Religion in America

Christianity Under Fire: Why Fewer People Identify With The Faith

CrossWalk.com | Tony Beam | March 9, 2009

The news for people of faith is not good. Since 1990, the last time the survey was conducted, the number of people who claim no religion at all has risen from 8% to 15%. In contrast, all of the mainline denominations have seen a significant decline in the number of people who describe themselves as participants. According to the survey, the number of Baptist declined from 19.3% to 15.8%. Methodists dropped from 8% to 5% and there are now approximately 2.8 million people who identify themselves with some sort of “new religious movement,” including “Wiccan, pagan, or Spiritualist.” These numbers are all the more troubling when you consider the fact that the adult population of the United States increased by “nearly 50 million” during the same 18-year period. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Responding to Neo-Atheism

American Thinker | Rick Richman | Sep. 21, 2008

Neo-atheism has had a very successful publishing run over the past several years, with best-selling books by Christopher Hitchens (“god is not great”), Sam Harris (“Letter to a Christian Nation”) and Richard Dawkins (“The God Delusion”), among others. But this year there has been an equally impressive counter-phenomenon. Three recent books, written from three widely divergent perspectives, have responded to the arguments of neo-atheism with both intellectual force and literary grace.

In April, David Berlinski, a secular Jew and well-known skeptic of Darwinism, who holds a Ph. D. in Philosophy from Princeton and has written widely on mathematics and science, published “The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions.” The book defends religion by attacking atheism’s attempt to enlist science in its cause. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Are Liberals Just Giving Lip Service to “the Least of These”?

Townhall.com | Will Hall | Aug. 28, 2008

I have held my tongue for some time while folks like Jim Wallis (Sojourners), Mara Vanderslice (Matthew 25 Network) and Brian McLaren (emerging church movement) -– all religious and political liberals — have manipulated a compliant secular media and some of the religious press to shill talking points for them.

The message varies in slight ways from story to story but basically asserts “the left” cares more for the poor than does “the right.” A companion assertion stated as fact is that evangelicals are “fractured” and that there is an emerging progressive group of evangelicals “discovering” there are other issues “just as important” as protecting the unborn and defending the biblical definition of marriage. Then a tired liberal political agenda is reframed in the language of faith.

It’s not just political chicanery or religious wrangling, but simply fraud — a form of wishful thinking that if repeated enough times, de facto becomes the truth. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

James Dobson and Obama’s Theory of Abortion Relativity

American Thinker | Lee Cary | Jun 26, 2008

In his confrontation with James Dobson, Senator Obama faces a degree of absolutism that pales in belligerent intensity compared to what he could, as President, face from America’s most hostile adversaries. His response to Dobson is a clue to how he might deal with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, et al.

It’s no secret that the Obama Campaign is executing a plan to woo evangelical voters coordinated by Joshua DuBois, the National Director of Religious Affairs. DuBois, a member of a United Pentecostal Council Assemblies of God church in Cambridge, Mass., was a graduate student at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School when he was “enthralled” by Obama’s reference to faith issues in his 2004 Democratic Convention speech. He volunteered to help Obama get elected president. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Red Diaper Christians

FrontPageMag | Mark D. Tooley | Jun. 9, 2008

Left-wing evangelist Tony Campolo, one of Bill Clinton’s post-Monica counselors, has declared that America’s ostensibly aggressive war policies against Muslims are inhibiting the spread of the Gospel. And he rather uncharitably lambasted American evangelicals who do not share his leftist perspective as “jingoistic” and motivated by oil “lust.” [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

God and Hillary Clinton

FrontPageMagazine | Jamie Glazov | Nov. 7, 2007

So, un-belief works for liberal Democrats. Here’s a statistical fact: The greater the number of people who do not believe in God, the greater the number of votes for liberal Democrats. I suppose Al Gore might call that a triumph of reason.

The problem for most of these liberal politicians is that they run for office in America and not in France. They would do extremely well among the socialist, unbelieving populations of Europe. […]

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

On being a Muslim and a Christian…Not

Virtue Online | David Virtue | June 18, 2007

First came the irregular ordination of women to the priesthood, and then homosexual behavior was deemed acceptable including the ordination and consecration of an openly avowed homosexual to the episcopacy, concomitantly with same sex blessings for all. The elastic band of The Episcopal Church’s theology has been stretched to its limit with the announcement that the Rev. Dr. Ann Holmes Redding, an Episcopal priest and theologian in the Diocese of Olympia, has become a practicing Muslim.

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

The Kennedy Catastrophe: Banishing Religion from the Public Square

Townhall.com | Ken Connor | May 6, 2007

For quite some time in America, frank public discussions about candidates’ religious views have been deemed verboten. The trend began in 1960, when John F. Kennedy found that his Catholic faith was proving to be a liability with Protestant voters. Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic to run for president since Al Smith’s landslide defeat in the 1920s, and throughout the campaign he met significant resistance from detractors who were deeply suspicious of the Catholic faith. Hundreds of anti-Catholic tracts were sent to millions of homes across America discouraging voters from supporting Kennedy. Many refused to vote for the young Senator from Massachusetts because they did not agree with his religious beliefs, and this created a crisis for the campaign.

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

America’s Secular Jihadists

Breakpoint Church Colson January 12, 2007

Atheists on the Offensive

Just a few months ago, I thought it was insulting to be called a “theocrat.” I was wrong. “Theocrat” is almost a compliment compared to what the Left is calling Christians now.

According to a New York Times review, we Christians are fascists—that’s what the Nazis were. And if we’re not stopped, we’ll try to take over America. It’s an illustration of how vicious the invective has become against faithful Christians.

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail