In just a couple of years, a significant portion of the American public has moved from questioning the patriotism of Barack Obama's pastor (and, by implication, the patriotism of candidate Obama) to wondering whether President Obama is, to turn a phrase, really a Muslim in Christian clothing. In fact, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life recently published the results of a recent survey showing that one-in-five Americans believes the president is Muslim--which dovetails with another poll indicating that only 30 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Islam.

These findings are hardly shocking if you watch any amount of news programming or the occasional reality TV show. People have an enormous capacity for delusional thinking and the media are more than willing to give them a platform "to shine." But do the media, specifically the sports media, move beyond providing a platform for shallow opinions to perpetuating the ideas of a narrow segment of the American public? ... read more

Amid the ongoing drama around Park51 and Glenn Beck's stagey MLK moment at the Lincoln Memorial, you may have missed New Gingrich's recent address at the American Enterprise Institute. The former Speaker of the House subtly played on the Tea Party emotionalism of the events in Washington, DC and lower Manhattan to set the scene for a new menace to America. In a talk ostensibly about national security, he warned of the dangers of sharia—the complex and widely varying body of social custom based on the Quran and Islamic tradition which governs national life in some Muslim societies and that often shapes community life in places where Islam is a minority religion. ... read more

While the news media have been covering (and often stoking) the drama around Park51, the proposed Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan, a peculiar revisionist narrative keeps popping up: George W. Bush as a defender of Muslims.

There had been hints of it here and there, but what really knocked me out of my seat was  Maureen Dowd's New York Times column praising Bush's supposedly sagacious distinction between terrorists and the majority of Muslims: ... read more

New York City's Fringe International Festival is a two-week extravaganza of experimental theater held annually during the last two weeks of August. Now in its 14th year, the Festival serves up everything from drag performance to quirky re-stagings of Shakespeare. At the Fringe, nothing is off limits. In the shadow of continuing national debates about Park51 / Cordoba House near Ground Zero in New York, a number of works at the Festival explore Muslim subjects in ways that disrupt our all-too-predictable "national conversations" about religion, ethnicity, race, immigration, terrorism and violence. ... read more

"Many of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world," Dalrymple writes. "The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn't mean he is in league with Irish Republican Army bomb-makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murder or abortion doctors. Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single terrifying monolith." ... read more

Women's longboard champion Joy Monahan isn't endorsing swimwear or board wax. In her latest promotional spot, she's selling Mormonism.

Last week, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints launched a commercial campaign with one simple mission: to show non-Mormon America that Mormons are "normal." In contrast to Big Love's high-collared sister-wife Nicki Grant, Monahan is sporty, hip and Hawaiian. Almost as an afterthought, she mentions, "I'm a Mormon."

The ad campaign has really confused the pundits, both on the right and left. Reaching nine mid-sized American cities, several of which are in potential swing states, the spot had Salon.com and Fox News smelling Mitt Romney in the mix. But the scent of presidential politics could be throwing journalists off the trail of a much more interesting story. ... read more

The sky is falling and apparently it's taking organized religion with it.

That's the take-away message in a recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece by William Lobdell. Starting with novelist Anne Rice's defection from the Catholic Church (or more accurately, her most recent defection) and then citing evidence from recent Pew Forum surveys charting the uptick in the number of religiously unaffiliated, Lobdell proclaims that not only is Christianity in America "not well" but that "its condition is more critical than most realize—or at least want to admit." ... read more

The conflict narrative that often shapes reporting on religion and public life is readily apparent in current coverage of a pair of live-wire stories: the recent ruling against the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 and the announcement that lawyers from Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice have sued to prevent the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.

While the he-said-she-said template serves as a handy receptacle for sharp sound-bites, it also tends to obscure complexity and favor the perspective of sources who are most eager to polarize the story. Sexuality, Islam and the perennial tensions between religion and science arguably generate as much heat as they do not because these topics are inherently controversial but because it serves the political interests of Christian conservatives to stoke controversy around them. ... read more

Mitt Romney and fellow Mormon politician Jon Huntsman have chosen the former path, according to an article in the Deseret News (the hometown newspaper of the LDS church, which also owns the paper in a for-profit business holding company). Since a new poll showed the former Massachusetts governor as the strongest GOP presidential contender, church members—as Deseret readers tend to be—are interested in how he will deal with the religion question. Recall that evangelical opposition doomed Romney's 2008 campaign. Back then, Romney addressed the faith issue head-on and tried making nice with conservative Christians. But he was unable to win their trust. If he runs again, he won't even try. "There are just some people for whom it won't be settled," Romney recently told the Boston Globe. "That's just the nature of who we are as a people."   ... read more

By J. Terry Todd

Religion isn't the first subject that springs to mind when you think about the San Diego Comic-Con International, the globe's largest annual pop culture klatsch that just wrapped up its 40th season. What started in 1970 as a modest confab for self-described "nerds," mostly sci-fi and comix fans, has evolved into a sprawling convention covering every aspect of mass media and every genre from anime to 'zines.

Over 150,000 people flooded San Diego's Convention Center for seminars, shopping, and parties, sharing their mutual devotions, dressing up like their heroes and alt personas – vampires, werewolves, zombies, and even old school characters like Yoda and Wonder Woman.   And they came to hang out with the stars.  This year's celebrity roster included, among many others, Will Farrell, Jeff Bridges, Tina Fay, and Angelina Jolie, there to promote her new movie Salt on the flick's opening weekend.  ... read more