Only 32% of Americans Like White Christian Nationalism (But That's Too Many!)

 

These charts are from the Public Religion Research Institute survey -- done between February 28th and December 8th of 2025 of a nationwide sample of 22,111 adults, with a 0.87 point margin of error.

67% of Sermons Mentioned Election At Least 1 Time In 2020

 

The chart above is from the Pew Research Center. Between August 31st and November 8th of 2020, they examined 12,832 sermons in christian churches. It turns out that 67% of those sermons mentioned the 2020 election at least one time. About 20% of them just encouraged voting, but 46% discussed issues, candidates, or parties (which is a violation of the law making those churches tax-free)..

Study: Atheists Treat Christians Better Than Vice-Versa

A study printed in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (by Colleen M. Cowgill, Kimberly Rios, and Ain Simpson) shows that atheists treat christians better than christians treat atheists.

This doesn't surprise me. Atheists understand what it's like to betrayed differently (discriminated against). That makes them less likely to treat other people that way. Today, many atheists are bold in declaring their atheism, and may even attack religion in general, but this does not translate into how they treat their fellow humans.

Here is how Michael Stone at Progressive Secular Humanist describes the study:

Science: Atheists behave more fairly towards Christians than Christians behave towards atheists according to a study published by the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

The study, titled: “Generous heathens? Reputational concerns and atheists’ behavior toward Christians in economic games,” found that 

Christians demonstrated an ingroup bias towards other Christians in an economic game but atheists did not have an ingroup bias towards other atheists.

The Independent reports:

Atheists are more generous toward Christians than Christians are toward them, a new study has claimed.

Researchers at Ohio University asked participants to share monetary rewards with partners in a version of the “dictator game”, in which one person had no power to affect the division of the bounty.

When atheists were told of their partner’s religious beliefs, they “behaved impartially toward ingroup and outgroup partners,” the study’s authors wrote in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 

However, “Christians consistently demonstrated an ingroup bias.”

Lead author of the study, Colleen Cowgill, explained to PsyPost the rationale behind her research:

The rise of the so-called ‘New Atheists’ about a decade ago coupled with the ongoing ‘culture wars’ between religious and secular groups in the United States has led atheists as a population to gain an unprecedented level of visibility in this country in recent years, even as their prevalence has only incrementally increased. This has sparked a particular interest in anti-atheist prejudice research in social psychology.

From this previous research, we know that the general population in America tends to stereotype atheists as being immoral and untrustworthy – a reputation that many atheists understandably find distressing. My primary interest was in how atheists themselves respond to these negative stereotypes.

Psychological research has demonstrated repeatedly that individuals facing negative stereotypes are not passive observers of this social landscape, but rather are impacted and react in a dynamic way to negative group-level judgments important to their identities…

The psychological stress of fearing that your performance may confirm a negative stereotype about your group serves to limit the cognitive resources you have available for performing well on the task. Another example of this is people’s response to what is termed ‘identity threat,’ or the threat of being disparaged or discriminated against due to one’s group membership. We often see that negative stereotypes about a group can lead members of that group to behave in compensatory ways that ostensibly seek to disconfirm that stereotype, such as when American immigrants strive to emphasize their American identity when it is threatened.

This was the rationale behind my hypotheses stating that atheists’ behavior toward Christians in economic games might be different from Christians’ behavior toward atheists in economic games. In the same way that many White Americans are often stereotyped as racist and have consequently been shown by research to be particularly motivated to be liked by Black Americans during interracial interactions, I thought that atheists would be uniquely motivated to disconfirm negative stereotypes about their amorality or untrustworthy nature during interactions with Christians.

I chose to operationalize this through an economic game because I thought it would be an ideal paradigm to capture constructs like ‘generosity’ and ‘fairness,’ which can directly relate to ideas of morality and trustworthiness. Indeed, we found in multiple studies that our atheist participants behaved more fairly towards partners they believed were Christians than our Christians participants behaved towards partners they believed were atheists, which are results that appear to support the original hypotheses.

These effects disappeared when the participant’s own religious identity was concealed. Under those conditions, atheists and Christians demonstrated the same typically observed in-group bias, which rules out the possibility that the results could be entirely explained due to discrimination on the part of the Christians.

Bottom line: Research shows that atheists behave more fairly toward Christians than Christians behave toward atheists.

