TruthBook Religious News Blog

A new crop of Christian leaders, such as Rick Warren, are demonstrating a willingness to reach out to Muslims in spite of the "Islam is evil" message delivered by many of their counterparts. Are American Muslims ready or able to reciprocate beyond dialogue?

By Junaid M. Afeef,
July 20, 2009

Rick Warren, the founder and senior pastor of Saddleback Church, spoke recently at the 2009 ISNA Convention in Washington, DC. He arrived at the convention center and made his way across the registration and information booths, up two flights of escalators and then again across the numerous exhibitors’ booths just outside of the auditorium where he was to speak. Several ISNA executives were with him, but he was able to pass by most convention attendees without any fanfare.

Given that the ISNA convention is a racially diverse gathering the sight of a white man in a summer suit was hardly noteworthy on its face, but given what his presence at ISNA means, perhaps a little more fanfare was in order. Rick Warren’s willingness to reach out to Muslims is a bold step towards greater inter-religious dialogue in the United States. Warren’s gesture at ISNA, as with the MPAC convention last year, represents a marked departure from the "Islam is evil" message delivered by other Evangelical Christian leaders like Franklin Graham.

After all, several reputable national studies after 9/11 have shown that Evangelical Christians hold very unfavorable opinions of Islam and of Muslims. Right after 9/11 a Pew poll found that 62 percent of Evangelical Christians believe that their faith is very different from Islam and a 2003 Beliefnet/Ethics and Public Policy survey found that 77 percent of Evangelical Christian leaders had an unfavorable view of Islam.

Warren is obviously part of that very small minority of Evangelical Christian leaders who does not have an unfavorable view of Islam and who does not think his faith is that much different from Islam. That is why he is willing and able to come to speak sincerely to large Muslim audiences. It is good for American religious pluralism that Rick Warren and the national American-Muslim leadership have found one another.

This relationship and the ensuing dialogue are important because they help pave the way for grassroots dialogue between their faith communities. The grassroots inter-religious dialogue is where great gains in understanding and bridge-building can be made. Understanding and relationships between American-Muslims and Christians are vital to sustaining America’s tradition of religious pluralism.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: Christian, evangelicals, interfaith, Islam, ISNA, Junaid M. Afeef, Muslims, pluralism, Rick Warren

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, May 08, 2009

Do frequent churchgoers support torture?

by Michael Paulson May 3, 2009 09:05 PM

The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life last week reported a finding that at first blush is stunning: the more often one attends religious services, the more likely one is to say that the use of torture against suspected terrorists is at least sometimes justified. And white evangelical Protestants are the most likely subgroup to offer at least some support for torture, while those who are not affiliated with a religious denomination are the least likely.

This is just the first paragraph from this interestiung article. Please click on "exernal source" to access the complete article, including the entire survey graphic and other comments.

Labels: evangelicals, Michael Paulson, protestants, torture

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The coming evangelical collapse

The coming evangelical collapse

An anti-Christian chapter in Western history is about to begin. But out of the ruins, a new vitality and integrity will rise.

By Michael Spencer
March 10, 2009

Oneida, Ky. - We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

This is a lengthy article, well worth reading. In it, the following questions are asked, and answered:

Why is this going to happen?

What will be left?

Is all of this a bad thing?

Please click on "external source" to access the article in its entirety.

Labels: Christianity, evangelicals, Michael Spencer

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Survey: Few Evangelical Leaders Had Contact with Muslims

By Jennifer Riley
Christian Post Reporter
Thu, Feb. 19 2009

A surprisingly small portion of evangelical leaders in America have had contact with Muslims in the past year, a new survey revealed.

Only 33 percent of leaders on the board of the National Association of Evangelicals, the nation’s largest evangelical body, said they have had a serious conversation with a Muslim in the past year, according to the February issue of the NAE’s Evangelical Leaders Survey.

An even a smaller number, 27 percent, of the evangelical respondents said they live or work near a mosque.

The vast majority have had no close contact with an Islamic institution (73 percent) or individual Muslims (67 percent).

According to the CIA World Factbook, Muslims make up 0.6 percent of the U.S. population. In comparison, Protestant Christians account for 51.3 percent of the population in America.

Among those that reported having serious discussions with Muslims, some indicated that the talks were through formal interfaith dialogues, professional ministry or international travel rather than personal friendships.

Some evangelical leaders, however, reported positive personal interactions with their Muslim neighbors.

An evangelical leader from Minneapolis said he lives within blocks of two mosques. He shared that during Easter he had discussions with a “kind, hard working young [Muslim] family man” about the two religions’ beliefs concerning the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Another evangelical leader, from a Hispanic church in California, recalled that a Muslim meeting place in his neighborhood was vandalized last year. Members of his church had helped clean up the meeting place and had sent them an offering.

The NAE survey questioned 100 members of the NAE board of directors that includes heads of evangelical denominations with about 45,000 local churches, executives of para-church organizations and colleges. The NAE claims to represent over 50 denominations and about 30 million constituents.

Labels: evangelicals, interfaith, Jennifer Riley, Muslims

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

2008 Election Poll is Worth the Wait

February 19, 2009 5:49PM

New analysis suggests that evangelicals remained unmoved in their support for Republicans, while a few other religious groups shifted.

Tobin Grant

Within minutes of the polls closing in November, journalists were reporting results from exit polls including analysis of how evangelicals and other religious groups voted. One of the findings from these polls was that evangelicals (that is, “born again” voters) voted three to one for McCain, with evangelicals in the South more likely to do so than evangelicals in the Midwest.

But exit polls are short, with too few questions on religion. For a clearer picture of religion’s role in the election, researchers use surveys that take more time to analyze. One of the best is The National Survey of Religion and Politics conducted by John Green (University of Akron and the Pew Forum).

In the March issue of First Things, Green presents a summary of how religious groups voted in November. The fact that this “summary” runs over 4,000 words speaks to the complexities and nuances of religion in American politics. Green uses a combination of information on religious affiliation, beliefs, behavior, race, and ethnicity to group Americans into no less than 15 different religious groups. He reports how each group voted in 2008 and compares this vote with results from 2004. The result is a clearer picture of how the more things change the more they stay the same in American religion and politics.

There were three groups that seem to have made sizeable shifts in their votes.

1. Black Protestants. In 2004, support for Kerry among those attending a Black Protestant church dropped to 83 percent. However, with Obama as candidate, this group returned to its high level of support for the Democrats. As Green notes, 95 percent of Black Protestants voted for Obama, meaning that one in five of Obama’s voters were Black Protestants.

2. Traditionalist Catholics. As with Mainline Protestants and Evangelical Protestants, Green differentiates Catholics by their support for traditional beliefs and practices. Traditionalist Catholics are those who hold more orthodox beliefs and are more active in their faith. In 2004, only one fifth of this group voted for Kerry. In 2008, support for the Democrat nearly doubled, with 39 percent supporting Obama. This is one group to watch over the next four years.

3. Ethnic Protestants. Green analyzes “Ethnic Protestants” as a separate religious group. This group is primarily Latino but it includes other non-white, non-Anglo Protestants. This group tends to hold conservative positions on social issues. They gave Bush their vote in 2004, with only 25 percent voting for Kerry. In 2008, Obama received just over half of this group’s vote. This is a group that has not solidified its voting. As of now, it is trending Democratic, but its votes are likely up for grabs for next few election cycles.

Tobin Grant is an associate professor of political science at Southern Illinois University — Carbondale.

Labels: 2008 election, evangelicals, religion, The Fifth National Survey of Religion and Politics: A Baseline for the 2008 Presidential Election, Tobin Grant

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The pulpit and the presidency

Rick Warren has the power to broaden the evangelical agenda
By Electa Draper
The Denver Post
Posted: 01/13/2009

Rick Warren, the chubby, denim-clad, goateed 54-year-old Southern Baptist now hailed as America's pastor, was the heir apparent to 90-year-old Billy Graham long before President-elect Barack Obama asked him to give the inaugural invocation.

Warren rose to the occasion in 28 years, under circumstances very different from Graham's.

Long before the Saddleback Civil Forum last August, where Warren moderated a values-focused Q&A session with presidential candidates Obama and John McCain, the media represented Warren as the authoritative spokesman for a new generation of evangelical Christians.

"Nobody takes a vote on this kind of thing . . . but I can't imagine any other religious leader who could have pulled off (the candidate forum) the way he did," said Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

"Rick Warren has become America's pastor, replacing Billy Graham in that role," Cromartie says without qualification.

People are looking for a Graham successor and anointed spokesman for evangelical Christians because they constitute a powerful bloc politically, commercially and culturally.

Nearly eight in 10 Americans say they are Christians. Evangelical Christians
Time and Newsweek both named Warren to their lists of top American and world leaders.

Warren, who started out in 1980 with a few people in Bible study in his home, now leads more than 20,000 members at his Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. He doesn't take a salary from the church and practices a reverse tithe when it comes to his considerable income as an author, keeping 10 percent and donating 90 percent.

Warren is known as the pastors' pastor. His first book, "The Purpose Driven Church," started a small revolution among clergy in 1995. His worldwide pastor-training network has half a million alumni.

Warren heads innovative global missions, such as The Peace Plan, and is widely credited with broadening the evangelical agenda beyond abortion and gay marriage to confront poverty, disease, climate change and genocide.

Franklin Graham predicts Warren will have Obama's ear on important issues, while his father will not be a spiritual adviser to the new president. He recently told Christianity Today magazine that his father is "just happy to get up in the morning."

Billy Graham has been the confidante of 11 presidents, every one since Harry Truman. He led prayers at four inaugural ceremonies. He participated in inauguration-related events for every president since John F. Kennedy, until Obama.

Warren disavows any role for himself as cultural warrior, yet, unlike the elder Graham, whom Warren has called one of his important role models, he has been a lightning rod for people on both the left and right of the social divide.

The selection of Warren to pray at the inauguration Jan. 20 elicited sharp criticism from gay rights advocates angered by his belief — the traditional evangelical Christian view — that homosexuality is a sin.

The 2008 Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reported that 64 percent of members of evangelical churches believe homosexuality should be discouraged; while only 34 percent of mainline Protestants believe the same.

Labels: Barack Obama, Billy Graham, evangelicals, inauguration, presidency, pulpit, Rick Warren

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Pew poll follows up on controversial one

Jan 8, 2009 | by Staff

WASHINGTON (BP)--A new poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that a significant minority of self-identified evangelicals believe that many religions can lead to salvation, even though some of those evangelicals apparently are confused over what the term "religion" means.

The poll seeks to bring clarity to a much-criticized poll by Pew in June that found 70 percent of Americans, including 56 percent of white evangelicals, believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life." Several Christian commentators criticized that first survey's general wording, saying that Christians often refer to their denomination as their religion. In other words, those critics wondered: Were the evangelicals who were polled saying they believe people within multiple Christian denominations can obtain eternal life, or were they saying that Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus also have a path to salvation?

The new poll asked follow-up questions, and its findings do -- as least partially -- support the claims of those critics. Nevertheless, the poll contains very little good news for the evangelical church.

In the new survey, 47 percent of professing evangelicals said they believe "many religions can lead to eternal life," a decline of nine points from the earlier poll. Pew then asked that same group how many non-Christian religions they believe can lead to eternal life. More than one-fourth (28 percent) said "none," giving credence to the theory that some evangelicals confused "denominations" with "religions." Still, 72 percent of those who said "many religions can lead to eternal life" cited at least one other non-Christian religion.

