Theocracy News...

...bringing divinely inspired self-righteousness to a culture war near you!

1. Granted, the American mainstream media is a poor reporter on religion, but missing the growing neo-con theocratic outlook of Mr. Stephen Harper, the relatively new Prime Minister of Canada, to our immediate north, seems particularly incompetent. Last January the NYTimes ran a lengthy profile on the man without even mentioning his religious beliefs (about which religion writer Kathryn Joyce marveled here). Chris Hedges in the current "Nation" magazine begins to redress the inadequate coverage here. But by far the most in depth coverage of Canada's own Christian Right is here, in the Canadian magazine "The Walrus."

2. The Baptist minister who pushed through the new rule in the N.C. Baptist Convention that will allow for the excommunication of gay-friendly congregations is profiled in the N&O today. His very large congregation finds him a sweet grandfatherly pastor, and he's obviously got quite a little Jesus camp going in Wendell, having walled himself into an air-tight logical fallacy: Anything bad that happens is evidence that God is punishing America for the sins of immorality.