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Is Abortion No Longer Significant for Evangelicals — or Has it Just Become Like Water?

…%). When Coney Barrett was nominated in September of 2020, Trump’s polling numbers among white evangelicals had dipped to a low of 55% in August 2020. However, once her nomination was made public that number rose to the normal average of 71%. Coney Barrett’s record on reproductive rights was a central issue in her confirmation hearings, as Anna North points out at Vox: Barrett, a Catholic and member of the religious group People of Praise, has als…

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Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

…ounseling and gathering spaces for Humanist groups. It also means that the numbers and distribution of Humanists in the military can be tracked along with those of other religious groups, potentially inviting a reshaping of the military chaplaincy, which critics complain is inappropriately weighted in favor of Christian, and specifically Evangelical Christian, denominations.  A study by the Military Association of Atheist and Freethinkers (MAAF)—t…

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Religious Kids Are More Selfish: The Stickers Don’t Lie

…know all of this? Educated guesswork. I could be wrong. But here’s how the numbers break down: globally, 323 families in the study identified as non-religious. And 219 kids in the study came from China. It is extremely unlikely that more than a handful of the Chinese families identified themselves as Christian or Muslim, and we know for sure that they mostly avoided identifying as Buddhist, because just 18 families in the whole 1,170 kid dataset d…

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Too Late for Apologies: Three Steps the U.S. Bishops Should Take to Prevent Another Sexual Abuse Scandal

…hat’s broken when they meet this week?  First, improve communication. Diocesan review boards are sometimes in touch with the National Review Board, which oversees the implementation of the Charter. But there is very little information sharing between local review boards. Why not hold an annual meeting of diocesan review board chairs, conducted by the National Review Board, where participants could share best practices? In addition, bishops need to…

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There’s Something Rotten in Ireland

…ring who it is being directed to and where it is apparently originating. A number of Palestinians are Christians, and that Christianity is of course traced back to the time of Jesus himself. The Palestinian weekend is Friday and Sunday. In addition to being the world’s most annoying and dissatisfying weekend schedule (there should be an award for that, or maybe financial compensation), the days reflect the primary religious affiliations of Palesti…

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And What of the Non-Jewish Jews?

…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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False Saviors: Trump, Cruz, and the Gospel of the Quick Fix

…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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A Debate Rages in India Over Conversion, Secularism, and “Spiritual Violence”

…a central component of the Goan Inquisition, a nearly two-century campaign sanctioned by the Catholic Church to convert non-believers—often violently—into Christianity. But the violence of the Portuguese era did not manage to “win hearts and minds.” British missionaries, schooled in the ways of catering to native populations, would have the most success in converting Indians through education and other incentives. Over time, India’s social fabric…

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Can the Catholic Church Survive Trump?

…es impossible to ignore for even those who were determined to avert their gaze. But that danger is especially acute for religious institutions, which face a special moral hazard in becoming too closely identified with a specific party. And, as political scientist Timothy Byrnes writes in the journal OMG!, no religious institution is in more peril of losing its soul to politics than the U.S. Catholic Church. (Unlike many evangelicals, who at this p…

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Are You There God? It’s Us, Googling

…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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