Welcome to 2010. I keep waiting for someone to speak truth to power. No, I'm not talking about speaking our minds to those we elected or to those they appointed. There's plenty of that going around. Rather I'm talking about speaking truth to the real power in America: We the...

The media-labeled "New Atheists" such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have put forward what they regard as the answer to religion: grow up, human race, and abandon your myths!

Most Americans, and maybe even most people around the world, have another answer to the extremes of religion that...

During the Sunday (Nov 20, 2009) Senate debate on health care, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) called on the American people to pray that a Democratic Senator would be unable to vote on the health care bill, in order to defeat Democrats.

"What the American people oughtta pray is that somebody...

"Herod care" anyone?

The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference led last night's "prayercast" co-sponsored by the Family Research Council.

In the "prayercast," Rodriguez prayed:

Heavenly father, righteous God, in this season as we celebrate birth of our savior, the one who came...

Fact: The Ugandan so-called "anti-Homosexuality Bill" by legislator David Bahati forces horrid punishments on gays -- jail terms and/or death.

Fact: Uganda is a predominantly evangelical and Bible-based society. (Pastor Rick Warren "recognized" this when he said "Uganda is a purpose driven country" in his book Purpose Driven Life. Warren...

Nothing illustrates...

Mike Huckabee broke his silence on Monday and defended his decision to give clemency to a convict said to be responsible for the ambush murder of four Seattle police officers. I have an odd connection to Huckabee. He told Katie Couric, during the 2007 primary race, that the book by...

Gay marriage and gay parents aren't a threat to children but a certain frighteningly widespread kind of Christianity is not just a threat but a death sentence. With the growth of the so-called charismatic faith healing denominations in America it's time to put child welfare ahead of our concept of...

Here's how Obama's critics will react to the news of his winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Religious Right will take this is further proof that Obama is the Antichrist.

The neoconservatives will trumpet this as the ultimate evidence of Obama being a socialist, embraced by notoriously socialist Norway.

The...

Since President Obama took office I've felt like the lonely -- maybe crazy -- proverbial canary in the coal mine. As a former right wing leader, who many years ago came to my senses and began to try to undo the harm the movement of religious extremism I helped build...

On what had to be one of the most disheartening media appearances I've ever made -- in terms of my usual shtick as an author and commentator -- I was just on Court TV yesterday. Court TV was fine. The case we were talking about made me want to throw...

In a dream world where the shouting stopped, where of course Americans argued with each other, but where we all assumed that we were all in this together, that we all wanted a better America, that it was about building community and treating each other with decency and respect, what...

Who are these people?! Where do they come from?! Ordinary Americans might wonder why anyone would stoop so low as to follow Glenn Beck, Fox News and Dick Armey (and their corporate sponsors masquerading as "FreedomWorks") as they organize their "9/12 March On Washington" to cynically exploit the 9/11 attack....

For me reading Max Blumenthal's Republican Gomorrah--Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, (Nation Books) is like looking into a mirror. That might be because Blumenthal extensively interviewed me and drew rather heavily on my book Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped...

The truth is that if (post-9/11) America wanted to fight two wars simultaneously -- and apparently endlessly -- protect our shores and project power into other parts of the globe simultaneously we needed draft. But we are a culture that refuses to make hard choices and likes happy endings, in...

To the right, President Obama faces a Republican Party that is now more of a fundamentalist cult, wedded irrevocably to myth and deliberate misinformation, than a political party. (I did my part to make it that way by being a religious right anti-abortion leader and side-kick to my far-right evangelist...

What's the common denominator linking crummy public transport, military contractors and the public option being taken off the table in the health care reform fight? Why is a single-payer health care provider "unthinkable"? The common denominator is that the United States is in the thralls of a demented cult that...

Can the left learn to keep its mouth shut once in a while? Does the American left know how to win wars or just skirmishes? Does the left want change or does it demand perfection? You can't have both in this life.

No one has been a tougher critic...

You evangelical leaders have a choice before you: rejoin American society as it is and love the actual country you're part of, or stick to your mythical Disney remake of a Little House On the Prairie fantasy and fade away -- forever.

To you "moderate" and "respectable" evangelical Christians...

From the media influence of the "birthers" to suggestions that the President wants to euthanize the elderly, a propaganda campaign against Obama is in full swing. Who, exactly, is behind it? In his book The Family, Jeff Sharlet has done a masterful job of exposing the machinations of the of...