Mark Tooley

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

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.

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.

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…

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.

Christianity for the Rest of Us

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…

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…

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…