Among the general population, 65 percent of Americans -- a drop from 70 percent in the earlier poll -- said there are many paths to salvation.

The newest Pew survey found that church attendance made a difference in one's beliefs. It also discovered a striking gap in beliefs between evangelical Protestants and mainline Protestants. Among white evangelical Protestants who attend church weekly, 37 percent -- a drop in 10 points from the earlier stat -- said "many religions can lead to eternal life." But among white mainline Protestants who attend church weekly, 75 percent believe there are multiple paths to salvation, and among white Catholics who attend church weekly, 85 percent hold to that view.

The latest Pew poll surveyed 2,905 adults July 31-Aug. 10.
--30--
Compiled by Michael Foust, assistant editor of Baptist Press.

Labels: church, eternal life, evangelicals, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Not Much Behavior Change during Christmas, Survey Finds

By Jennifer Riley
Christian Post Reporter
Mon, Dec. 15 2008

Unlike what most people expect, most Americans do not dramatically change their lifestyle during the Christmas season, according to a survey that examined five seasonal behaviors.

In terms of church attendance for Christmas, there is an expected increase in the number of attendees, but not from the expected crowd, according to the survey. While people may expect a large turnout of CEOs – Christmas and Easter Only attendees – the Barna study found that most of the increase in attendance is expected from regular churchgoers.

One out of five adults say they will attend more religious services at a church, synagogue or other place of worship during the holiday season than they normally would. But the group that was most likely to say that was regular attendees (27 percent) rather than those who don’t normally attend service (4 percent), the study found.

In other findings, one out of five adults (18 percent), said they would definitely donate more money to their religious center during the holidays than at other times of the year. Evangelicals are the most likely group to donate (30 percent), followed by African Americans (29 percent) and Catholics (24 percent).

Out of the five behaviors explored in the latest Barna Group survey, the only one that a majority of people said they change during the holidays is listening to Christmas carols in their home.

Six out of ten American adults (59 percent) said they will definitely listen to carols this holiday season, with evangelicals being most likely to do so (82 percent).

Among the non-born again population, 50 percent said they will play carols at home, including one-third (34 percent) of atheists and agnostics.

Interestingly, there was a racial correlation for Christmas carols: 63 percent of whites, 55 percent of African Americans, and 48 percent of Hispanics and of Asians said they would listen to carols at home.

But the holiday is not a joyful time for everyone, with a small but significant percentage of Americans saying they would struggle with loneliness or depression during this season.

The group that was most likely to suffer with loneliness or depression was downscale adults, or individuals whose annual income is less than $20,000 and those who did not attend college. More than one out of ten (11 percent) said they would definitely face depression or loneliness during the Christmas season, according to the Barna study.

Evangelicals and atheists were among the people least likely to have these emotions and experiences, with less than one percent of each group saying they would struggle with these unwanted emotions.

The study also found that some Americans expect to drink more alcohol during the holidays. Those most likely to drink are people under 25 years old (12 percent), atheists and agnostics (11 percent), and liberals (11 percent).

The survey is based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,203 adults across the United States from November 1 to 5, 2008.

Labels: atheists, Barna Group, carols, Christmas, church, depression, evangelicals, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Jews, Latino Pentecostals together

12/12/2008
By Christina Hoag
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES -- When Randy Brown visited Hispanic Pentecostal congregations in Southern California, he was stunned by displays of Star-of-David flags, fervent prayers for peace in Israel and Hebrew words in their church names.

Brown, an executive with the American Jewish Committee, saw an opportunity to build Jewish-Latino relations and combat anti-Semitism among the immigrants, who generally have little exposure to Jews in their predominantly Roman Catholic native countries.

The Los Angeles office has since worked to forge new bonds: They have taken groups of Pentecostal Hispanic pastors to Israel, offered a course called "The Essence of Judaism" at a Southern California Pentecostal seminary, and invited Hispanic pastors and their families to Passover seders and Sukkot harvest celebrations.

While Latino immigrants in the U.S. are mostly Catholic, evangelicals comprise a notable 15 percent of the population, according to a recent study by the Pew Hispanic Project and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Many are Pentecostal, one of the fastest-growing streams of world Christianity, known for spirit-filled worship and speaking in tongues.

A 2007 survey by the Anti-Defamation League found a higher-rate of anti-Semitic views among foreign-born Latinos than among U.S.-born Hispanics. Twenty-nine percent of Latinos born elsewhere harbor anti-Jewish views, while the rate for Hispanics born in the country -- and for the U.S. population in general -- was 15 percent, the study found.

The 2007 numbers are slightly lower than those in a 2005 survey, but Jewish leaders are worried all the same, especially as Latin Americans are expected to become 29 percent of the national population by 2050.

Latin American countries are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and are steeped in a five-century-old tradition of a church that wields much influence. With the exception of Argentina, Jewish communities in Latin America are tiny and tend to keep a low profile.

By contrast, U.S. Jewish and Catholic leaders have held high-level interfaith talks for years. Several Catholic colleges in the country have centers for Jewish-Catholic understanding, and U.S. bishops heavily emphasize the Second Vatican Council teaching that Jews are not collectively responsible for the Crucifixion. That outlook influences not just Catholics, but also other Christians in the U.S.

Pastor Tony Solorzano, who heads the Iglesia Llamada Final, a 5,000-member congregation in Downey and Inglewood, said some Latinos simply need more education about Judaism to dispel stereotypes. Some consider Jews "Christ-killers."

Pentecostals, who interpret the Bible literally, believe God promised the Jewish people the historic land of Israel. Many consider the modern state of Israel a fulfillment of biblical prophecy -- and a precondition of the second coming of Jesus Christ.

They often cite a passage from Genesis where God makes a covenant with Abraham that those who bless Abraham's people will be blessed, those who curse his people will be cursed.

Jewish leaders are building on Pentecostal pro-Israel sentiment to dispel stereotypes between both groups. Many Jewish groups in recent years have accepted such support without questioning the theology behind it, which says that all people, including Jews, will ultimately accept Christ.

Pentecostal congregations, often housed in storefronts filled with rows of folding chairs, have become fixtures in Latino neighborhoods across the United States, as well as Latin America. Pastors tend to be influential opinion-makers in their congregations and some, like Lopez, have radio programs or stations, expanding their reach.

At the Latin University of Theology in Torrance, which trains Pentecostal pastors, many of the students in Brown's Spanish-language "Essence of Judaism" course hail from Latin American countries. He hopes they'll return home with new knowledge about Jews and Judaism to change negative images and misperceptions.

Nationally, the American Jewish Committee has formed a Latino and Latin American Institute, and in 2001 convened the first Latino-Jewish Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., to discuss common policy concerns such as immigration.

Labels: Anti-Defamation League, Catholic, Christina Hoag, evangelicals, interfaith, Jews, Latinos, Pentecostalism

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, November 14, 2008

Exit poll: Tennessee still buckle of Bible Belt

2 of 3 white voters identify themselves as evangelical Christians

Duncan Mansfield, Associated Press
Thursday, November 13, 2008

Their presidential candidate lost and their influence in national politics may be waning, but white evangelical Christians clearly dominated the 2008 election in Tennessee.

Even for a Bible Belt state that is headquarters to the Southern Baptist Convention, their majority was surprising — two of every three white voters in Tennessee identified themselves as evangelical Christians in exit polls.

This in a state where 84 percent of the voters were white, according to surveys of 1,520 randomly selected voters by Edison Media Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

McCain carried Tennessee convincingly, and the white evangelical turnout likely contributed to Republicans taking control of both chambers of the Tennessee Legislature for the first time in 140 years.

Out of the 40 states where exit polls asked voters if they are born-again Christians, only Arkansas had more white evangelicals than Tennessee. Arkansas had 55 percent. Tennessee and Oklahoma each had 52 percent. For Tennessee, that was virtually unchanged since 2004.

The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, meaning white evangelicals actually could make up anywhere from 48 percent to 56 percent of Tennessee’s voters.

Arkansas is home to Mike Huckabee, the former governor and ordained Baptist minister who beat McCain in the Republican presidential primary in Tennessee in February.

White evangelicals made up 26 percent of voters nationwide in this election.

They voted 3-1 for McCain across the country and in Tennessee. But for the first time in several election cycles, white conservative Christians weren’t a factor in the national contest. Obama won easily — 53 percent to 45 percent — without them.

Tennessee exit polls showed that a presidential candidate’s values were most important to about a third of voters overall, but to an even greater number — 41 percent — of white evangelicals.

More than half of white, evangelical Christians in Tennessee said the economy was the No. 1 issue, slightly fewer than all voters statewide, followed by terrorism, slightly more than voters across the state.

Tennessee white evangelicals were far more likely to be Republican and live in East Tennessee.

White, evangelical Christians were 44 percent Republican, 37 percent Independent and 19 percent Democrat, compared with Tennesseans overall, who are 32 percent Republican, 37 percent Independent and 30 percent Democrat, according to the poll.

They represented two of every three voters in East Tennessee and slightly more than half the voters in the rural counties of Middle and West Tennessee. They were just less than half the voters in metropolitan Nashville and about two of every five voters in greater Memphis.

Labels: Barack Obama, Duncan Mansfield, election, evangelicals, John McCain, Tennessee, voters

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, November 07, 2008

Obama made inroads with religious vote

The Democrat prevailed with Roman Catholic and Jewish voters. He even picked up support among Evangelicals.
By Alexandra Marks
New York

This year it appears the Democrats got religion, at least in terms of the vote.

In becoming the president-elect, Barack Obama made gains among religious voters of almost every type compared with recent Democratic presidential candidates. He handily won the Catholic and Jewish votes, and even picked up support among Protestants and some Evangelicals, long a pillar of Republican ballot-box strength.

Some theologians suggest that the religious shift signals the emergence of a faith-based coalition that will counterbalance or, perhaps, replace the religious right. It’s made up of mainline religious progressives, black and Hispanic Evangelicals, and a growing number of younger, white Evangelicals and Catholics.

During the campaign, both presidential camps made a point of reaching out to the opponent’s core religious constituencies. Obama’s campaign spearheaded a grass-roots drive to bring in young Evangelicals and Catholics. The McCain campaign relied more on surrogates like Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I) of Connecticut to try to bring Jewish voters into the GOP.

Their success varied. The McCain campaign had hoped to exploit Jewish voters’ initial unease with Obama, raising questions about the depth of his support for Israel and his willingness to negotiate with its enemies, such as Iran. It ran television ads in Florida and other places with large Jewish populations that quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “Ahmadinejad says Israel won’t survive…. Obama says he would meet with him personally.”

Senator Lieberman, a leading political Jewish voice and a former Democratic vice presidential nominee, was frequently with Senator McCain on the stump. When he wasn’t, he was often in Florida working on behalf of his GOP Senate colleague.

Some Republicans also sought to exploit fears that Obama was secretly a Muslim or had close associations with anti-Semitic black leaders such as Louis Farrakhan.

That did not sit well with some Jews, who organized rabbis and others to counter such attacks on Obama.

