Religion Dispatches
…ancestry generations ago, a Jewish spouse, Jewish friends etc. In terms of numbers, Jews by religion or no religion make up 2.2% of the U.S. population, but if you add “People with a Jewish affinity” it rises to 2.7%, so that this category of people who are not considered Jews by the Jewish community but identify as Jews is nearly 25% of the Jews by religion or no religion, those we conventionally call “Jews.” The fact that there are so many Ameri…
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…nted for 60% of employment in 1979 accounted for only 46% by 2012; and the number of persons not in the labor force is growing. While some are getting richer, the numbers tell us, middle income earners are hobbled by shrinking purchasing power, disappearing job opportunities, and increasingly out-of-reach education. This is problem enough for the many who work hard and can’t figure out why they’re “losing ground,” as Pew wrote. Add to that fears o…
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…disappearing tradition is stoked primarily by demographics. Indian census numbers show that the percentage of those identifying as Hindus dipped below 80 percent for the first time. But while there is much talk about a rising Muslim population, the actual spikes have come among Christians, where the mass conversion of tribal groups and Dalits has been part of a sustained and systematic effort of “Great Commission” movements such as the Joshua Pro…
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…administration and the mandate. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of white Catholics who said the Obama administration was “unfriendly to religion” more than doubled from 17 percent to 36 percent between 2009 and 2014. And starting around 2012, white Catholics broke for the GOP by historic margins. It’s also worth noting, as Michael Sean Winters has, that this occurred around the time the administrative staff of the bishops’ confer…
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…ion in “Google searches for churches,” yet more evidence of the increasing number of “nones,” or that “searches related to the Bible, God, Jesus Christ, church and prayer are all highly concentrated in the Bible Belt. They rise on Sunday everywhere.” Other patterns are more jarring: “Relative to the rest of the country, for every search I looked at, retirement communities search more about hell,” he writes. Each month, on average, 422 people in th…
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…ople who aren’t associated with the Christian right. Ten is a pretty small number to best represent a movement Newsweek describes as “changing and growing more diffuse, even as it remains a potent force in American politics.” While some of the picks seem obvious (Marjorie Dannenfelser of the anti-choice group Susan B. Anthony List, or Jim Daly, the new head of Focus on the Family, or Robert George mastermind of the Manhattan Declaration) legal sch…
Read More…t” near Sedona, Arizona. Participants in the retreat paid more than ten thousand dollars each to fast, sweat, listen to lectures and watch films under Ray’s guidance. In the days leading up to the sweat lodge, more than fifty people were set out in remote locations to fast for thirty-six hours with no food or water. Then, on the afternoon of October 8, 2009, Ray gathered all the people at the Angel Valley Retreat for a Warrior Sweat which was sche…
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…emics in Middle East studies with its “naked McCarthyite character” and accusations that Middle East scholars who do not share his views are un-American. Conspiracy Theorists Get a Hearing in Congress These views nonetheless have a hearing among Republican lawmakers and presidential aspirants. Despite being shunned at CPAC, Gaffney’s views are shared by Rep. Allen West (R-FL), chosen by CPAC to give its closing keynote address, an honor that in th…
Read More…f Duke and UC-Berkeley researchers highlights the continuing growth in the number of Americans who indicate no religious affiliation, with a full 20% now answering “none” when asked “What is your religious preference?” Michael Hout and Claude S. Fisher of UCB and Mark A. Chaves of Duke drew on data from the most recent General Social Survey (GSS), which has tracked religious preference since 1972, when a mere 5% of Americans self-identified as rel…
Read More…om are from Virginia) will be able to bring suit against SGM. On May 29, Susan Burke and William O’Neil, lawyers for the plaintiffs, filed a motion for Burrell to reconsider her decision. They plan to appeal if this request is denied. Burke has also stated that “Going forward with a civil lawsuit does not in any way prevent criminal actions—perhaps may even make it more likely.” The personal and organizational fallout for SGM and in the churches…
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