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I’m a huge Tiger Woods fan. That’s why it pains me that he continues to do damage to his once-nearly-pristine image. Having recently reclaimed his sport’s ranking as World No. 1 – as the Euros put it – Tiger flew this week to Augusta, Georgia as the favorite to win the Masters. He acquitted himself rather well the tourney’s first two days, save for a mishap yesterday on the 15th hole. He hit an approach shot to the green that, as bad luck would have it, ricocheted off the flag pole and careened into the creek. After taking a “drop”...

Joe Biden’s heart bleeds for defenseless babies. The Vice President told us so last month, while advocating a ban on assault weapons. “Think about Newtown,” said Biden, and “those 20 beautiful babies” that were shot and killed by Adam Lanza. “Think about how many of these children…may be alive today,” he said, if only the baby-killer hadn’t possessed a Bushmaster. Well, I might think the Veep’s lamentations for Newtown’s tender-aged victims genuine if I heard him express similar grief for other beautiful babies that have been so remorselessly killed. Like those killed at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Biden’s home...

My wife and I received the heartbreaking email yesterday morning from Rick Warren, our pastor at Saddleback Church in Southern California: His youngest son, Matthew went to be with the Lord. Had the 27-year-old died in a car accident – like Christopher Laurie, 33-year-old son of Pastor Greg Laurie of Harvest Church in Southern Cal, who lost his life in 2008 – we might have lamented the vicissitudes of life. Or had the young man been murdered – like Ryan Armstrong, 22-year-old son of Pastor Ron Armstrong of Cornerstone Church in SoCal (which my wife and I previously attended) –...

Autumn Carter, a Mansfield, Ohio girl, was raped and killed in 1998. She was six-months old (that’s right). Her convicted killer, Steven Smith, has a May 1 date with the executioner. Yesterday, he appeared before the Ohio Parole Board, where he pleaded for mercy. Smith, 31 years old at the time he took baby Autumn’s life, has not repented his evil. He says his life should be spared because he really didn’t mean to kill the infant. He just wanted to have sex with her. The convicted killer’s public defenders, Joseph Wilhelm and Tyson Fleming, had his back yesterday at...

Norman Barker performed a duet with Judy Garland in the 1948 film “Easter Parade.” His son, Dan, became a pastor, before falling away from his Christian faith in 1984. In 1990, Dan Barker, by then a devout atheist, published an essay, which he titled “An Easter Challenge For Christians.” And he has reissued his transparent attack on Easter every year since then. This year, his challenge appears on a blog hosted by the so-called Freedom From Religion Foundation, an atheist hate group, based in Madison, Wisconsin, for which Barker and his wife serve as co-presidents. In his anti-Easter essay, Barker...

While channel surfing recently during the wee hours of the morning, I happened upon the weekly telecast of Melissa Scott, pastor of a Glendale, California church. My instinct was to keep on surfing (I still struggle with the idea of female “pastors,” for in spiritual matters, the Word of God declares, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man”). Nevertheless, I wanted to hear what Sister Melissa (my honorific for her) had to say. So I watched her telecast and found her rather conversant on the Bible. Scholarly even. I DVRed a couple...

As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in a landmark case that seeks to establish “marriage equality” as the law of the land, my thoughts turned to Kody Brown, David Epstein and Kenneth Pinyan. Brown, who appears with his four brides and 17 children in the TLC reality show “Sister Wives,” faces prosecution for violating Utah’s ban on polygamy. Epstein, a Columbia University political science professor, was charged last year with one count of incest for his three-year consensual sexual relationship with his 24-year-old daughter. And Pinyan, the subject of a documentary film, “Zoo,” which won an award at...

Adrienne Moton wept this week as she recounted her role in the mass murder of at least 10 pre-born babies. The West Philadelphia medical assistant testified during the capital murder trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, owner of an abortion clinic in the supposed “City of Brotherly Love.” Moton told a jury that she snipped the spines of at least 10 babies, a heinous procedure even by abortion standards. She said she was ordered to do so by Gosnell, the abortion-rights equivalent of Josef Mengele. She also recalled taking a cell phone snapshot of one of the baby murder victims left...

Angie Schuller Wyatt has issues. The granddaughter of Robert Schuller, the retired televangelist, the former pastor of the Crystal Cathedral, doesn’t like religion, doesn’t like socially conservative men and doesn’t much like her family. She says so in her new, provocatively titled book, “God and Boobs: Balancing Faith and Sexuality,” which, she complains, the small-minded Christian publishing community “refused to publish.” That’s because, the authoress asserts, hers “is the book about God that religious people don’t want you to read.” And why so? Well, says she, “Some argue it’s anti-God because of a cover that displays a woman’s bare back...

Frank Newport, author of the recently published book, “God is Alive and Well,” made a timely appearance this past week at a forum hosted by Concordia University in Southern California. It followed the much-hyped release of a new survey by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Duke University that stated, “Americans and religion increasingly parting ways.” Deliberately misinterpreting data culled from the General Social Survey, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, the researchers claimed that the percentage of Americans “preferring no religion” had risen to 20 percent in 2012, down 12 percentage points from 1990. “We...