Then there was Sarah Silverman to contend with. The young Jewish comedienne became the spokeswoman for the so-called Great Schlep. It signed up more than 25,000 young Jewish voters and urged them to go to Florida to get their grandparents to support Obama.

Obama managed to solidify Jewish support: 78 percent supported him over McCain, according to an analysis of election polls by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. In 2004, 74 percent of Jewish voters backed Democrat John Kerry for president.

The Obama campaign was more successful in making inroads with some of the GOP’s core constituencies. It reached out to Catholic voters who attend mass regularly – a group that went for Mr. Bush by 12 percentage points in 2004. This year, Obama and McCain split that vote. Among Catholics who attend mass less often, Obama won overwhelmingly.

“In 2004, Bush split with Kerry those Catholics who attended less often, but Obama won that group by 18 percentage points. That is a very significant shift,” says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. “Part of the explanation is the significant shift to Obama among Hispanic Catholics.”

Obama also worked to reach out to the Republicans’ white evangelical base, but he had less success there. He did win more support among them than Senator Kerry did in 2004, but only by a few percentage points.

“When we’re looking at white Evangelicals, we’re looking at one of the strongest Republican constituencies in the country – a group that would be very hard to move into the Democratic column under any circumstances,” says John Green, senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum. “From that perspective…, one could argue that this may be some evidence of success.”

Other analysts say Obama did make inroads with younger white evangelicals in key states like Colorado and Indiana, where he boosted his support among Evangelicals by 14 percentage points and 8 percentage points, respectively, over Kerry’s 2004 levels.

Labels: Alexandra Marks, Barack Obama, Catholic, evangelicals, voters

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Survey: Most Americans Believe God Uniquely Blessed U.S.

By Michelle A. Vu
Christian Post Reporter
Thu, Oct. 23 2008

This is page one of a two-page article. Please click on "external link at the end of this page.

WASHINGTON - Most Americans strongly believe that God has uniquely blessed America, and a similar majority believe that the United States should set the example as a Christian nation to the rest of the world, a survey, released Wednesday, found.

Sixty-one percent agree that America is a nation specially blessed by God, and 59 percent believe the United States should be a model Christian nation to the world, according to a poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc. for the PBS news program Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and the United Nations Foundation.

Support for the idea that America is uniquely blessed by God was highest among people who attend religious services weekly (80 percent), with 86 percent of evangelical Christians sharing this belief. In comparison, less than half (48 percent) of those who attend religious services less regularly held the same view.

The nationwide survey of 1,400 adults, including an oversample of 400 evangelical Christians aged 18-29, was conducted to find how religion shapes people’s view of America’s role in the world and its foreign policy.

People who strongly believe that America is blessed by God and should set a strong Christian example are also more likely to say that the United States is morally obligated to play a significant role in world affairs.

Overall, most Americans also believe the United States has a responsibility to be very engaged (24 percent) or moderately involved (70 percent) on the global stage. However, most Americans believe (67 percent) the United States’ relation with the rest of the world is on the wrong track.

In terms of foreign policy priorities, there was not much of a difference between what the general American public and what white evangelicals consider most important issues. They both agree that controlling nuclear weapons around the world and fighting global terrorism are the two top agendas for Washington.

There were also no significant differences between the two groups on other issues such as fighting global disease, preventing genocide in countries like Sudan, improving the standard of living in less developed nations, and promoting democracy in other nations.

What the general American public and white evangelicals most sharply contrast on in terms of foreign policy priorities is supporting Israel - 65 percent of white evangelicals consider this extremely or very important compared to 46 percent of the general American public; promoting religious freedom in other nations (67 percent white evangelicals vs. 53 percent); combating global warming (43 percent vs. 59 percent); and providing women with reproductive healthcare (53 percent vs. 60 percent).

Differences can be explained by religious views held by evangelical Christians, who largely see Israel as the birthplace of Christianity and link abortion to reproductive healthcare.

In addition to examining faith groups as a whole, the survey also looked in particular at young white evangelicals.

Labels: America, evangelicals, God, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc, Michelle A. Vu

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Survey: Megachurches more intimate, believers less gullible than stereotypes

Friday, 19 September 2008

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A new survey by Baylor University researchers suggests that megachurches are more intimate, believers less gullible and atheism less prevalent than popular stereotypes would suggest.

The survey found that members of such churches tended to have more friends within their congregations, hold more conservative or evangelical Christian beliefs, share their faith with friends and strangers more often, and be involved in volunteer work more frequently than their counterparts in churches with less than 100 in average attendance.

An additional factor suggested by the survey: Megachurches are far more likely than small churches to be conservative evangelical congregations. Meanwhile, smaller churches had a higher rate of affiliation with what the survey called a “liberal Protestant denomination,” or with mainline church bodies such as the United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church.

The survey also found that active religious believers -- and particularly conservative Christians -- were less likely than the general public to believe in the occult and paranormal.

“The Baylor Survey found that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases credulity, as measured by beliefs in such things as dreams, Bigfoot, UFOs, haunted houses and astrology, with education having hardly any effect,” the survey’s authors said.

For instance, as measured against an index of belief in occult and paranormal beliefs researchers constructed, only 14 percent of respondents who described themselves as “evangelical” rated high on the index. Meanwhile, 30 percent of those who rejected the “evangelical” label scored high on the same index.

Those who described themselves as “theologically liberal” were actually more likely than evangelicals -- and than the public at large -- to believe in such things as the ability to communicate with the dead, the existence of mythical creatures such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, and alien encounters with Earth.

The survey, of 1,648 English-speaking American adults, used detailed questionnaires mailed in the fall of 2007. Collected by the Gallup Organization and analyzed by Baylor researchers, it has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

It was funded by the Templeton Foundation, and is the second wave of a three-part survey project. The first set of results was released in 2006. The final set, researchers said, will be released next year.

Labels: Baylor Religion Survey, evangelicals, John Templeton Foundation, megachurches, paranormal

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Faith, Golden Rule influence attitudes on torture, new poll shows

Thursday, Sep. 11, 2008
From staff reports

A new poll commissioned by Mercer University and Faith in Public Life shows the conflicted attitudes on torture among white evangelical Christians in the South.

Close to six in 10 white evangelicals in the South say that torture can often (20 percent) or sometimes (37 percent) be justified in order to gain important information, according to the survey, conducted by Public Religion Research. This compares to roughly half (48 percent) of the general public that believes torture can be justified, according to a Pew Research Center poll earlier this year.
Click here to find out more!

Despite high levels of religiosity, white evangelicals in the South are significantly more likely to rely on life experiences and common sense (44 percent) than Christian teachings or beliefs (28 percent) when thinking about the acceptability of torture. And only about one in 20 white evangelicals rely on the advice of government leaders when it comes to torture.

Among those influenced by Christian teachings, a majority (52 percent) of survey respondents oppose torture. In contrast, among those who rely most on life experiences and common sense, less than one-in-three (31 percent) oppose torture.

A majority (52 percent) agree with the Golden Rule argument against torture - that the U.S. government should not use methods against this country's enemies that we would not want used on American soldiers.

An appeal to the Golden Rule increases opposition to torture among every subgroup of white evangelicals. For example, only about one-third (34 percent) of white evangelicals who attend worship services more than once a week say torture is never or rarely justified, but a majority (50 percent) of this group was persuaded by the Golden Rule argument against torture. This represents a 16 point shift in opinion among the most frequent attending white evangelicals in the South.

A majority (53 percent) of white evangelicals in the South believe that the government uses torture as part of the campaign against terrorism, despite repeated claims made by government officials that the U.S. does not engage in torture. Only about one-third (32 percent) say that the U.S. does not use torture as a matter of policy.

This survey was based on telephone interviews conducted under the direction of Opinion Access Corp. among a sample of 600 white evangelical Christian adults, ages 18 years or older in the southeastern United States. The survey was fielded from Aug. 14-22.

Labels: Christianity, evangelicals, Golden Rule, religion, terrorism, torture

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, August 15, 2008

New Barna Group Survey on Religion and the Presidential Election

August 12, 2008, 10:27 am
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny

Senator Obama seems to be ahead of Senator McCain among most faith groups.

Among Catholics, he leads 39 percent to 29 percent. But he has slipped since June.

What’s interesting to me about polling, although I know nothing about it, is the formulation of categories. Here is what the article says about categorizing evangelicals. Anybody know if they have as complicated an approach to categorizing Catholics?

Understanding Evangelicals

One of the most frequently reported on groups of voters is evangelicals. Most media polls use a simplistic approach to defining evangelicals, asking survey respondents if they consider themselves to be evangelical. Barna Group surveys, on the other hand, ask a series of nine questions about a person’s religious beliefs in order to determine if they are an evangelical. The differences between the two approaches are staggering.

Using the common approach of allowing people to self-identify as evangelicals, 40% of adults classify themselves as such. Among them, 83% are likely to vote in November. Among the self-reported evangelicals who are likely to vote, John McCain holds a narrow 39% to 37% lead over Sen. Obama. Nearly one-quarter of this segment (23%) is still undecided about who they will vote for.

Using the Barna approach of studying people’s core religious beliefs produces a very different outcome. Just 8% of the adult population qualifies as evangelical based on their answers to the nine belief questions. Among that segment, a significantly higher proportion (90%) is likely to vote in November, and Sen. McCain holds a huge lead (61%-17%) over the Democratic nominee. Overall, just 14% of this group remains undecided regarding their candidate of choice.

Labels: Barack Obama, Cathleen Kaveny, election, evangelicals, John McCain, politics

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Hell: Some believe it exists, others fear it, many do not

Posted by Charles Honey | The Grand Rapids Press
August 09, 2008

Believers in hell decline

...for more and more Americans, hell is a myth. In a survey released this summer by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, just 59 percent of 35,000 respondents said they believe in a hell "where people who have led bad lives, and die without being sorry, are eternally punished."

That's down from the 71 percent who said they believed in hell in a 2001 Gallup survey. And it is lower than the 74 percent who said they believe in heaven in the recent Pew poll.

The heaven-hell gap is reflected locally. In a 1999 Press survey of West Michigan residents, 84 percent said they believed in heaven compared to 72 percent for hell.

Skepticism about hell is growing even in evangelical churches and seminaries, says one local theologian.

"In a pluralistic, post-modern world, students are having a more difficult time with (the idea of) people going to hell forever because they didn't believe the right thing," says Mike Wittmer, professor of systematic theology at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary.

"That's the biggest question out there right now: 'Would God send someone to hell if they were someone as good as me, but didn't believe what I believe?' "

It was easier to believe in hell 20 years ago when missionaries tried to convert people in far-flung places, Wittmer says. In today's global village, many live next to good, non-Christian neighbors and wonder why an all-powerful, loving God wouldn't eventually empty out hell, Wittmer says.

"I've noticed in the last five years how that view is making inroads even in conservative churches, whereas five years ago it wasn't even uttered or discussed," he adds.

Americans' optimism and tolerance for diversity complements a growing view of God as benevolent, not judgmental, other experts say.

The believers

The Pew survey showed the biggest believers in hell are evangelical Protestants, African-American Protestants and Muslims. Sizable majorities of Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, as well as atheists, agnostics, and the rest of the unaffiliated, say they do not believe.

Islamic beliefs

At the Islamic Center and Mosque of West Michigan on Burton Street SE, Imam Sharif Sahibzada also listens for the devil's footsteps. Though faithfully following God, Sahibzada says he nevertheless fears hell.