Christians Are Overrepresented In The 116th Congress

The charts above are from the Pew Research Center. They show the religious make-up of the United States 116th Congress.

Many christians, especially evangelicals, like to claim they are being discriminated against in this country. That is simply not true, and the make-up of Congress reflects that. Christians have a significantly higher proportion of Congress than they do in the U.S. population -- and that is true of both protestants and catholics.

This erroneous belief that they are discriminated against probably springs from the extension of equal rights to groups that many christians discriminated against themselves (using religion as a justification for that discrimination). What they don't seem to understand is that granting equal rights to others doesn't take any rights away from them.

Our Constitution is not a religious document, and the Founding Fathers never meant for it to be one. They went out of their way to create a secular government that would allow all religious people the freedom to practice their religion -- and allow those who are not a part of any religion to be free from religious intolerance. We have not always lived up to those ideals, but we are making progress toward that.

Being prevented from writing your own religious principles and dogma into law is NOT discrimination. It is the constitutional protection of the right of ALL Americans to be free (to practice or not practice any religion).

I am just thankful that the non-religious still have some rights in this country. And someday, we might actually have adequate representation in this country's Congress. Each generation is less religious than the one that came before it, and someday this will truly be a secular country with a secular Congress -- just like the Founding Fathers dreamed.

The Religious Right Has Become Sociopathic

(Cartoon image is by Mike Peters at grimmy.com.)

The following is much of a thought-provoking article by Tim Rymel in The Huffington Post:

Since Evangelical Christianity began infiltrating politics, officially in the late 1970s, there has been a disturbing trend to limit or remove rights from those who don’t meet the conservative idea of an American. Many of these initiatives come in the form of “religious freedom” laws, which empower discrimination, while other legislation targets immigrants who believe differently. The result has been a sharp division in American culture, and the redefinition of Christian theology. 

Evangelical speaker, author, and university professor, Tony Campolo, said Christianity was redefined in the mid-70s by positions of “pro-life” and opposing gay marriage. “Suddenly theology fell to the background,” he said. And somewhere in the middle of all the change, Evangelical Christianity crossed the line of faith and belief to hatred and abuse. Those who cruelly implement the actions of their faith are oblivious to the destruction they cause to their religion, or the people their beliefs impact. Is it fair to call it sociopathic?

Psychology Today listed sixteen characteristics of sociopathic behaviors, which include: Untruthfulness and insincerity, superficial charm and good intelligence, lack of remorse or shame, poor judgment and failure to learn by experience, pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love, unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations, specific loss of insight, and general poverty in major affective reactions (in other words, appropriate emotional responses).

We see examples of these kinds of behaviors in church leaders and followers. . . .

It’s common for us to avoid cognitive dissonance, when our beliefs dictate one thing, but our experiences show us something else is true. We call this living in denial, and we all do it on one level or another. But when we choose our “truth” while coldly watching a fellow human being suffer, we’ve crossed a line of mental health. 

The 2016 election demonstrated an especially high level of insincerity, shamelessness, poor judgment and pathological egocentricity among Christian evangelicals. James Dobson, who once said of Bill Clinton, “Character does matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world,” and then said of Donald Trump, “I’m not under any illusions that he is an outstanding moral example. “It’s a cliché but true: We are electing a commander-in-chief, not a theologian-in-chief.” 

The evangelical Christian message is loud and clear. They care for no one but themselves. Their devotion is to the version of Christianity they have created, which calls for ruthless abandonment of immigrants, women, children – even their own – and anyone else who doesn’t fall inline with their message. Social justice, which is mentioned in Bible verses over two thousand times, has been replaced with hardline political ideology. Principle over people. Indifference over involvement. Judgment over generosity. 

Every generation redefines what it means to be, or belong to a religious group. Religious ideologies, interpretations, and doctrines are fluid. But whatever it is, or whatever it becomes, is made by the people who belong to the religion and what they collectively decide to make it.

Not All Protestant Groups Are The Same On Moral Issues

From the Gallup Poll.

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs surveys each May between 2001 and 2017. Most of these surveys were conducted with random samples of approximately 1,000 national adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of 17,765 national adults in the aggregated sample, the margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The results based on the aggregated samples of denominational groups vary in sample size from 222 to 1,450, with margins of sampling error between ±3 and ±8 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. 