So I was looking over the wife’s shoulder while she was watching “Project Runway” on Lifetime TV. During a commercial break, Lifetime aired a promo for a new show that debuts tonight. The promo begins with the familiar Aretha Franklin tune, “I Say a Little Prayer,” playing in the background. A young woman, looking like she works for some sort of escort service, is getting dressed. She oh-so-sexily applies her lipstick and mascara before teasingly stroking her hair. She surveys a rack of clothes before deciding upon a dress that looks very much like lingerie. She puts on a pair...

Much has been made – and rightly so – of recent news reports that President Obama somehow managed to find a spare $250 million to send to Egypt while warning American taxpayers about “immediate, painful, arbitrary budget cuts” to come as a result of the so-called sequester. The president’s dishonesty offends. But what particularly outrages is that he gifted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi with U.S. foreign aid even as his Islamist regime continues to persecute the country’s Coptic Christians, who make up 10 percent of Egypt’s population. CNN recently reported, “Threats by Muslim extremists against Coptic Christians in the past...

So I just got around to reading a tweet from Mark Oppenheimer, religion columnist for The New York Times. He was offended by my February 3 post taking issue with a cover story he wrote for Sports Illustrated, “In the Fields of the Lord,” which appeared in the magazine’s Super Bowl issue. Oppenheimer’s article dissed NFL players who “point to heaven after the big sack, cross themselves after a touchdown and give thanks to Jesus in the post-game interviews.” His hit piece – which, at one point, jokes about pro footballers attempting to “Christianize the strip club” – suggests that...

Hooray for the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Unlike all too many liberal courts throughout the country, which have held that atheist hate speech against Christians is perfectly okay, the Sixth ruled last week that such anti-religious malice is not protected by the First Amendment. The case dates back to 2010, when the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an atheist hate group based in Madison, Wisconsin, wrote a series of letters to Jim Fouts, Mayor of Warren, Michigan, demanding that the city remove a nativity scene from a holiday display it has put up for years. Mayor Fouts told the...

Teri James is a deceiver. She pretended to be a faithful Christian when she applied for a job with San Diego Christian College, but proved to be an interloper. The 29-year-old knowingly and willingly signed the school’s “community covenant.” In so doing, she foreswore “abusive anger, malice, jealousy, lust, sexually immoral behavior including premarital sex, adultery, pornography and homosexuality, evil desires and prejudice based on race, sex or socioeconomic status.” Last October, James was summoned to her supervisor’s office. She acknowledged that she had broken the covenant by engaging in promiscuous sex – with a co-worker, no less – which...

My wife and I enjoyed a special blessing yesterday. We sat in the front row at Saddleback Church in SoCal where Pastor Rick Warren played host to Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, husband and wife producers of the new ten-part miniseries, “The Bible,” which premiers tonight on the History Channel. Mark has brought such well-known reality shows to television as “Survivor,” “Celebrity Apprentice,” “The Voice,” “The Job” and “Shark Tank.” Roma is best known for her role as Monica, on the popular television series “Touched by an Angel.” Many, I imagine, had an inkling that Roma might be a Christian....

CMT just issued a press release promoting “an evening full of laughs” featuring comedian Ron White. “The cigar-smoking, scotch-drinking White headlines the 90-minute special,” said CMT, “giving his thoughts on being banned from the popular dating site ChristianMingle,” among other hilarious topics. I find it interesting that CMT, which is owned by Viacom (which also owns MTV and VH1), would so prominently mention White’s riff on ChristianMingle. Especially in the wake of the recent arrest of a Del Mar, Calif. man charged with raping a woman he met on the online dating site. Police suspect that Sean Patrick Banks used...

Today is Valentine’s Day. For the happily married among us, it’s probably not that big a deal. Because when you have someone you love, who you’re doing life with, every day is Valentine’s Day. Things are different for singles looking for love: Those who’ve never experienced holy matrimony. Those who once were married but – for one reason or another – sadly parted ways with their spouse. Those who have lost a beloved husband or wife to illness or other tragedy. As I reflect upon Valentine’s Day, I am reminded of a sermon I heard a couple years ago while...

The 55th Annual Grammy Awards air tonight on CBS. Very much to its credit, the network has struck a blow this year for family viewing by issuing a wardrobe advisory to female attendees encouraging them to dress more like ladies – not named Gaga – and less like wannabe porn stars. “Please be sure,” the advisory stated, “that buttocks and female breasts are adequately covered. Thong type costumes are problematic. Please avoid exposing bare fleshy under curves of the buttocks and buttock crack.” And this: “Bare sides or under curvature of the breasts is also problematic. Please avoid sheer see-through...

One of the more memorable sketches to air on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” featured actor Alec Baldwin and comedian Adam Sandler as members of a Boy Scout troop. Baldwin played a gay scoutmaster, “Mr. Armstrong.” Sandler reprised his role as “Canteen Boy,” a scout clearly suffering arrested development. In the sketch, Mr. Armstrong makes a sexual advance on Canteen Boy, brushing his unshaven face against the lad. So uncomfortable is Sandler’s character, who is not so dimwitted that he doesn’t know a pedophile when he sees one, that he flees into the woods. The sketch was uproariously funny. But what...