Jewish viewpoint

Although many Jews believe in neither hell nor heaven, others have varied views of the afterlife, says Rabbi David Krishef of Congregation Ahavas Israel.

One is that souls go to a place called Gehenna, often translated as hell in the Bible. It is derived from a burning valley south of Jerusalem where garbage was dumped and children sacrificed. Their souls are purified in a kind of purgatory before most go to heaven, but some are so evil they are punished or utterly destroyed, Krishef says.

He tends to believe in the latter as the fate of unrepentant evil-doers such as Hitler, Osama bin Laden and Yigal Amir, the assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In any case, the morality by which one lives is the key, he says.
Press Photo/Lance WynnCarmella Conway, 85, a Dominican Sister at Marywood Health Center, said she believes in a gracious God who relies on people to help save others from hell.

Helping others

How we live can keep a lot of people out of hell, if you ask Sister Carmella Conway.

She is a Grand Rapids Dominican Sister who spent 55 years teaching religion. She believes in a gracious God who relies on people to help save others from hell, both on earth and beyond.

"We can transform the world by helping others," Sister Conway says following a morning Mass at Marywood, the Dominican motherhouse. "We're kind of guilty if anybody goes to hell."

Starvation, war, lack of charity: These sins make life hellish for many, she argues. Between God's grace and people's faithful work, very few if any will go to hell, she says.

"I think we're going to be surprised when we get there," she adds with a smile.

So does Sister Marjorie Vangsness, 91, who flatly says she does not think about hell.

"I think about the fact God loves us unconditionally, and that God has given us union with God," says Sister Vangsness, a native of Iron Mountain who taught at Aquinas College. "I'm inclined to go along with those who think maybe there's nobody in hell, that God helps all of us to be with him."

Ultimately, we need to accept the mystery of life after death, she says. Sister Emma Kulhanek agrees, but is confident about where she will go.

"If we live as we can best live, then I'm going to heaven," says Sister Kulhanek, 78, a former teacher and principal. "There's a lot of pain just in this world. It's what we do with it that makes the difference."

-- The New York Times News Service contributed to this story

Labels: Americans, evangelicals, God, heaven, hell, Islam, Judaism, Pew survey, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Is there life on other planets?

Poll probes Americans' belief in UFOs and life on other planets

Scripps Howard News Service
Originally published 08:00 a.m., July 18, 2008
Updated 08:00 a.m., July 18, 2008

A survey conducted by the Scripps Howard News Service and the University of Ohio found that about eight percent of Americans say they have seen a mysterious object in the sky that might have been a visitor from another world.

Earlier this year, Marshall Franks of Gulf Breeze, Fla. was at a neighbor's house when he took pictures of an unusual rain cloud passing overhead. When Franks, a 52-year-old musician, uploaded pictures of the clouds to his computer, he noticed three orange, pill-shaped objects in a V formation.

Survey respondents said they saw objects in the shape of lighted orbs, hovering without making any noise, either alone or in V formations.

"I just know I got a picture of something strange," Franks said. "I'm not going to say it's anything, but I'd like to have some professional's opinion."

Some respondents, like 53-year-old Mai-Janne Merklein, feel uncomfortable sharing their stories with others, fearing they'll think they're crazy.

The school bus driver from Springfield, Mass. said she twice saw floating orbs, the first in 1980 outside Dover, Del. when she and three friends pulled their car over to switch drivers. They noticed a vaguely spherical orb of light moving overhead; it hovered silently then quickly flew away.

"When I told my father, he said it was probably a military something or other. I didn't argue," she said.

On another occasion, while hiking with a friend in Holyoke, Mass., Merklein saw a similar object.

Rhine said she didn't tell anyone her story until nearly forty years later, when her half-brother said he also had an experience he believes was extraterrestrial.

He was in Amarillo when an extremely bright white light began pouring into his friend's home. Peering out a picture window to investigate, Rhine's half-brother and his friend saw the silhouette of a humanoid creature, just over four feet tall with a large cranium out of proportion with its small frame. Before summoning enough courage to open the door, Rhine said, the light had disappeared.

The survey revealed that people living in rural areas of the country or in suburbs were twice as likely than urban dwellers to report UFOs. Some respondents said this might be due to light pollution in urban centers blocking the night sky.

Still, seeing isn't necessarily believing.

Respondents like 69-year-old Lindsey Ivey of Ellijay, Ga. aren't convinced their sightings are actually extraterrestrial.

Ivey said on two occasions he saw four mysterious lights hovering in a T shape near his former home in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Despite this, Ivey does not believe intelligent life exists beyond earth, partly because of his Christian faith and also since he believes there are too many circumstances needed for a planet to support life.

The survey revealed that people who have attended church recently are also about a third less likely to report having seen a UFO.

Ivey said he believes students at nearby Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University caused the lights.

Robert Garner, a 62-year-old safety-training supervisor in Nesbit, Miss., isn't sure if his experience was extraterrestrial or divine.

He was deer hunting before sunrise one December morning in 1995 when the wooded area around him suddenly became brightly illuminated for about seven seconds before returning to normal. He said he never saw any object or source of the light.

"There was no sound, no shaking, no movement; all of a sudden, it was as if someone just turned on a light, this beautiful green, golden color," he said. "It was either an angel, or a UFO came down and took a picture of us."

Garner said for weeks after the incident he no longer needed his glasses to see.

On March 13, 1997, Fran Chodacki, a 62-year-old Page, Ariz. resident was one of thousands who witnessed the "Phoenix Lights," a mile-wide V-shaped formation of lights visible over Phoenix. The lights reportedly moved slowly across the city's skyline for about three hours. Chodacki was living in nearby Scottsdale, Ariz. at the time.

She said she does believe aliens exist and have visited the Earth. But she's not sure if her sighting was extraterrestrial.

"Maybe it was a military thing; I don't know. Everything is mysterious in this world," she said. "It's a possibility."

Poll results

Most Americans say it is very likely or somewhat likely that humans are not alone in the universe and that intelligent life exists on other planets.

Only a third of adults, however, believe it's either very likely or somewhat likely that intelligent aliens from space have visited our planet, according to a survey of 1,003 adults conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University.

The poll revealed that one in every 12 Americans has seen a mysterious object in the sky that might have been a visitor from another world, while nearly one in every five personally knows someone who has seen an unidentified flying object.

America's fascination with UFO sightings has been robust, dating at least back to 1947 with the discovery of unusual objects near Roswell, N.M., that many claimed were the remnants of an extraterrestrial craft that crashed.

Among the ranks who have seen something strange in the sky are former President Jimmy Carter, the late Beatle John Lennon and the late comedian Jackie Gleason.

One of the largest mass sightings on record -- the so-called "Phoenix Lights" that hovered for several hours over two or three Southwestern states on March 13, 1997 -- was even seen by then-Arizona Gov. Fife Symington. The governor at first made jokes about the incident, but later apologized for making light of something that thousands of people saw.

"The universe is a big place," Symington told reporters last year. "We're conceited to think we're alone."

Men, young adults and college-educated Americans are more likely than most to believe that humans are not alone in the universe.

The survey found some patterns in the kinds of people who have reported having seen UFOs.

Men are almost twice as likely to have seen something peculiar in the sky than are women. Older Americans are much more likely than younger people to have seen something, as are residents of rural areas or suburbs rather than those living in major cities. People living in Western states are three times more likely to have seen a UFO than are residents of the Northeast, Midwest or South.

UFO experts agree that these trends all make sense. Men are more likely than women to be outdoors on a dark night. Older Americans have had more opportunities simply by virtue of a longer life to see something unusual in the sky.

It is also logical, they say, for people in Western states to have seen more UFOs than people in other regions. Most of the nation's largest and most expensive observatories are located in the West, which provides optimal views of the sky.

"These people have had more opportunities than others to see things in a darkened sky. That makes sense," said Mark Rodeghier, director of the Chicago-based J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies.

Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, Wash., agreed.

"Of course, we get lots of reports from major cities," Davenport said. "But it could be that people in rural areas have a better view of the sky. People in cities are blinded by all of the bright lights."

But the experts were quite surprised by other trends found among the UFO witnesses.

People who have attended church recently and who identify themselves as born-again Evangelical Protestants are much less likely to have seen UFOs or to believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence than people with little or no involvement with organized religion.

People with strong political and ideological convictions -- self-identified "strong Republicans" and "very conservative" people as well as "strong Democrats" and "very liberal" persons -- are much less likely to report having seen a UFO than are politically moderate persons.

"There are just so many variables when addressing this issue," said Davenport. "But the religious trend is very, very interesting. Maybe you are more open to having seen things outside your experience if you don't have very tightly held religious beliefs."

But why are people with strong political beliefs less likely to see UFOs?

"They are more attuned to the establishment," said Rodeghier. "People who are in the establishment are more likely to have distain for the whole UFO issue. That's something those of us in the field of UFO study have seen over and over again. But people who are independent are more open to the issue."

The survey was conducted by telephone at Ohio University's Scripps Survey Research Center from May 11-28. The poll was funded through a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation.

The overall survey has a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.

Chart 1 detailing Scripps UFO poll findings

The following are selected findings from a survey of 1,003 adults conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University from May 11-28. The project was funded by a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation.

Here are some questions about life on other planets. Do you think it is very likely, somewhat likely or unlikely that there is intelligent life on other planets?

* Very Likely .................... 26
* Somewhat Likely ................ 30
* Unlikely ....................... 35
* Don't Know/Other Response ....... 9

Do you think it is very likely, somewhat likely or unlikely that intelligent life from other planets has visited our Earth?

* Very Likely .................... 12
* Somewhat Likely ................ 21
* Unlikely ....................... 54
* Don't Know/Other Response ...... 13

Do you know anyone who has seen a mysterious object in the sky that might have been a visitor from another world?

* Yes ............................ 19
* No ............................. 80
* Other Response .................. 1

Have you, personally, ever seen a mysterious object in the sky that might have been a visitor from another world?

* Yes ............................. 8
* No ............................. 91
* Other Response .................. 1

Chart 2 detailing Scripps UFO poll findings

A survey of 1,003 adults conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that 8 percent said they, personally, have seen a mysterious object in the sky that might be a visitor from another world. Here is how different groups responded to the question.

* Entire nation ................... 8
* Men ............................ 10
* Women ........................... 6
* 18-24 years old.................. 7
* 25-44 ........................... 5
* 45-64 .......................... 10
* 65 or older .................... 10
* Lives in major city ............. 4
* Smaller city .................... 5
* Suburb ......................... 12
* Rural area ..................... 10
* Northeast ....................... 4
* South ........................... 6
* Midwest ......................... 5
* West ........................... 15
* White ........................... 8
* African-American ................ 6
* Hispanic ....................... 10
* Asian-American/Other ............ 0
* Strong Democrat ................. 5
* Lean Toward the Democrats ....... 9
* Independent .................... 11
* Lean Toward the Republicans ..... 7
* Strong Republican ............... 3
* Very Conservative ............... 5
* Somewhat Conservative ........... 6
* Middle of the Road ............. 10
* Somewhat Liberal ................ 8
* Very Liberal .................... 6
* Not A High School Graduate ..... 15
* Graduated High School ........... 9
* Attended Some College .......... 10
* College Graduate ................ 5
* Post Graduate Studies ........... 4
* Income Below $25,000 ........... 11
* 25,000 to $40,000 .............. 13
* 40,000 to $60,000 ............... 9
* 60,000 to $80,000 ............... 6
* 80,000 to $100,000 .............. 4
* Above $100,000 .................. 6
* Attended Church Recently ........ 6
* Not Attended Church Recently .... 9
* Evangelical Protestant .......... 4
* Other Protestant ................ 8
* Roman Catholic .................. 8
* No Religious Preference ......... 9

Chart 3 detailing Scripps UFO poll findings

A survey of 1,003 adults conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that 56 percent say it is either "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that intelligent life exists on other planets. Here is how different groups responded to the question.