The Projected Growth Of Religion (2015 To 2060)

I thought the chart above, from the Pew Research Center, was interesting -- and thought it was fitting to post it on this religious weekend. Currently, christians make up about 31% of the world's population, while muslims make up about 24%. But by 2060, with muslims growing at a significantly faster rate. they will make up roughly equal percentages of the world population -- with christians being about 32% and muslims being about 31%.

I think that is probably true, since the estimates are figured on birth and death rates -- and those religions (like all religions) depend mainly on people being born into the religion for their growth.

The one area that I disagree with is the projected growth of the non-religious. They project the percentage of non-religious will fall from 16% to 13%. If you look at only the birth and death rates, that would be true. But the growth of the non-religious has never depended on both and death rates.

The non-religious are those who accept science -- including contraception to plan their families. While the growth of the non-religious has been larger with each generation in the United States (and the world), that is not because they are having more babies than the religious -- in fact, they are probably having less. Their growth is because when children mature into adults they think more deeply about religious beliefs -- and a growing percentage discard those beliefs.

This has been true of a growing percentage in each of the last several generations, and there's no reason to believe the percentage of the non-religious won't continue to grow in future generations.

Trump Would Let Churches Engage In Partisan Politics

(Cartoon image is by Nick Anderson in the Houston Chronicle.)

Churches and other religious organizations are considered to be charities by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). That means they are tax exempt. But that tax exempt status has a requirement to be maintained -- the religious organizations cannot involve themselves in partisan politics. They can encourage political participation of their members, and they can encourage members to vote. But they cannot instruct their members to vote for a particular party or a particular candidate.

Donald Trump wants to change that. He knows that he got significant support from right-wing fundamentalist church members in the last election, and he knows that those members (and their church leaders) tend to support his Republican Party. He now wants to reward those churches and church leaders for their support, and insure that they can campaign for him and his party openly in the future. Toward that end, Trump says he wants to change the rules to allow churches to participate in partisan politics while keeping their tax exempt status.

This is just wrong. It is a huge benefit for churches and religious organization to not have to pay taxes. And the taxes they don't pay has to be made up by all individual taxpayers (even those who are not members of that organization, or any religious institution). It is bad enough that they don't have to pay taxes, but it is ridiculous to allow them to participate in partisan politics while paying no taxes.

It is also against the will of the American people. Poll after poll has shown that a significant majority of Americans don't want partisan politics preached from the pulpit. They like the rules as they are. But on this issue, just like many others, Trump doesn't seem to care what Americans want. He is going to act for the benefit of himself and his party, regardless of what the public wants.

This change to the IRS laws must be opposed.

Christians Are Again Overrepresented In 115th Congress

The charts above are from the Pew Research Center. They used information from their own surveys during 2016 and information from the CQ Roll Call.

If you wondered by this country still has a problem in maintaining true religious freedom (as mandated by the U.S. Constitution), these charts can help answer that. They show that once again, just like in the past, christians have more than their share of congressional representation, and other religions (and those without religion) don't have their fair share of congressional representation.

Even though christians only make up about 71% of the U.S. population, they have 90.7% of congressmen adhering to their religion (91.3% of House members and 88% of senators). Mean while, the fastest growing segment of the population (those unaffiliated with any religion) currently makes up 23% of the total population, but have only 0.2% representation in Congress (0.2% of House members and 0% of senators). All of the non-christian religions are also not fairly represented.

Is it any wonder that true religious freedom eludes us?

Presidential Preference Among U.S. Religious Groups

A few days ago, I brought you the results of a religious breakdown among christian groups in this country from the Public Religion Research Institute. Now the Gallup Poll has released a similar survey (done between July 1st and August 28th), and their survey includes other religions.

It shows Trump has an advantage among White protestants (+28), White catholics (+10), and mormons (+17). Clinton has the advantage among Black protestants (+66), Hispanic catholics (+55), jews (+29), muslims (+55), other non-christian religions (+30), and the non-religious (+25).

Political Views Color What Is Viewed As "Christian"

I am a committed atheist (and have been for over 40 years), but I found this survey very interesting. While all christians claim to get their religious views from the Bible, that may not be true. It seems that political views can alter one's views of what it takes to be a good christian. As this poll shows, while reading the same Bible, Democrats and Independents and Republicans have differing views on how to be a good christian.

