Republicanism, religion and the ‘nones’

We need the nones to see the probable meaning of the most recent Gallup analysis of tracking data for the relationship between intensity of religious faith and political party identification.

First, the Gallup analysis concludes:

The percentage of Americans who identify with or lean toward the Republican Party drops from 49% among the highly religious to 26% among those who are not religious. The percentage who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party rises from 37% among the highly religious to 56% among those who are not religious. For comparison, the party figures for November among all adults in these data are 40% Republicans/Republican leaners and 45% Democrats/Democratic leaners.

Thus, Republicans are in the plurality among highly religious Americans. For each of the other three groups, Democrats are equal with or higher in number than Republicans. The Democratic edge expands as religiosity decreases. Among the not-religious group, Democrats have a 30-point edge over Republicans.

The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) found that the “percentage of Christians in America” on the decline and nones are on the rise. Specifically:

The non-theist and No Religion groups collectively known as “Nones” have gained almost 20 million adults since 1990 and risen from 8.2 to 15.0 percent of the total population. If we include those Americans who either don’t know their religious identification (0.9 percent) or refuse to answer our key question (4.1 percent), and who tend to somewhat resemble “Nones” in their social profile and beliefs, we can observe that in 2008 one in five adults does not identify with a religion of any kind compared with one in ten in 1990.

Thus, as long as Republicanism’s principal appeal is to the most fervent Christians, as Gallup found, Republican political influence is likely to continue to wane.

U.S. Christian leaders against Uganda’s “Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009″

U.S. Christian leaders — who may not agree on same-sex lifestyle issues — have spoken out in a statement issued today against a law under consideration in Uganda that would make some homosexual behavior punishable by death. While diverse in political philosophy, they came together over “Jesus’ commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves.”

Their statement [.pdf] says:

Our Christian faith recognizes violence, harassment and unjust treatment of any human being as a betrayal of Jesus’ commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. As followers of the teachings of Christ, we must express profound dismay at a bill currently before the Parliament in Uganda. The “Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009″ would enforce lifetime prison sentences and in some cases the death penalty for homosexual behavior, as well as punish citizens for not reporting their gay and lesbian neighbors to the authorities.

As Americans, some may wonder why we are raising our voices to oppose a measure proposed in a nation so far away from home. We do so to bear witness to our Christian values, and to express our condemnation of an injustice in which groups and leaders within the American Christian community are being implicated. We appeal to all Christian leaders in our own country to speak out against this unjust legislation.

In our efforts to imitate the Good Samaritan, we stand in solidarity with those Ugandans beaten and left abandoned by the side of the road because of hatred, bigotry and fear. Especially during this holy season of Advent, when the global Christian community prepares in hope for the light of Christ to break through the darkness, we pray that they are comforted by God’s love.

Regardless of the diverse theological views of our religious traditions regarding the morality of homosexuality, in our churches, communities and families, we seek to embrace our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as God’s children worthy of respect and love. Yet we are painfully aware that in our country gays and lesbians still face hostility and violence. We recognize that such treatment degrades the human family, threatens the common good and defies the teachings of our Lord — wherever it occurs.

Signatories include such centrist evangelical activists as David Gushee of Mercer University,and those from a range of other faith traditions such as Adam Tice, the Associate Pastor of Hyattsville Mennonite Church. They range from Jim Wallis of Sojourners (on the left) to the Rev. Samuel Rodriguezof the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (on the right) and include Melissa Rogers of Wake Forest University Divinity School’s Center for Religion and Public Affairs, and others [.pdf] .

The joint statement was organized by Faith in Public Life and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. It follows the Dec. 4 statement by Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori which said in part that “efforts to criminalize homosexual behavior are incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

[H/T: Divine Diva]

Once in Royal David’s City

Once in Royal David’s City performed at St Paul’s Cathedral in London:

[H/T: Guardian]

Michelle Malkin imagines an interesting, leftist war on cops

Counterpunching at critics of conservative Mike Huckabee’s pardons, she imagines a an anti-cop war, not so much by the left as by people of color. She concludes:

President Obama — Chicago pal of police-targeting Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers and the convener of the national beer summit to indulge his race-baiting, police-bashing Harvard professor friend Henry Louis Gates — did not attend the service.

Get it?

Where does ‘very dangerous’ Obama stand?

“Very dangerous” Barak Obama is still a popular cuss:

Whom will you help through the holidays?

This will be a lonely Thanksgiving for a great many of us. In Florida, the economy has left thounsands of seniors in nursing homes alone for the holidays, according to Capitol News Service.

For others, the issues are more personal. There are many like GWFrink3, for whom the season of rejoicing is also a season of grief. They need us, even if their smiles are impenetrable.

A Simple Country Boy calls upon those of us who are well, to help those who are not.

Is this not the season which is founded upon celebration of such compassion?

Who could imagine Al Mohler oversimplifying R. Crumb?

Who else could? Al Mohler himself.

Crumb isn’t offering a substitute for Genesis, or pretending to. Nor is Crumb offering an object of worship. He has instead created a work of art in his medium of choice – comparable to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (Gibson, working in his medium of choice). But for all his quoting of Crumb, Mohler doesn’t seem to grasp that. He skips right along, without acknowledging the broader issues, to assert, it seems, that Crumb’s work contravenes the second commandment. Are we missing something here?

Sweet Alabama Baptist hash tag & data desert

Alabama’s Southern Baptist state conventioneers seem to agree that #absc09 is the hash-tag du jour.

Please try it #absc09.

The resulting tweets are thus far cotton-candy sweet.

They suggest the most puddle-wonderful state convention, ever.

So you can’t tell what’s going on.

Except that it is so very, very nice, which probably means those filing the tweets are afraid to say anything informative.

The state Baptist newspaper there gives us a nice picture in which Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt appears to be killing a mosquito, with a few paragraphs and a note telling us to get the print edition. What to do. Buy a plane ticket?

Meanwhile, the state Baptist convention web server is overloaded or otherwise AWOL came back to life, without adding to what we know about the convention.

Related

Our growing list of Discovered Baptist State Convention and Baptist-related twitter hashtags.

Pwned: OneNewsNow swallows divorce ban parody

Please look here.
Then look at the OneNewsNow story.
OneNewsNow is the American Family Association (AFA) news service and you may wish to tell them, out of kindness, It’sAJoke.
Once featured on Cockeyed.com.
Sells a funny T-shirt.
Joe.My.God., maybe not AFA’s favorite blog, blew the whistle.

[H/T for the video: Madam Maracas]

Texas Baptist Standard rediscovers the Texas textbook fight?

The BStd Headline: Texas textbook battles have national impact

Which we and others have endlessly explained. And?

“What we teach in the public schools matters,” [Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C.] told a group at Northaven United Methodist Church in Dallas during the “Faith & Freedom Speaker Series,” sponsored by the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund.

Yep. There is a fight in under way. So important a fight that in addition to those linked to above, it has attracted the attention of a Hindu expert, gatherings of geeks and, of course, atheists.