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?”
“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.
“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.'”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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