If Jesus was a real person and intended to start the new religion called christianity (both of which are in doubt), I wonder what he would think about people letting their political views color their religious views? Wouldn't he be upset at some christians judging other christians -- especially when that judgement seems to be a political one?

The charts above were made from a new YouGov Poll -- done between April 1st and 3rd of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of 4.2 points.

The Terrorism That Republican Candidates Won't Talk About

(This image of Republican debaters is by DonkeyHotey.)

Throughout this campaign the Republican presidential candidates have repeatedly brought up the specter of jihadist terrorism in this country -- and they did it again in their debate a few days ago. This is a naked attempt to appeal to their base's fear and hatred of muslims -- both here and abroad. It is not a real effort to hold a rational discussion on terrorism in the United States.

I say that because they all completely ignored a recent act of terrorism in this country -- the terrorist attack on a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado. They were eager to talk about the terrorist attack in California, because it was done by muslims. But they don't want to talk about terrorist attacks done by right-wing christians.

If they did, then they would have to admit that many of the right-wing christian terrorists are radicalized by the words of Republican candidates -- and by their propaganda organization, Fox News. The GOP candidates (and Fox News) have been preaching hate for all they consider to be "enemies" (muslims, President Obama, immigrants, Democrats, liberal, minorities, Planned Parenthood, etc.) -- saying all of these "enemies" are destroying the United States. It is more than a bit disingenuous to say that this continual hate speech has not radicalized many of the right-wing christian terrorists.

And their refusal to recognize that terrorism in this country is not done by jihadists alone, means they have no real solution to terrorism in this country. Their only "solution" is to discriminate against muslims and broader the U.S. participation in the war in Iraq/Syria (both of which would just cause more American deaths and radicalize more jihadist terrorists). It is a bumper sticker solution that won't work in the real world.

Another reason it won't work is because most terrorist attacks in the United States are not done by jihadists, but by home-grown right-wing christian terrorists. Americans are far more likely to be the victim of a right-wing terrorist than a jihadist terrorist, as it is just a fact that most terrorist incidents in this country are carried out by right-wing christian terrorists.

We do need to have a rational discussion on how to suppress terrorist attacks in this country, but the Republicans are not willing to participate in that debate. They are only interested in bigoted hate and fear mongering.

Terrorist Strikes In Colorado Springs

While right-wing politicians were busy trying to scare Americans over the possibility of a terrorist attack in this country by islamic jihadists, terrorism struck in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A gunman attacked the Planned Parenthood clinic in that city, killing a police officer and two civilians and wounding nine others (three police officers and six civilians).  But this was no islamic jihadist. It was a white male, and almost assuredly a right-wing christian terrorist.

I'm sure the right-wing will take exception to my using the word terrorist. They prefer that those on the right who commit these horrific acts be called "mentally unstable" or "lone wolf attackers". I find that to be disingenuous. Except for the number of victims and attackers, I fail to see how this is any different from the Paris attacks (which everyone is quick to label as terrorism). In both instances, we have religious extremists attacking innocent victims for a political reason. That is terrorism -- no matter the race, ethnicity, or religion of the attackers.

Hopefully, this will remind (or make clear to) Americans that the biggest terrorist risk in this country is not from islamic jihadists (and certainly not from thoroughly vetted refugees), but from right-wing home-grown christian terrorists (who are almost exclusively white and male). A lot of our politicians, especially Republicans, don't want to admit that -- but that is the reality.

(Photo of terrorist being taken into custody is by Reuters. CBS News identifies him as Robert Lewis Dear, age 59.)

GOP Uses The Politics Of Fear (And Ignores The Facts)

(This image is from the flickr page of user EN2008.)

The Republican candidates for president, and their elected cohorts in Congress, have been quick to jump on the tragedy in Paris and try to turn it to their own benefit. This is nothing new. They know their domestic policies, especially their economic policy (trickle-down) has failed, so they are using the politics of fear to enhance their electoral chances. They believe if they can scare the American voters enough, and convince them that their party will provide a safer country, then they can win the next election -- in spite of the fact that their domestic policies have nearly destroyed our economy (and they have no intention of changing them, since they benefit their rich buddies).