* Entire nation .................. 56
* Men ............................ 62
* Women .......................... 50
* 18-24 years old................. 74
* 25-44 .......................... 56
* 45-64 .......................... 60
* 65 or older .................... 46
* Lives in major city ............ 54
* Smaller city ................... 57
* Suburb ......................... 61
* Rural area ..................... 53
* Northeast ...................... 52
* South .......................... 56
* Midwest ........................ 48
* West ........................... 65
* White .......................... 54
* African-American ............... 54
* Hispanic ....................... 61
* Asian-American/Other ........... 67
* Strong Democrat ................ 61
* Lean Toward the Democrats ...... 60
* Independent .................... 60
* Lean Toward the Republicans .... 56
* Strong Republican .............. 40
* Very Conservative .............. 42
* Somewhat Conservative .......... 53
* Middle of the Road ............. 64
* Somewhat Liberal ............... 58
* Very Liberal ................... 65
* Not A High School Graduate ..... 80
* Graduated High School .......... 54
* Attended Some College .......... 49
* College Graduate ............... 60
* Post Graduate Studies .......... 58
* Income Below $25,000 ........... 56
* 25,000 to $40,000 .............. 48
* 40,000 to $60,000 .............. 53
* 60,000 to $80,000 .............. 64
* 80,000 to $100,000 ............. 64
* Above $100,000 ................. 62
* Attended Church Recently ....... 51
* Not Attended Church Recently ... 63
* Evangelical Protestant ......... 38
* Other Protestant ............... 62
* Roman Catholic ................. 60
* No Religious Preference ........ 66

Labels: belief, evangelicals, religion, Scripps Howard News Service., UFO

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Catholics, Evangelicals Differ On Views Of Sin

Evangelicals More Traditional Than Catholic Counterparts

Last updated Friday, May 30, 2008
By Terry Mattingly
Scripps Howard News Service

One tough challenge that Catholic shepherds face, Pope Benedict XVI said this past Lent, is that their flocks live in an age "in which the loss of the sense of sin is unfortunately becoming increasingly more widespread."

"Where God is excluded from the public forum the sense of offense against God -- the true sense of sin -- dissipates, just as when the absolute value of moral norms is relativized the categories of good or evil vanish, along with individual responsibility," he told a group of Canadian bishops, early in his papacy.

"Yet the human need to acknowledge and confront sin in fact never goes away. ... As St. John tells us: 'If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.'"

But there's a problem at pew level. Many American Catholics who regularly attend Mass simply do not agree with their church when it comes time to say what is sinful and what is not. In fact, according to a recent survey by Ellison Research in Phoenix, if the pope wanted to find large numbers of believers who share his views on sin he should spend more time with evangelical Protestants.

For example, 100 percent of evangelicals polled said adultery is sinful, while 82 percent of the active Catholics agreed. On other issues, 96 percent of evangelicals said racism is sin, compared to 79 percent of Catholics. Sex before marriage? That's sin, said 92 percent of the evangelicals, while only 47 percent of Catholics agreed.

On one of the hottest of hot-button issues, 94 percent of evangelicals said it's sinful to have an abortion, compared with 74 percent of American Catholics. And what about homosexual acts? Among evangelicals, 93 percent called this sin, as opposed to 49 percent of the Catholics.

The Catholics turned the tables when asked if it's sinful not to attend "religious worship services on a regular basis," with 39 percent saying this is sin, compared to 33 percent of the evangelicals.

Sellers said his team sifted evangelicals out of the larger Protestant pool by asking participants to affirm or question basic doctrinal statements, such as, "The Bible is the written word of God and is totally accurate in all that it teaches" and "Eternal salvation is possible through God's grace alone."

The split between Catholics and evangelicals jumped out of the statistics.

It's clear that most Americans are operating with definitions of sin that are highly personal and constantly evolving, said Sellers. These beliefs are linked to faith, morality, worship and the Bible, but also are affected by trends in media, education and politics. For example, 94 percent of political conservatives believe there is such a thing as sin, compared to 89 percent of political moderates and 77 percent of liberals.

The declining numbers on certain sins would have been even more striking if the Ellison researchers hadn't added a strategic word to its survey.

The study defined "sin" as "something that is almost always considered wrong, particularly from a religious or moral perspective."

Note that linguistic cushion -- "almost."

"We had to put that 'almost' in there," Sellers said. "Most Americans do not believe in absolute truths, these days. So if you present them with a statement that contains an absolute truth, people are immediately going to start challenging you and looking for some wiggle room. ... They just can't deal with absolute statements and that messes up your survey."

Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. His Web site is www.tmatt.net. His column is distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.

Labels: Catholic, Ellison Research, evangelicals, Pope Benedict XVI, sin, Terry Mattingly

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Group of evangelical Christians writes manifesto urging separation of religious beliefs and politics

By politicizing faith, Christians become 'useful idiots' for one party or another, the group warns

By Rebecca Trounson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 10, 2008

A group of prominent U.S. evangelical Christians is urging other evangelicals to step back from partisan politics and avoid becoming "useful idiots" for any political party.

In an often strongly worded statement released this week, more than 70 pastors, scholars and business leaders said faith and politics have become too closely intertwined and that evangelicals err when they use their religious beliefs for political purposes.

Three years in the making, the manifesto was signed by many high-profile, mostly centrist evangelicals, including Leith Anderson, president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals; Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine; and Frank Wright, president of National Religious Broadcasters.

Many of the most prominent conservative evangelicals did not sign. A spokesman for James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, said Dobson had concerns about the document and decided not to add his name.

One of the statement's drafters said one purpose was to reclaim the word "evangelical" from its political association.

"This is not primarily a political movement," said the Rev. John Huffman Jr., senior pastor of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach and board chairman of the evangelical magazine Christianity Today. "Evangelicalism is a theological understanding that we are called to be followers of Jesus Christ, and that's not captive to a culture, society or nation."

Analyst Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said he expected the statement to have limited political impact.

"It's mainly a warning to people not to confuse their personal faith with political convictions," he said.

Labels: Christianity, evangelicals, faith, politics, Rebecca Trounson

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

American faith: A work in progress

American faith: A work in progress
Politics and a new view of morality have radically altered the religious landscape.

By Stephen Prothero

Numbers lie, but they also tell tales, untrustworthy and otherwise. So the key question stirring around the much discussed U.S. Religious Landscape Survey released in late February by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life is what tale does it tell about the religious state of the union.

For some, the story of this survey, based on interviews in multiple languages with more than 35,000 U.S. adults, is the strength of American religion.

Not too long ago, I wrote that American atheism was going the way of the freak show. As books by Christopher Hitchens and other "new atheists" climbed the best-seller lists, I caught a lot of flak for that prophecy. But atheists make up only 1.6% of respondents to this survey. And 82% of respondents report that religion is either somewhat or very important in their lives.

Others find in this new data a nation of religious shoppers: 44% of the Americans surveyed have traded in their original religious home for another. Apparently, the grass is also greener at the church, synagogue or mosque next door.

Still others, noting that only 51% of Americans describe themselves as Protestants, see Protestantism teetering on the verge of becoming a minority.

Catholicism is at least by some readers of the tea leaves in trouble, too, now that ex-Catholics constitute 10% of the population.

Diminished safeguards

The tale I take away from this study is that shifts in the political and moral winds are transforming American religion. Many believe that the Founders separated church and state in order to save the federal government from the interference of overzealous ministers. Not so. The purpose of the First Amendment's establishment clause — which prohibits the federal government from passing laws that favor any one religion (atheism included) — was to safeguard religion against the encroachment of politics. And this new survey suggests that those safeguards are, well, going the way of the freak show.

The key subplot here is the rise of "nones," a category growing faster than any other religious group. Of all adults in the USA, 16% say they are religiously unaffiliated, while 7% were raised that way. Moreover, 25% of younger Americans (ages 18-29) report no religious affiliation at all.

It is important to emphasize that this march of the "nones" is by no means beating the drums for the old secularization thesis, which posited that as societies embraced modernization they would shun God. This is because many "nones" are quite religious. In fact, many Americans refuse to affiliate with any religious organization not because they do not believe in God but because they believe in God so fervently that they cannot imagine any human institution capturing the mysteries of the divine. In this study, only about a quarter of all "nones" call themselves atheists or agnostics. In other surveys, about half the unaffiliated typically affirm the Christian God.

Two related factors seem to be at play in the rise of the "nones": a decline in the stigma of being a religious free agent, and an increase in the stigma of being a church member. According to Darren Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University who has written widely on religious demographics, Americans have long "overconsumed religion because of social constraints." It used to be that you were considered a bad citizen, a bad marriage prospect and a bad employee if you didn't show a little faith in faith. And plainly it is still imperative for presidential candidates to pledge their allegiance to God as well as flag. But in recent years, the moral failings of Ted Haggard, John Geoghan and other men of the cloth have been broadcast from National Public Radio to YouTube. As the almighty have fallen, atheists have felt empowered to stand up and ask whether religion really is any sort of guarantor of moral behavior. What is so moral about affiliating with gay-bashing gay evangelists or pedophilic priests?

Plainly, the Republican Party gained ground over the past quarter-century by attaching itself to family, morality and God, even as the Democratic Party lost ground by focusing on such matters as rights and reason. In the process, the Republicans became the party of God and the Democrats the party of secularism — not a good strategy for the Democratic Party in a country where 96% of voters believe in God. So Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both taking pains to pitch their party as a party of prayer and piety.

Even so, for much of the past generation, "Christian" and "conservative" have seemed to be interchangeable terms. It should not be surprising if at least some on the left who once upon a time might have described themselves as "Christians" have decided to jettison that affiliation for political reasons. Such reasons, it should be emphasized, are basically the same ones why so many Europeans have divorced themselves from their country's established churches: because the marriage of a given church with a particular political regime is never eternal, and when it ends it leaves a lot of angry children in its wake.

Customized religion

Another story buried in the data of this new survey is the power of evangelical Protestantism, and particularly non-denominational churches. Of those surveyed, 44% called themselves "born again" or "evangelical" Christians, and among religious options non-denominational Protestantism is one of the fastest growing.

The story behind the numbers of this latest survey is not that religion is in trouble. It is that religion is morphing into something new. Faith is becoming more political. But it is becoming more personal at the same time.

Stephen Prothero is the Chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University. He's also the author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn't.

Labels: Americans, Christian, evangelicals, faith, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Stephen Prothero, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, unaffilIiated

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, February 08, 2008

Bishops Tell Christians to Give Up Some Carbon for Lent

By Alexis Madrigal February 07, 2008

Two Church of England Bishops want their followers to join them in a "Carbon Fast" for Lent, the 40 day period in which many Christians abstain from eating or imbibing some favored item.

