Will the church remain faithful to Christ or allow a society consumed with consumerism to package their Savior like just another brand?

That’s the concern expressed by Tyler Wigg Stevenson in his new book, Brand Jesus, from Seabury Books.

Wigg Stevenson believes that American Christianity has been corrupted by the dominance of today’s rampant consumerism.

He warns that certain forces -- such as consumerism, the economy, and American politics -- have become increasingly idolatrous and threaten the sacred boundaries between the church and the world.   more »

Whenever I watch a group of Republicans do almost anything, I find myself imagining someone from a sensible planet, or even a sensible country, watching and wondering what in fuck they would make of it.

This is particularly true of debates, and during this week's Republican mash-up in South Carolina, there were so many mouth-open/what the fuck moments upon which to ruminate, it's hard to pick the most bizarre.

Recall that this debate follows the one where all the candidates vied with one another to claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan, a politician so simultaneously clueless and ideological that, to this day, nobody knows where his faculties ended and his Alzheimer's began - whether before or after he left the presidency.

Much of this nutty Reagan nostalgia is inspired by the fact that to any sentient human being, Reagan actually looks good compared to George Bush.   more »

In this blessed age of the "new Middle East" brought to us courtesy of the American benevolence and zeal for democracy, we have been manipulated by the spin machines to believe that civil wars are breaking out spontaneously in Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia and now Palestine.

What more proof do we need that we are primitive, uncivilized savages who need the big stick of the kind, civilized Western occupiers to keep us from each other’s throat?

Therefore the American occupation of Iraq can’t end, for fear of a "full blown civil war." Now some Israelis are saying only re-occupying Gaza would restore "peace."   more »

Here we rot, in this murky no-man's land of vague dis-ease, this foul, anesthetized place where our brutal-war-that-isn't-really-a-war has become the norm,

A time when it feels like we as a country should be getting stronger and should be leading the world in everything from peacekeeping to environmentalism to medicine to technology.

And yet we have this giant, bloodstained monkey on our backs, violent and ugly and still shockingly strong, and he is laughing, cackling at our feeble attempts to shake ourselves free, even as he eats at our soul.   more »

I predicted a few weeks ago that we would start to see more stories about the bizarrely conflicting roles of Mark Penn.

He holds down the job of "Worldwide President and CEO" of the fifth-largest public relations firm in the universe (Burson-Marsteller) while also apparently being the de facto campaign manager for Senator Clinton's presidential bid.

Ari Berman of the Nation has now opened the bidding with a superb article revealing much of what it actually means to be Worldwide President and CEO of Burson-Marsteller.

This includes presiding over more than one Republican lobbying operation and a union-busting outfit that was once prominently featured on the Burson-Marsteller website but was quickly given the "Commissar Vanishes" treatment after I mentioned it in passing.   more »