Terrorism is a real issue, but not as the Republicans would have us believe. They want Americans to believe that the only terrorist threat we face is from radical muslims. This is not new either. For the last decade and a half, the GOP has gone out of their way to demonize muslims and paint their religion as violent. The problem is that ignores the facts about terrorism in the United States.

The truth is that a significant majority of terrorism in the U.S. is not carried out by muslims, but by right-wing extremists (most of which claim to be christian and patriotic). These groups (militia's, white supremacists, soveriegnists, etc.) pose a significantly greater threat to the safety of Americans. But the Republicans don't want you to know that -- and have gone so far as to have that threat removed from government reports. They don't want you to know it because those extremists are in their own base.

This shows their scare tactics are purely political. If they truly worried about terrorism in this country, then they would be talking about all of the terrorism -- including the threat posed by the ultra-right-wingers. But that would anger some in their own party's base, and they don't want that. Their tactic is to win votes through fear -- not expose the extremists in their own party.

Here are the real facts on terrorism in the United States (from a June 2015 article in the New York Times). I post here a part of that article:

If you keep up with the news, you know that a small but steady stream of American Muslims, radicalized by overseas extremists, are engaging in violence here in the United States.

But headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. Just ask the police.

In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism. . . .

Despite public anxiety about extremists inspired by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, the number of violent plots by such individuals has remained very low. Since 9/11, an average of nine American Muslims per year have been involved in an average of six terrorism-related plots against targets in the United States. Most were disrupted, but the 20 plots that were carried out accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.

In contrast, right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities, according to a study by Arie Perliger, a professor at the United States Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. The toll has increased since the study was released in 2012.

Other data sets, using different definitions of political violence, tell comparable stories. The Global Terrorism Database maintained by the Start Center at the University of Maryland includes 65 attacks in the United States associated with right-wing ideologies and 24 by Muslim extremists since 9/11. The International Security Program at the New America Foundation identifies 39 fatalities from “non-jihadist” homegrown extremists and 26 fatalities from “jihadist” extremists.

Meanwhile, terrorism of all forms has accounted for a tiny proportion of violence in America. There have been more than 215,000 murders in the United States since 9/11. For every person killed by Muslim extremists, there have been 4,300 homicides from other threats.

Public debates on terrorism focus intensely on Muslims. But this focus does not square with the low number of plots in the United States by Muslims, and it does a disservice to a minority group that suffers from increasingly hostile public opinion. As state and local police agencies remind us, right-wing, anti-government extremism is the leading source of ideological violence in America.

Percentage Of Christians Is Shrinking In The United States

A new Pew Research Center study shows that the number of christians in the United States continues to shrink. Note in the chart above, made from the results of that study, that all christian sects have lost about 7.8% of their membership just in the last eight years (since 2007). And it is not in just one group -- all of the christian groups have lost membership -- protestants 4.8%, catholics 3.1%, orthodox 0.1%, and mormons 0.1%.

The non-christian religions have seen some tiny growth, but there is only one group that has seen significantly larger growth -- those with no religion at all, which showed a growth of 6.7%. In fact, the non-religious are now the second largest group in this country. The largest group is the evangelicals (62 million), followed by the non-religious (56 million), catholics (51 million), mainline protestants (36 million), and Black protestants (16 million).

If this trend continues, and there is no reason to believe that it won't, in another decade or two the non-religious could be the largest group in this country. The chart below shows the generational change in religion. Note that with each new generation the number of christians shrinks, and the number of the non-religious grows. In the latest generation, the millennials, the number of non-religious people is now about 34-36%.

Religious Service Attendance And Same-Sex Marriage

Evangelicals and other right-wing christians (and muslims) like to hide their bigotry behind their religion. It's the only excuse they can think of to oppose the equal rights guaranteed by our secular constitution. That's why this chart didn't surprise me very much. It shows that those who want to ban same-sex marriage are those who attend their religious services the most. That makes sense -- since it would be very hard to use religion as an excuse if you never, rarely, or only intermittently attended those services (which would make it too obvious that religion is just being used as an excuse for personal bigotry).

The chart was made from a recently released Gallup Poll. That poll was done between 2012 and 2014 of a random national sample of more than 4,000 adults. The numbers are the averages of the polls taken during that time period.

