Religious Influence In Government - Network For Church Monitoring

In secular Britain, a clash over public prayer

Posted by N4CM News, Top Stories 11 Mar 2012

Source: The Washington Post. Perhaps the locals should have anticipated sparks on a town council stocked not only with a practicing pagan, a staunch atheist and an agnostic former stripper but also two evangelical Christians and a Methodist church organist. But few could have predicted that one small town’s fight over the abolition of Christian prayers at public meetings would escalate into Britain’s own culture wars.

How the Far Right Roman Catholics and Evangelical Taliban Trapped the President

Posted by N4CM Opinion 21 Feb 2012

Source: Frank Schaeffer. I’m stunned by the fact that the US media doesn’t seem to know that the President Obama v. the US Catholic bishops — AKA “religious freedom” aka “birth control v. women” — affair is the result of a well laid plan by a few Religious Right Extremists that has succeeded in entrapping the President just as these extremists planned. The bishops have been led to attack the President by [...]

Moyers: Why Religion Should Not Dictate Our Politics

Posted by N4CM Belief, Opinion 17 Feb 2012

Source: BillMoyers.com. The president did something agile and wise the other day. And something quite important to the health of our politics. He reached up and snuffed out what some folks wanted to make into a cosmic battle between good and evil. No, said the president, we’re not going to turn the argument over contraception into Armageddon, this is an honest difference between Americans, and I’ll not see it escalated into a holy war.

Atheists win UK case on council prayers

Posted by N4CM News, Top Stories 13 Feb 2012

Source: New Statesman. The National Secular Society has won a Judicial Review against Bideford Town Council’s practice of holding prayers as part of its formal proceedings. Mr Justice Ouseley, leading judge of the Administrative Division of the High Court, today ruled that the 1972 Local Government Act did not give councils the power to introduce a religious dimension to their meetings. The judge didn’t decide that having [...]

Don’t Be Fooled – Why the Tea Party Is More Powerful Than Ever

Posted by N4CM Opinion 16 Jan 2012

Source: Washington Monthly. Go to the panels with the boring names. That’s the secret to any political conference. Flashy names are candy floss meant to tempt you into meetings that at best will tell you what you already know, and at worst will bore you mindless. That’s the approach I take, anyway, at the 2011 Defending the American Dream Summit, the annual megaconfab put on by Americans for Prosperity. This is the Tea Party group [...]

Should People and Governments Shun the Totalitarian Catholic Church?

Posted by N4CM Belief, Freedom of the presss, Opinion 6 Jan 2012

Source: AlterNet. When a totalitarian regime aids and abets the rape of tens of thousands of children one would expect it to be shunned by governments and citizens alike. And any statements it might issue on matters of morality accorded no respect. Why should we make an exception when the regime is the Catholic Church? That the Roman Catholic Church is totalitarian is undeniable. Church law itself makes this clear.

Poland adjusting to more secular age

Posted by N4CM News, Top Stories 28 Dec 2011

Source: The National Catholic Reporter. The traditional primacy of the Roman Catholic church in Poland has been shaken. On Oct. 9, one of every 10 Poles voted for the socially egalitarian and explicitly anticlerical party known as the Palikot Movement, named after founder Janusz Palikot. While politicians generally avoid criticism of the church in a country that is 97 percent Catholic, the Palikot party has already demanded [...]

Politics, Religion and the Tea Party

Posted by N4CM Christian Right Watch 19 Dec 2011

Source: Al Jazeera. With a powerful Tea Party movement framing Republican policy in Washington and across the US, Fault Lines looks into the links between the Tea Party movement, the Christian conservative movement and Republican politics ahead of the GOP primaries. As the race for the Republican presidential nomination for the 2012 elections heats up, Fault Lines follows the Iowa campaign trail to investigate [...]

Evangelical Leader Rises in Brazil’s Culture Wars

Posted by N4CM News 29 Nov 2011

Source: The New York Times. Silas Malafaia’s books, which sell in the millions in Brazil, have titles like “How to Defeat Satan’s Strategies” and “Lessons of a Winner.” The Gulfstream private jet in which he flies has “Favor of God,” in English, inscribed on its body. As a television evangelist, Mr. Malafaia reaches viewers in dozens of countries, including the United States, where Daystar and Trinity [...]

Religious lobbying groups multiply on Capitol Hill

Posted by N4CM News, Top Stories 23 Nov 2011

Source: The Washington Post. The field of religious advocacy has mushroomed on Capitol Hill in recent decades, a new survey shows, with the number of groups growing fivefold since 1970 and hundreds of millions spent each year to influence issues from school vouchers and immigration to the right of women overseas to have abortions. The report, released Monday by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life, [...]