But really the plan is closer to a carbon diet than a fast. According to the UK's Independent, those joining the fast will, among other carbon-cutting tips, "be asked to remove one lightbulb from a prominent place in the home and live without it for 40 days."

The bishops green stance is not about protecting the environment, per se, but rather a call to lessen global warming's impact on the residents of third-world nations.

"It is the poor who are already suffering the effects of climate change. To carry on regardless of their plight is to fly in the face of Christian teaching," James Jones and Dr. Richard Chartres, bishops of Liverpool and London, respectively, said in a statement. "There’s a moral imperative on those of us who emit more than our fair share of carbon to rein in our consumption."

Those words would be music to the ears of environmental folks here in the States who have long held skeptical hopes that Christians, particularly evangelicals led by Richard Cizik, would become a potent new constituency in an emerging climate change political coalition.

But pro-environmental evangelical “calls to action” in February 2006 and January 2007 haven't seemed to make much of an impact on the mass of US evangelicals, at least according to a 2007 survey released by the Christian consulting firm, The Barna Group.

One thousand random US adults were asked the question, “Think about how you would like the United States to change within the next 10 years…” and given a wide variety of areas of concern they’d like to improve including the reliability of news coverage, national security in the US, and the health of Christian churches. Among the total survey group, 60% of people felt that “investment in environmental protection” should be a top priority. But those meeting “born-again criteria” felt differently:

Evangelicals stood out regarding their views on the environment. Only 35% said that protecting the environment should be a top priority - the lowest score recorded among any of the 80 subgroups studied.

Even though the Barna survey's phrasing seems destined to draw negative reactions with the inclusion of the they’ll-raise-your-taxes codephrase “investment,” it still doesn't begin to explain evangelical distaste for environmental issues evidenced in the results.

It's clear that here in the States, we have a long way to go before mainstream Evangelicals are willing to do anything green, even if some other polls show less disheartening results (pdf).

Labels: Americans, Barna Group, carbon fast, Christian, evangelicals, global warming, Lent

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Devil more popular than Darwin in America

By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles

More Americans believe in the existence of hell and the devil than Darwin’s theory of evolution, according to a nationwide poll.

Nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of US residents polled said they believed in a literal hell and the devil, 60 per cent said they believed in the virgin birth.

Only 42 per cent of those surveyed, however, said they believed in Darwin’s theory of evolution, or “natural selection”. Some 39 per cent of respondents said they believed in creationism.

Broken down by religion, the survey found that only 16 per cent of born-again Christians (or evangelicals) compared to 43 per cent of Catholics and 30 per cent of Protestants believed in Darwin’s theory.

Meanwhile, 60 per cent of born-again Christians, but only 43 per cent of Catholics, believed in creationism.

Overall, the poll reflects the centrality of faith to American life, politics and culture, with 82 per cent saying they believed in God.

Three quarters agreed there is a heaven while 72 per cent believed Jesus is God or the Son of God and 79 per cent believed in miracles.

The question of faith is proving a key issue in campaigning for next year’s presidential election.

The poll, by market researchers Harris, involved 2,455 US adults from across the country selected to reflect the national population in terms of age, sex, race, education and household income.

It also found that significant minorities of Americas believe in ghosts (41 per cent), UFOs (35 per cent), witches (31 per cent), astrology (29 per cent) and reincarnation (21 per cent).

Born-again Christians were more likely to believe in witches (37 per cent) while Catholics were found more likely to believe in astrology and re-incarnation

Labels: America, astrology, Catherine Elsworth, Catholic, creationism, evangelicals, evolution, faith, ghosts, politics

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, October 26, 2007

Christian right causing rest of us to lose faith

Oct. 25, 2007

I believe it was Gandhi that once said, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Then when I read a survey by the Barna Group, a Christian research organization, my worst suspicions were confirmed.

The survey was about how young people view Christianity, and it showed that among 16-29-year-olds, young people have never been more critical and skeptical of Christianity.

The survey cited feelings of disengagement and disillusionment among young people as a primary reason for this.

Whereas a decade ago, the majority of non-Christians had a favorable view of Christians, that rate now sits at 16 percent.

Which group draws most of the ire from non-Christians?

Just consider this: Half of young Christians themselves echoed the same sentiments --that they "perceive Christianity to be judgmental, hypocritical and too political."

I often find myself within this camp.

Simply put, I think the church as an institution, our leaders -- perhaps even some of our parents -- have failed us.

Over the past few decades, while mainline Protestantism was growing out of touch with modernity, evangelicals became too radicalized and began to turn many people off. Suddenly, seeking people were forced to choose. Well, many young people have chosen now, and they choose neither.

Respondents to this poll gave deeply intimate stories of experiences that have turned them off to Christianity -- not broad, sweeping generalizations. Finally, there is statistical evidence for what we have already known all along but were just afraid to admit to ourselves.

But supposing you are a Christian, the fact of the matter is that what's being done in our name (particularly by the Christian far right) is killing Christianity. Since they are often the people who hijack the dialogue and speak loudest, they are the ones the public most often sees.

Consider this a plea to those so-called Christians. The next time you malevolently condemn homosexuals, try to get creationism into classrooms or join the cries for war, just remember: The rest of us are watching.

For the rest of us, we should make it a fundamental aspect of our faith to oppose these markedly un-Christian actions that turn people off to Christianity.

It's good to know the observations of someone outside the faith. We must always be looking for the plank in our own eye, before we look for the splinter in others.

It helps us to take inventory of ourselves and learn what we can be doing better to let the world know what we are really about.

Gandhi also said that what passes as Christianity these days is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount.

I think he was right.

Labels: Barna Group, Christian, evangelicals, Gandhi, youth

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Internet churches and religious webcasts drawing more congregants

By Scott Andron
McClatchy Newspapers

Article Last Updated: 10/19/2007

MIAMI — Every Sunday morning, while hundreds of congregants converge on Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City, Fla., Stephanie Smith boots up her computer and joins the services — from 1,400 miles away.

Instead of attending a bricks-and-mortar church near her home in Fort Worth, Texas, Smith hooks her computer up to her big-screen TV and watches a live, Web-based videocast via Flamingo Road's "Internet Campus." Some Sundays, she invites family and friends to join her.

Smith is one of a growing number of Americans for whom the Internet plays a central role in their spiritual lives.

Among evangelical Christians, and the largest "megachurches" in particular, many pastors are taking their Web sites far beyond an online ad with a schedule of real-world services.

Many pastors are coming to see the Web site as a ministry in itself, not only as a way to bring people to church, but as a way to bring them to God — even if they never set foot in the physical building.

While most houses of worship now have Web sites, few use them as aggressively and creatively in seeking new converts as evangelicals, for a variety of reasons.

For Roman Catholics, important sacraments like communion are hard or impossible to translate into binary digits. Jews generally don't seek new converts, although the Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch sect, for example, has extensive Web offerings aimed at attracting non-observant Jews.

But "conservative Christians jump on any new medium they can to find new ways to spread the Gospel," said Scott Thumma, a professor of the sociology of religion at the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut.

And megachurches "are doing the most fascinating and interesting stuff on the Web, but they are doing it because they have millions of dollars and thousands of people to draw on."

Like many Web sites run by large evangelical churches, Calvary's includes a step-by-step guide for nonreligious people seeking to convert, links to request "prayer support" for people going through a difficult time, and a searchable video archive of Pastor Bob Coy's previous sermons.

Looking for advice on your marriage? Sex? Forgiveness? Just type in the word, and a list of relevant sermons will appear. Want his advice every day? Subscribe to his podcast and listen on your MP3 audio player. Want to get saved right there in front of the computer? Pastor Bob will pray with you on a recorded video.

For at least one church, the Internet is so central that the church has a "dot" in its name. Lifechurch.tv has 11 campuses in six states, including a new congregation that meets at Palm Beach Central High School in Wellington, Fla. Its 12th campus is on the Internet, and the church tries to give online participants the same experience as those worshiping in person.

All the campuses receive a live sermon via satellite from the main campus in Oklahoma. Before and after the sermon, a local minister is on hand to lead services, announce upcoming events and pass the offering plate.

Internet participants — 700 to 900 on a typical weekend — can join in by clicking an icon to raise their hands in response to the pastor's words.

And after the formal service, they can chat — either by typing or using a webcam and microphone — with the pastor or each other.

Several other churches, including Flamingo Road and Calvary, also offer ways for online participants to interact during services.

Thanks to online shopping, online dating, online social networking and online darn-near-everything-else, many young Americans don't distinguish between their friends from school and those from Facebook.

These youngsters just see them all as friends, said David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, a consulting firm that conducts survey research for churches and other religious groups.

In fact, Kinnaman's firm predicts that by 2010, 10 percent of Americans will rely exclusively on the Internet for their religious experience.

Labels: church, evangelicals, interactive, Internet, ministry, Scott Andron, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Scientists, Evangelicals Team Up For Alaska Expedition

Date: August 30, 2007

Science Daily — The historic collaboration between leading scientists and Evangelicals to protect the environment, spearheaded by the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) continues this week with a trip to Alaska.

A group of five scientists and five evangelical leaders began traveling together on August 25th to observe first- hand the dramatic effects of climate change on local people and on the land, ocean, plants, and wildlife of the nation's northernmost state.

"The goal of our trip is to witness together what human-caused climate change is doing to our world," said co-leader of the trip Eric Chivian, who shared the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize and is Director of the HMS Center. "While this collaboration may come as a surprise to some, it makes perfect sense. Both scientists and Evangelicals see life on earth as sacred and share the same deep sense of responsibility about protecting it."

"The idea is for all of us to experience what human activity is doing to God's Creation so that we can understand the urgent importance of caring for it," added expedition co- leader Rev. Richard Cizik, Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the NAE. "We dare to imagine a world in which science and religion cooperate, minimizing our differences about how Creation got started, to work together to reverse its degradation."

Led by a naturalist from Homer, Carmen Field, the group began its journey with a two-day stop in Shishmaref, a traditional Inupiaq Eskimo village in the Bering Strait with a population of about 500 people. The Inupiats have inhabited this village, located on Sarichef Island in the Chukchi Sea, for over 400 years. Because of melting sea ice and permafrost, however, the village is at high risk from storm surge erosion, and already 14 houses have fallen into the sea in recent years, raising concern that the village will soon need to be relocated to the mainland.

"People in the Arctic are among the most vulnerable on Earth due to the impacts of climate change," said James McCarthy, Professor of Biological Oceanography at Harvard University, an expert on climate change and the Arctic, and President-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest scientific society. "They depend on intact sea ice and permafrost, both of which are rapidly disappearing, for their hunting and fishing, indeed for their very lives."

The group will also stop at Portage and Exit glaciers to witness the rapid, unprecedented melting of glacial ice, and at the Kenai Peninsula, where more than three million acres of spruce forests have been killed by exploding populations of Spruce Bark Beetles, brought on by warming temperatures.

During the week-long expedition the group will meet with scientists, physicians, local church leaders, and evangelical pastors in Shishmaref, Anchorage, and Homer to learn directly from Alaskans about how they are coping with the effects of climate change. Leith Anderson, Senior Pastor of Wooddale Church and President of the NAE said, "It is very important to involve Alaskan pastors in our work, for they are central in helping to spread the message about the importance of Creation Care."

