Every single one of the sops Newt Gingrich is throwing the far right has been scripted for him by generations of far right so-called Reconstructionist "thinkers" and far right Roman Catholic ideologues that have been pushing the religious community -- and America -- steadily in the direction of overthrowing democracy...

Christopher Hitchens is dead. There will be people who think that as a famous atheist Hitchens was an enemy of not just religion in general but of his own cultural tradition of Christianity. In fact they will think that with his passing a threat to religion and faith has passed...

Speaking as a former evangelical anti-abortion leader, I note that if it boils down to a choice between the Mormon or the adulterer for the Republicans in 2012, the Evangelicals who drive the Religious Right will climb the walls. Do they vote for a heretic or a lying philanderer?

The convergence of two news stories should be a wakeup call to alert us to the fact that there is a brutal movement in America that legitimizes child abuse in the name of God. One story involves a judge whipping his daughter with a belt on a YouTube clip that...

Cassie Jaye is a young filmmaker who's first film; Daddy I Do won Best Documentary at the Cannes Independent Film Festival (2010). She is better than good at what she does; the word brilliant comes to mind. I say this having just seen an advance copy of

Lurking in the heart of the religious communities who have taken over the Republican Party is a strange take on sex that keeps exploding into public view. The title of my new book Sex, Mom and God could have been Sex With Mom and God" because the sexual dysfunction that...

America is a one party state. The Democratic Party is the sole political party in the US now.

The Republican Party is no more. It is not a political party; as David Brooks noted "the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party."

It has become...

Foreigners, visitors from another planet and Americans living in a bubble of reasonable or educated people might not know this but the reality is that the debt ceiling confrontation is by, for and the result of America's evangelical Christian control of the Republican Party. It is the ultimate expression of...

This is an excerpt from frank Schaeffer's new book. Writing in the Washington Post, Jane Smiley called Sex, Mom and God "laugh out loud funny" and her review concluded like this: "Frank has been straightforward and entertaining in his campaign to right the political wrongs he...

Both sides on the "life issues" remain totally invested in being morally "right." The purists on both sides also refuse to admit that most Americans (if public opinion polls are to be believed) occupy a -- sensibly conflicted -- middle ground on "the issue."

Abortion must be legal...

I just got home from the 4-day Wild Goose Festival held in Shakori Hills, N.C. Peeing in the woods at night was better than using the porta potties and when the breeze died down it was hot and humid. But with a beer tent, old friends from the...

According to governor Rick Perry of Texas what America needs is prayer. We need to pray in order to restore our moral direction. And the people he wants to lead those prayers are conservative Evangelicals, Roman Catholics and Jews, or at least the good kind of Jews: observant,...

Reconstructionists are not about to take over America, the world, or even most American Evangelical institutions. But their influence has been like a drop of radicalizing flavoring added to a bottle of water. As reported in the Huffington Post, a Pew Research Center poll showed that 42 percent...

The Weiner Problem is a bigger problem (no pun intended) than one man's sick folly: It is a metaphor for a whole post-60s generation of American progressives that became more interested in winning culture war battles and fucking around personally than in the traditional lefty agenda of unions, organizing, workers,...

As the New York Times reported about Sarah Palin's latest efforts to blow off the media, no one has gone as far as Palin to both dismiss the media and cash in on its attentions:

What was most striking about the bus odyssey was the apparent relish...

The 5,000-plus emails and letters generated by my memoir Crazy for God (about why I left a leadership position in the religious right) made it clear that I still had questions to answer about my family's role in the rise of the American extremism, even violence.

People...

(This is an excerpt from my new book Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway.)

I was wrong when I was an anti-abortion activist.

I changed my mind.

Today, I am...

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 4 -- "The-God-Of-The-Bible's Unauthorized Biography" -- of Frank Schaeffer's new book, Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics -- and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway (Da Capo Press, 2011)....

If you're not at the Wild Goose Festival this June you'll have missed the most important spiritual gathering in the US to take place in decades. Can a group of Christians save the reputation of Christianity from the "Christian" Right?

Join me and many others (see the inclusive...