Today's Top Five Stories

1. Evangelicals dislike media, but they dislike 'Islamo-fascists' more
"Many conservative Christians have long regarded the media as enemy territory, where traditional values are at best misunderstood and often mocked," writes Matt Stearns of the Knight Ridder news service. "So you might think they would relate sympathetically to Muslim outrage over the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban." You might think it, that is, if you haven't been paying attention to much conservative Christian rhetoric since 9/11. "They see this phenomenon as part of an orchestrated effort by what they call Islamo-fascists to take over the Islamic world," explains the University of Oklahoma's Allen Hertzke, who has chronicled earlier Christian-Muslim political alliances. The ubiquitous John Green says the anti-Semitic tone of many Muslim responses has also turned off evangelicals. For NAE head Ted Haggard, it's all about the violence: "Maybe the radical protests are validating the cartoon instead of proving that cartoon wrong." Not quoted, unfortunately: the very solid statement from the European Evangelical Alliance.

2. Churches observe "Evolution Sunday" The ratio of churchgoers who this week celebrated "Evolution Sunday" to the newspapers that covered it is almost even. The New York Times notes two churches taking part: one with 85 parishioners, the other with 21. Sounds like these churches should be more concerned about their own extinction than about evolution. Then the paper also warns that the official numbers may be inflated: "The Clergy Letter Project [which sponsored the celebration] said that 441 congregations … were taking part in Evolution Sunday, but that was impossible ...