The Scientists-Evangelical Alaska Expedition grew out of a collaboration that began at a two-day private retreat in December 2006 attended by 30 leaders from the scientific and evangelical communities. The retreat led to close relationships of mutual trust and understanding among the participants and to the release in January 2007 of an "Urgent Call to Action," a pledge that these leaders would speak with one voice in their shared commitment to protect life on Earth.

Trip Participants:

Leith Anderson D.Min, M.Div., President, National Association of Evangelicals; Senior Pastor, Wooddale Church
Eric Chivian M.D., Director, Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School; Shared 1985 Nobel Peace Prize
Richard Cizik M.Div, M.A., Vice President for Governmental Affairs, National Association of Evangelicals
Deborah Fikes M.A., Advisor, Ministerial Alliance of Midland, Texas; Special Advisor to Governor Kim Moon-soo, Republic of Korea; Advisory Committee, Senator Sam Brownback; President; D.H. Fikes International Inc.
Peter Heltzel Ph.D., M.Div., Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology, New York Theological Seminary
Harry Jackson D.Div, M.B.A., Bishop and Senior Pastor, Hope Christian Church
James McCarthy Ph.D., Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University
Camille Parmesan Ph.D., Associate Professor, Section of Integrative Biology, University of Texas
Peter Raven Ph.D., President, Missouri Botanical Garden; George Engelmann Professor of Botany, Washington University
Carl Safina Ph.D., President, Blue Ocean Institute; Adjunct Professor, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Harvard Medical School.

Labels: Alaska, evangelicals, global warming, God, Harvard Medical School, National Association of Evangelicals, religion, scientists

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monday, July 23, 2007

In Europe, God Is (Not) Dead

Christian groups are growing, faith is more public.
Is supply-side economics the explanation?

By ANDREW HIGGINS
July 14, 2007

Stockholm

Late last year, a Swedish hotel guest named Stefan Jansson grew upset when he found a Bible in his room. He fired off an email to the hotel chain, saying the presence of the Christian scriptures was "boring and stupefying." This spring, the Scandic chain, Scandinavia's biggest, ordered the New Testaments removed

In a country where barely 3% of the population goes to church each week, the affair seemed just another step in Christian Europe's long march toward secularism. Then something odd happened: A national furor erupted. A conservative bishop announced a boycott. A leftist radical who became a devout Christian and talk-show host denounced the biblical purge in newspaper columns and on television. A young evangelical Christian organized an electronic letter-writing campaign, asking Scandic: Why are you removing Bibles but not pay-porn on your TVs?

Scandic, which had started keeping its Bibles behind the front desk, put the New Testament back in guest rooms.

After decades of secularization, religion in Europe has slowed its slide toward what had seemed inevitable oblivion. There are even nascent signs of a modest comeback. Most church pews are still empty. But belief in heaven, hell and concepts such as the soul has risen in parts of Europe, especially among the young, according to surveys. Religion, once a dead issue, now figures prominently in public discourse.

CHANGING OPINIONS

In Europe, the cradle of the Enlightenment and secularization, issues of religion have figured prominently in recent public discourse. Below, some examples.

* * *

Sinéad O'Connor, Irish singer, caused a stir in 1992 by ripping up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on "Saturday Night Live" and shouting "Fight the real enemy!" She's now released "Theology," a collection of Bible-based songs:

"I adore religion and love it. Obviously, like anything, it has all sorts of negatives sometimes, as we all do," she told Beliefnet, a Web site. She described the photo-tearing episode as "an act of love for God, actually. But, also an act of rattling the bars of something that I do love, but I don't love [the Catholic Church] as much as I love God."

* * *

Gérard Depardieu, French film star known for his chaotic personal life, met Pope John Paul II in 2000 and was urged to play Saint Augustine, a 4th-century North African bishop who, after a dissolute youth, became a pillar of faith and one of the church's pre-eminent philosophers. Depardieu read selections of Saint Augustine's "Confessions" in Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral in 2003.

"I was heavy with spirituality without knowing it. I was touched by the light of Saint Augustine," Depardieu told the French Catholic newspaper La Croix. "Saint Augustine's quest touched me personally because it reflected by own fragility."

* * *

Sting, British rock star, was raised a Catholic, turned away from organized religion but has often talked about faith. On "The Oprah Winfrey Show," he said:

"Religion is an interesting word. It comes from Latin; it means to reconnect, reconnect with the world of the spirit. There are many ways to reconnect with the world of the spirit, not just through going to church or praying, you can reconnect through music, through the woman or the man you love. These are my roots to the sacred."

* * *

Oriana Fallaci, combative Italian journalist and lifelong critic of religion, grew close to the Catholic Church toward the end of her life. She met Pope Benedict XVI and praised him as a bulwark against Islam. She died in 2006, leaving her book collection to a university run by the Vatican.

"I am an atheist, yes. An atheist-Christian," she said in New York in 2005.God's tentative return to Europe has scholars and theologians debating a hot question: Why? Part of the reason, pretty much everyone agrees, is an influx of devout immigrants. Christian and Muslim newcomers have revived questions relating to faith that Europe thought it had banished with the 18th-century Enlightenment. At the same time, anxiety over immigration, globalization and cutbacks to social-welfare systems has eroded people's contentment in the here-and-now, prodding some to seek firmer ground in the spiritual.

Some scholars and Christian activists, however, are pushing a more controversial explanation: the laws of economics. As centuries-old churches long favored by the state lose their monopoly grip, Europe's highly regulated market for religion is opening up to leaner, more-aggressive religious "firms." The result, they say, is a supply-side stimulus to faith.

"Monopoly churches get lazy," says Eva Hamberg, a professor at Lund University's Centre for Theology and Religious Studies and co-author of academic articles that, based on Swedish data, suggest a correlation between an increase in religious competition and a rise in church-going. Europeans are deserting established churches, she says, "but this does not mean they are not religious."

Upstarts are now plugging new spiritual services across Europe, from U.S.-influenced evangelical churches to a Christian sect that uses a hallucinogenic herbal brew as a stand-in for sacramental wine. Niklas Piensoho, chief preacher at Stockholm's biggest Pentecostal church, says even sometimes oddball, quasi-religious fads "tell me you can sell spirituality." His own career suggests that a free market in faith is taking root. He was poached by the Pentecostals late last year after he boosted church attendance for a rival Protestant congregation.

Most scholars used to believe that modernization would extinguish religion in the long run. But that view always had trouble explaining why America, a nation in the vanguard of modernity, is so religious. The God-is-finished thesis came under more strain in the 1980s and 1990s after Iran, a rapidly modernizing Muslim nation, exploded with fundamentalist fervor and other fast-advancing countries in Latin America and Asia showed scant sign of ditching religion.

Now even Europe, the heartland of secularization, is raising questions about whether God really is dead. The enemy of faith, say the supply-siders, is not modernity but state-regulated markets that shield big, established churches from competition. In America, where church and state stand apart, more than 50% of the population worships at least once a month. In Europe, where the state has often supported -- but also controlled -- the church with money and favors, the rate in many countries is 20% or less.

Consider the scene on a recent Sunday at Stockholm's Hedvig Eleonara Church, a parish of the Church of Sweden, a Lutheran institution that until 2000 was an official organ of the Swedish state. Fewer than 40 people, nearly all elderly, gathered in pews beneath a magnificent 18th-century dome. Seven were church employees. The church seats over 1,000.

Hedvig Eleonara has three full-time salaried priests and gets over $2 million each year though a state levy. Annika Sandström, head of its governing board, says she doesn't believe in God and took the post "on the one condition that no one expects me to go each Sunday." The church scrapped Sunday school last fall because only five children attended.

Just a few blocks away, Passion Church, an eight-month-old evangelical outfit, fizzed with fervor. Nearly 100 young Swedes rocked to a high-decibel band: "It's like adrenaline running through my blood," they sang in English. "We're talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."

Passion, set up by Andreas Nielsen, a 32-year-old Swede who found God in Florida, gets no money from the state. It holds its service in a small, low-ceilinged hall rented from Stockholm's Casino Theatre, a drama company. Church, says Mr. Nielson, should be "the most kick-ass place in the world." Jesus was "king of the party."

The message has lured some unlikely converts, including a heavily tattooed, self-described former mobster. "I've gone soft," says Daniel Webb, the son of an English father and Swedish mother, who spent five years in jail for illegal arms possession and assault. He was baptized, like most Swedes, in the Church of Sweden but never prayed. He went to church for the funerals of fellow hoods but scoffed at Christian sympathy for the meek.

Europe's upstart churches aren't yet attracting anywhere near enough customers to offset a post-World War II decline. But they are shaking up and in some places reviving the market for religion, argues Rodney Stark, a pioneer of religious supply-side theory at Baylor University in Texas.

Mr. Stark first developed the notion of a "religious market" in the 1980s as a way to explain America's persistent faith. It posits that people are naturally religious but that their religiosity varies depending on the vigor of what he calls religious suppliers. "Wherever churches are a little more energetic and competitive, you've got more people going to church," he says.

The notion that Adam Smith's invisible hand reaches into the spiritual realm has many detractors. Steve Bruce, a professor of sociology at Aberdeen University in Scotland, says market theory "works for cars and soap powder but it does not work for religion." Christianity in Europe, he says, has reached the point of no return, like a dying language doomed because too few people transmit its vocabulary to their children.

The Church of Sweden is also skeptical of the supply-side view. "We don't sell a product," says archbishop Anders Wejryd. With 1,800 congregations, he says, his church must cater to a spectrum of views. He says the Church of Sweden's more dynamic parishes, some of which mimic evangelicals' methods, are thriving.

Predictions that Christianity is doomed in Europe date back centuries. Writing in the early 1700s, Thomas Woolston, an Englishman, estimated it would die out by 1900. A century later, France's Auguste Comte proclaimed the end of mankind's "theological stage." Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels viewed religion as a symptom of capitalist ills that would be cured by socialism. More recently, the demise of Christianity in Europe has led to warnings that the continent risks becoming "Eurabia," a land dominated by Islam.

Conservative U.S. preachers and politicians curse European nonbelief and trumpet the religious values of America's pilgrim fathers. But Mr. Stark, the supply-side theorist, says America's religiosity is relatively recent. In 1776, he says, around 17% of Americans belonged to churches. That is about the same as the current proportion of the population in Belgium, France, Germany and the U.K. that worships at least once a month, according to 2004's European Union-funded European Social Survey.

In the U.S., the American Revolution ended ecclesiastical hegemony in the 11 colonies that had an established church and unleashed a raucous tide of religious competition. As Methodists, Baptists, Shakers and other churches proliferated, church-going rose, reaching around 50% in the early part of the 20th century, he says.

Europe never developed such a religious bazaar. The Church of Sweden, the Church of England, the Catholic Church in Italy and France, state-funded churches in Germany and others lost their de-facto "monopoly" status to other denominations over a century ago. But they retained their ties to the state and economic privileges.

Grace Davie, professor of sociology at Britain's Exeter University, compares them to "public utilities" -- institutions that people look to for basic services such as weddings and funerals but that don't demand day-to-day involvement. The Church of Sweden, for example, has a near-monopoly on death. Its broad property holdings, gathered since the 16th century, include most of Sweden's graveyards. The state still pays it to oversee funerals, even those involving Muslim rites.

