deilogos

There’s a new slogan making its way onto car bumpers and across the Internet: “Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8.” The verse reads “May his days be few; may another take his office.” Beliefnet’s “Psalm 109:8–A Prayer for Obama” says the “Prayer for Obama” is meant to “entreat God to destroy the president.” Is this prayer a call for violence against the President? Does it accord with Christian principles? (more…)

Should faith-based social service programs be required to abide by the same anti-discrimination laws as other organizations? “Faith-Based Discrimination,” a recent New York Times editorial, argues that President Obama should make good on his promise to prevent faith-based programs that receive federal funding from discriminating against employees on the basis of their religion.

The first comparative survey of U.S. conservative and progressive (or liberal) religious activists has just been published. Are one’s religious leanings a reliable indicator of what issues they care most about and even what faith they subscribe to?

Since the Obama Administration sent Special Advisor for Green Jobs Van Jones packing last week, do we need to establish a green religion to keep environmentalism alive in America?

Will Senator Ted Kennedy’s death further politicize health care reform? Will it “shine a spotlight on Catholicism, its rituals and rites and rubrics?” Is Kennedy bound for purgatory? The Anchoress weighs in with “Ted Kennedy, Healthcare & Purgatory“.

Is public healthcare a moral imperative? President Obama, speaking to a group of religious leaders, seems to think so: “This debate over healthcare goes to the heart of who we are as American people… This is part of an ethical and moral obligation that we look out for one another.”

“The Supreme Love and Revolutionary Funk of Dr. Cornel West, Philosopher of the Blues.” Jeff Sharlet over at Killing the Buddha attempts to unravel the enigma that is Dr. Cornel West, who’s been called “perhaps the preeminent black intellectual of our generation.”

According to the troubling article “Bush, God, Iraq and Gog” by Clive Hamilton, “There can be little doubt now that President Bush’s reason for launching the war in Iraq was, for him, fundamentally religious. He was driven by his belief that the attack on Saddam’s Iraq was the fulfilment of a Biblical prophesy in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.”

“Inside the System.” Father Luis Barrios is currently serving a 60 day sentence for misdemeanor trespassing during a protest against the School of the Americas at Fort Benning military base in Georgia. His colleague David Brotherton writes that his treatment at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in Manhattan has bordered on torture.

Andrew Sullivan argues that there’s a new religious power in America – atheism.