer is "yes," according to a new book printed by the official publishing house of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and written…
THE JULY 30 NEW YORK TIMES gave prominent coverage to a Minnesota mega-church pastor who disavowed the Religious Right ("Disowning Conservative Politics, Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock"). The Rev. Gregory Boyd, ostensibly fed up by the political pressures of the 2004 presidential race, gave a…
THE ACCELERATING RIFT over homosexuality in the nearly 80 million member global Anglican Communion has finally reached directly into the Washington, D.C. area.
WHEN TWO FAIRFAX COUNTY POLICE OFFICERS were slain by a deranged teenager in mid-May, their funerals were both held at the 10,000-member McLean Bible Church in Vienna, Virginia, about 15 miles outside Washington, D.C.
WHEN VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT HUGO CH VEZ met with the Pope earlier this week, he assured Benedict XVI that he is a Christian. And he told the press that has a special friend who is one too. Sort of.
ON THE RELIGIOUS LEFT, the great hope these days is that the Religious Right is melting down over Global Warming. Liberal evangelical activist Jim Wallis rejoiced about the crack-up in a recent column, claiming that "the Religious Right is losing control" thanks to environmentalist evangelicals.…
A PROMINENT HAMAS member of parliament has explained why most American Christians support Israel. The churches are run by "converted" Jews who are exploiting Christians for Zionist purposes. "Even the churches where the Americans pray are led by Jews who were converted to Christianity, but they…
AMERICAN CHURCH OFFICIALS pleaded for forgiveness for the sins of the United States last week--from the Iraq War, to Bush's rejection of the Kyoto Accord, to the racism exposed by Hurricane Katrina, to economic exploitation, and for the more general American sin of idolatry.
Exodus
NBC'S lame-duck series Book of Daniel kicked up a lot of controversy during its brief run, but perhaps not for the right reasons.
FOR OVER A HUNDRED YEARS children have gathered on the South Lawn of the White House on the Monday after Easter to roll Easter eggs across the yard and meet the Easter Bunny. Seemingly few (if any) Washingtonians have ever tried to exploit the annual White House Easter Egg Roll for political…
PRESIDENT BUSH and Vice President Cheney are both members of the United Methodist Church, as are more than 60 members of Congress and 8.2 million other Americans. But the church's bishops, when they speak politically, sound surprisingly more like Michael Moore or Noam Chomsky (neither of whom is…
IN A NEW REPORT bishops of the Church of England have urged Western Christians to apologize for the Iraq War as an "act of truth and reconciliation." The committee of bishops, chaired by the bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries, also linked U.S. "imperialism" to the influence of U.S. evangelicals, who…
MICHAEL LERNER was back on campus at Berkeley. But this time he is a portly Jewish rabbi leading 1,200 mostly middle-aged "spiritual progressives," and not the young Students for a Democratic Society agitator targeted by J. Edgar Hoover in the 1960s.
LAST MONTH, FOR THE first time in years, a member denomination withdrew from the National Council of Churches (NCC). The spunky, 400,000-member communion is the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, and its decision to quit the reflexively left-wing NCC was based on a…
EPISCOPALIANS often get tarred as America's most liberal Christian denomination. But there is a more liberal one! (Hint: it's the one Howard Dean joined after he quit the Episcopal Church in a dispute over a bike trail.)
ONE OF AMERICA'S largest Protestant denominations voted in May to prohibit the solemnization of same-sex unions in its churches, to withhold ordination from practicing homosexuals, to ban church funding for "gay" causes, to require celibacy for its single clergy, and to endorse civil laws that…
WHAT IF THE Christian Coalition were fighting to return a little refugee boy to the right-wing military dictatorship from which he and his mother had fled -- she having lost her life in the process? Imagine the howls of protest. How odd, then, that the National Council of Churches (NCC) has…
DURING THE COLD WAR, Soviet propagandists and Western "progressives" routinely charged that the United States had "political prisoners" of its own: "freedom fighters" locked up by the Justice Department for "crimes of conscience." The complaint has lost steam in recent years. There is no longer a…
WATCH FOR SAME-SEX MARRIAGE to become the latest rage at America's university chapels. Recently Harvard's chaplain, himself a homosexual, announced that his chapel will extend its "hospitality" to male-male and female-female couples. The chapel at Stanford has hosted two same-sex ceremonies in the…