Around 75% of Sweden's nine million people are nominally members of the "state church" -- though few ever worship and around 10% are avowed atheists, says Jonas Bromander of the Church's research unit. Sweden's evangelical churches, by contrast, have only 31,000 members, but they worship regularly and are growing, slowly, in number.

Tension between the Church of Sweden and would-be competitors goes back to the early 19th century, when early evangelicals were banished into exile. So-called free churches were later permitted but they remained in the shadow of the state-coddled Church of Sweden.

After World War II, the Church of Sweden followed the leftward direction of Swedish political life. The Ecclesiastical Department, the ministry that supervised the church, was headed for years by a prominent atheist. Liberal theology triumphed. Church attendance plummeted.

In the early 1980s, Ulf Ekman, a Church of Sweden priest, set up Livets Ord, or the Word of Life, an American-style congregation in Uppsala. His strict Bible-based message and charismatic preaching style attracted a flood of worshippers, and also controversy. The Church of Sweden stripped Mr. Ekman of his status as a preacher. The media denounced him as a cult leader bankrolled by America. The government investigated. Today, his church has around 3,000 active members.

A big impetus to the return of faith is fear of the future, says Elisabeth Sandlund, editor of Sweden's main Christian newspaper, Dagen. In Sweden and across Europe, old moorings are coming loose as cradle-to-grave welfare systems buckle. "People want something solid to hold on to," says Ms Sandlund. While working as a financial journalist, she started sneaking off to church and in 1999 eventually told her husband she believed in God. "He was not happy," she says.

Whether competition for believers actually boosts belief stirs bitter academic discussion. Measuring religiosity is difficult and each side cites different statistics. The latest data from a major research project that tracks churchgoing and belief in concepts such as God and soul, the European Values Survey, were compiled between 1981 and 1999. (They show a decline in faith in the 1980s followed by a leveling off and, for some indicators, a slight bump in the 1990s.)

To try to refute the supply-siders, Aberdeen University's Mr. Bruce points to Poland and Ireland, highly religious countries each dominated by a Catholic "monopoly church." Mr. Stark and those in his camp counter that market mechanisms in Poland and Ireland were trumped by the church's role as a vehicle for nationalism. More revealing, they say, is America's boisterous religious market and its high levels of religiosity.

One factor now spurring religious competition in Europe is the availability of state money that traditionally flowed almost entirely to established churches. It still does, but the process is more open.

In Italy, the state used to pay the salaries of Catholic priests, but in 1984 it began letting taxpayers choose which religious groups get financial support. The proceeds of a new "religious tax" of 0.8% are now divided, according to taxpayer preference, among the Catholic Church, four non-Catholic churches, the Jewish community and a state religious and humanitarian fund.

The result is an annual beauty contest ahead of a June income-tax deadline, as churches try to lure taxpayer money with advertising campaigns. Catholics get the lion's share -- 87% of nearly $1.2 billion in 2004, the last year for which figures are available. But according to a 2005 study by Italian lawyer Massimo Introvigne and Mr. Stark, the system "reminds Italians every year that there is a religious economy."

Sweden has also overhauled church financing. In 2000, the government gave up formal control of the Church of Sweden. With great fanfare it replaced what had been a church "tax" with an annual "fee," still collected by tax authorities, levied on Church of Sweden members.

For the first time, taxpayers were told what they owed in cash -- instead of being given just a percentage figure, which is typically under 1% of household income. Church of Sweden membership dropped abruptly, and the church launched a publicity drive pitching religion. Membership stabilized, though church-going continued to decline. Still, the established church last year received around $1.6 billion in membership fees via state tax collectors. The church also brings in some $460 million in funeral-and-graveyard administration taxes.

A government-run commission provides money to 28 registered religious groups outside the Church of Sweden, but these funds totaled only $7 million last year. Passion Church and other such ventures rely mostly on voluntary donations by their worshippers. This, says Kjell-Axel Johanson, an evangelical priest, keeps upstarts more in tune with their flock. He recently set up a new church that, unable to afford a permanent home, rents a bar for a few hours. "God doesn't care about packaging," he says.

Hotel chain Scandic, meanwhile, has reversed course. Before Christians mobilized, it planned to keep a few copies of the New Testament at the front desk, along with the Quran and Hebrew Bible. With the hotel under new ownership since April, Bibles are back in rooms. The Swedish arm of Gideons, a Bible distribution group, recently gave the chain 10,000 New Testaments in Swedish and English.

Write to Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com

Labels: Andrew Higgins, Christian, church, Europe, evangelicals, faith, God, money, secular, supply-side economics, Sweden

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Survey: Muslim Americans, White Evangelicals Similar in Religious Fervor

By
Jennifer Riley
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jul. 10 2007 04:37 PM ET

The religious intensity of Muslim Americans is most similar to white evangelicals and black Protestants, according to a recent analysis of a landmark survey.

Although believers of Islam and Christianity are often portrayed as polar opposites or even antagonists, the new study on how Muslims compare to mainstream Americans showed that in many aspects Muslims and white evangelicals in America share many commonalities.

The Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of Muslim Americans, 80 percent of white evangelicals, and 87 percent of black Protestants say religion is “very important” in their lives.
These high percentages stand in contrasts to Catholics, only 49 percent of which said religion was “very important” in their life, and white mainline Protestants, only 36 percent of which responded likewise.

Moreover, Muslim Americans are similar to white evangelicals and black Protestants in their tendency to personally identify themselves first by their religion before their nationality.

Sixty-two percent of evangelicals, 55 percent of black Protestants and 47 percent of Muslims think of themselves first as a follower of their religion before describing themselves as an American.

In comparison, only 31 percent of Catholics and 22 percent of white mainline Protestants said they foremost consider themselves Christian before an American.

Religious holy books are also regarded highly by Muslims and the two Christian groups. They are more likely to regard their holy book as the word of God to be taken literally, word-for-word than Catholics and white mainline Protestants.

The majority of white evangelicals (66 percent) and black Protestants (68 percent) said they take a literal view of the Bible, while half of Muslim Americans consider the Koran as the literal word of God.

The percentage of those believing the Bible should be taken literally as the Word of God dropped under 30 percent for both Catholics and white mainline Protestants.

“None of this is to suggest that Muslims and Christians do not have distinctly different religious beliefs and practices,” commented the analysis’ authors Robert Ruby and Greg Smith.

“Nevertheless, the resemblance in religious intensity of Muslims to many groups that might think of themselves as wholly unlike Muslims is striking.”

However, Muslims and white evangelicals are markedly different when it comes to their political orientation. Muslim Americas are more politically liberal than evangelicals and are similar to black Protestants, secular Americans and white mainline Protestants.

Only 11 percent of Muslims say they are Republicans or lean Republican - a figure similar to black Protestants (10 percent). In contrast, 57 percent of white evangelicals responded that they are Republicans or lean politically right.

Muslim American’s left-leaning political stance was displayed during the 2004 presidential election where eight of ten Muslim voters (85 percent) supported John Kerry – a value similar to black Protestants (86 percent) and secular voters (67 percent).

Yet on the issue of homosexuality, Muslims take a similar position to white evangelicals with 61 percent saying the lifestyle should be discouraged by society. Similarly, 63 percent of white evangelical are oppose to homosexuality, according to Pew Forum.

“In many ways, Muslim Americans seem like a mosaic of many other American groups, sharing certain traits with these other groups while not being identical to any of them,” concluded the study’s authors. “They are anything but wholly apart; indeed, in important respects, Muslim Americans reflect the religious and political values held by most other Americans.”

Labels: Americans, evangelicals, God, Jennifer Riley, Muslims, Pew Research Center survey, protestants, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Sunday, July 08, 2007

God Is In The Details

The Washington Post summarized a new Pew Research Center survey that shows there are significant foundational shifts in Americans’ understanding of what constitutes marital happiness and success.

In a front-page story on Sunday, reporter Donna St. George looked at the most substantial attitudinal change over previous years:

Children rank as the highest source of personal fulfillment for their parents but have dropped to one of the least-cited factors in a successful marriage, according to a national survey to be released today.

In a study that shows how separately marriage and children are viewed, Americans expressed great passion for their sons and daughters but clearly did not see them as the glue of their adult relationships.

On a list of nine contributors to success in marriage, children were trumped by faithfulness, a happy sexual relationship, household chore-sharing, economic factors such as adequate income and good housing, common religious beliefs, and shared tastes and interests, the nonprofit Pew Research Center found.

The article is very interesting and shows just how rapidly Americans are separating sex, marriage and children. As you might expect — along with a reader who passed along the story — there are some dramatic religious ghosts lurking inbetween the paragraphs of this story.

You’re probably not as nerdy as I am, by which I mean I like to read every survey, Supreme Court opinion and piece of legislation I can get my hands on. So you may not want to read the 91-page report [PDF] on which St. George wrote her story. But if you did, you would find that religious differences correlate with major differences of opinion recorded in the survey.

White evangelical Protestants and people of all faiths who attend religious services at least weekly hold more conservative viewpoints on pretty much the whole gamut of questions asked on the Pew survey. This is true across all age groups. For example, white evangelical Protestants are more likely than other religious groups to consider premarital sex morally wrong.

They are more likely to consider the rise in unmarried childbearing and cohabitation bad for society and more likely to agree that a child needs both a mother and father to be happy. They also are more likely to say legal marriage is very important when a couple plans to have children together or plans to spend the rest of their lives together. Further, white evangelical Protestants are more likely than white mainline Protestants to say that divorce should be avoided except in extreme circumstances and to consider it better for the children when parents remain married, though very unhappy with each other. In sum, white evangelical Protestants have a strong belief in the importance of marriage and strong moral prescriptions against premarital sex and childbearing outside of marriage.

The pattern is the same among those of any faith who attend religious services more frequently, compared with less frequent attendees.

Another interesting division in the survey was between white evangelicals and white mainline Protestants. Seventy-three percent of evangelicals consider it important for couples to legally marry compared with only 35 percent of white mainline Protestants, 43 percent of Roman Catholics and 20 percent of seculars. Of those who attend church more regularly, 69 percent say marriage is very important compared with 36 percent of the less religious and 27 percent of those who never or almost never attend church services.

The Pew report tried to paint a picture of people with traditional marriage views and, again not surprisingly, the religious angle appears:

Compared with other parents, they’re more likely to be white, well-educated and well-off economically. They also have a distinctive religious profile. They are more likely to be Catholic (32% vs. 21%) than other parents. They also are more observant; some 47% attend church weekly or more often compared with 38% of other parents. Politically, they’re more inclined to be Republican than other parents, and, ideologically, they’re more inclined to be conservative.
A majority are happy with their lives — some 55% report being “very satisfied” with their lives overall, compared with just 40% of the rest of the population.

That last sentence is interesting. The headline for the Washington Post story is “To Be Happy In Marriage, Baby Carriage Not Required.” That headline may be eyecatching for the aging baby boomers who make up the paper’s audience, but I’m not sure it’s quite right.

Stories about surveys tend to have a very short shelf life, but perhaps other reports will look into some of the religious ghosts.

Labels: children, Donna St. George, evangelicals, happiness, marriage, Pew Research Center survey, protestants