Republican lawmakers in North Carolina introduced a bill to allow the state “to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide,” WRAL-TV reports.

“With President Obama and his family in the pews for Easter Sunday worship, the Rev. Luis Leon at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington’s Lafayette Square took the opportunity to take a shot at political conservatives, arguing from the pulpit that some conservative positions are holding people back,” the Washington Post reports.

Said Leon: “It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back … for blacks to be back in the back of the bus … for women to be back in the kitchen … for immigrants to be back on their side of the border.”

McKay Coppins: “Some leaders of the religious right are openly worried this week after a sprawling 98-page report released by the Republican National Committee on how the party can rebuild after its 2012 implosion made no mention of the GOP’s historic alliance with grassroots Christian ‘value voters.'”

“Specifically, the word ‘Christian’ does not appear once in the party’s 50,000-word blueprint for renewed electoral success. Nor does the word ‘church.’ Abortion and marriage, the two issues that most animate social conservatives, are nowhere to be found. There is nothing about the need to protect religious liberty, or promote Judeo-Christian values in society. And the few fleeting suggestions that the party coordinate with ‘faith-based communities’ — mostly in the context of minority outreach — receive roughly as much space as the need to become more “inclusive” of gays.”

“You may not be interested in Islamism, but Islamism is interested in you… The vast majority of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims adhere to a view of their religion that agrees on the need to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on the world.”

Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey, quoted by Salon, speaking on a CPAC panel.

Sarah Palin is writing a her next book about Christmas, the AP reports.

The former Alaska governor has a deal with HarperCollins for A Happy Holiday IS a Merry Christmas and will criticize the “over-commercialism” and “homogenization” of the holiday and call for a renewed emphasis on the religious importance.

Andrew Sullivan: “Well, if anyone’s an expert on miraculous births…”

A Gallup analysis finds Mississippi remained the most religious state in the union in 2012, with
58% of its residents classified as very religious.

At the other end of
the spectrum, Vermont remained the least religious state, with 19% of
its residents classified as very religious.

“Pressed to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to settle clergy sex abuse lawsuits, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony turned to one group of Catholics whose faith could not be shaken: the dead,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

“Under his leadership in 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles quietly appropriated $115 million from a cemetery maintenance fund and used it to help pay a landmark settlement with molestation victims.”

“The church did not inform relatives of the deceased that it had taken the money, which amounted to 88% of the fund. Families of those buried in church-owned cemeteries and interred in its mausoleums have contributed to a dedicated account for the perpetual care of graves, crypts and grounds since the 1890s.”

“Of course, almost no black people today care about Kwanzaa — just white
left-wingers who try to shove this down black people’s throats in an
effort to divide Americans.”

— Wisconsin state Rep. Glenn Grothman (R), quoted by Gawker.

Mike Huckabee told Fox News that today’s deadly massacre in an elementary school in Connecticut was due to the lack religion in public schools.

Said Huckabee: “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage because we’ve made it a palce where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability?”

[Read more…]

“It’s, well, Christmas all over again. The Grinch is trying to steal our holiday. It’s been so beautiful, the nation comes together, we sing Christmas carols, we give gifts to each other, we have lighted trees, and it’s just a beautiful thing. Atheists don’t like our happiness, they don’t want you to be happy, they want you to be miserable. They’re miserable, so they want you to be miserable. So they want to steal your holiday away from you.”

— Pat Robertson, on The 700 Club, gearing up for another War on Christmas.

In a priceless moment on his television show, Pat Robertson asks his female co-host if she likes pornography.

[Read more…]

“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell.”

— Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), quoted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

A recent Gallup poll found that 27% of Democrats would not vote for a Mormon under any circumstances, versus 18% of Republicans.

Peter Beinhart: “One reason Democrats may be more anti-Mormon than Republicans is that Democrats, on average, are more secular. Devout Protestants, Catholics, and Jews may be more tolerant of Mormonism because they understand from firsthand experience the comfort and strength that religious commitment brings. Many secular Democrats, by contrast, may start with the assumption that religious orthodoxy produces irrationality and intolerance… Democrats may exhibit greater suspicion of Mormonism, in other words, because they exhibit greater suspicion of all organized religion. It’s just that anti-Mormonism is still socially acceptable enough to confess to a pollster.”

Coming next month: Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat.

The author explains how American Christianity “has gone off the rails — and why it threatens to take American society with it.”

New York Magazine: “Heresies, in his telling, include Eat Pray Love, Jimmy Swaggart, and, say, the notion that Jesus would have signed Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge.”

Gawker: “Two readers have sent us confirmation that Edward Davies, Mitt Romney’s militantly atheist father-in-law, was indeed posthumously converted to Mormonism by his family, despite the fact that when he was alive he regarded all religions as ‘hogwash.'”