This survey determined that 54% of the total population supported legal same-sex marriage. That has since climbed to about 6 out of 10 Americans. Only one group had a significant majority (69%) opposing same-sex marriage -- those who attend religious services every week. The group that attends nearly every week aren't nearly as convinced same-sex marriage is bad. They are split right down the middle (48%-49%). All other groups showed a significant majority supporting legalization -- attending once a month (58%), seldom attending (65%), and those never attending (75%).

Biblical Marriage (Is Not Just A Man And A Woman)

(The image at the left is from patheos.com.)

Christian bigots like to hide their hatred behind religion. They will tell you that they believe in the traditional marriage as defined in the bible.

That makes me believe they haven't read much of the bible, because marriage in the bible is far more expansive than just a man and a woman. It has many variations -- most of which are no longer considered moral in this country (and some are downright illegal).

The christian bigots seem to have the ability to believe only the parts of the bible they like, while ignoring those parts that are inconvenient to their preferred point of view.

Those people would be well-advised to read the following article -- written by Rebecca Todd Peters for The Huffington Post. Ms. Peters writes:

This week's Supreme Court debates about the definition of marriage echo the same debates that have been dominant in communities and states across the country for the past several years. Justice Kennedy, who appears conflicted about where he stands on this issue, expressed his concern about changing a conception of marriage that "has persisted for thousands of years."

In truth, like most social institutions, the institution of marriage has shifted and changed over the years in ways that have strengthened it and made it both more accessible and more just.

200 years ago, we debated whether or not slaves should be allowed to marry. 150 years ago, we debated whether married women should remain their husband's property under the principle of coverture (the principle of two-becoming-one-flesh), or whether women should be regarded as their own persons, with full rights and responsibilities. 47 years ago, we debated whether or not interracial marriages should be legal.

In 1967, the Loving v. Virginia ruling eradicated state laws prohibiting interracial marriage and thus transformed the institution of marriage yet again, in ways that struck down discriminatory state laws in much the same way that a ruling in the current case might do. 

That ruling read, in part, "Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man [sic]," fundamental to our very existence and survival . . .To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes . . . is surely to deprive the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law."

Even more recently, we have debated no-fault divorce, marital rape laws, and now marriage equality. In each of these cases where we have debated about the nature of the institution of marriage, we have shifted and expanded our understanding in ways that moved us a little closer toward justice in our society.

But, so often in this debate it is Christianity and the Bible that are brought up as the ultimate weapon in defense of a marriage between one man and one woman. The Genesis text that states that a man shall leave his parents and join with his wife to become one flesh is trotted out as "proof" that God has defined marriage as between one man and one woman.

Unfortunately, these folks must have stopped reading their Bibles at the end of Genesis, chapter two. Even a cursory read of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament demonstrates that marriage was not understood or practiced in any way related to the modern idealism we have superimposed on this text.

Marriage in the Bible was much more about property rights, ensuring paternity of offspring, succession, political alliances and tribal stability than it was about companionship, mutual support and affection as we think of marriage today. The patriarchs of the Jewish and Christian tradition often had sex with multiple women, usually, but not always, for the purpose of procreation. Many of the women in the Bible who were slaves, or servants, or handmaids were reportedly "given" by the legal or primary wife to her husband for the purposes of securing children. The notion of consent, particularly for women, in matters of marriage or sexual intercourse is not a relevant moral norm in most of scripture.

Wives could "give" their female slaves to their husbands for the purpose of sexual intercourse either as co-wives in polygamous marriages or as concubines. Concubines were women engaged in sexual relationships with men whom they did not marry. Both of these practices are commonplace in the Bible. Sarah is reported to have "given" her maid servant, Hagar, to Abraham "as a wife" so that God's promise of offspring could be fulfilled (Gen. 16:3). Other notorious polygamous marriages in the Hebrew Bible include Esau, Moses, Jacob, Gideon, David and Solomon who reportedly had 600 wives and 300 concubines!

Many prominent Biblical patriarachs had concubines, often in addition to their wives. Perhaps the most notorious concubine is the unnamed woman of Judges 19 who belonged to a Levite. She was offered up to a hostile crowd of ruffians to save the Levite man from harm. The crowd gang-raped her and upon returning to their home, the Levite cut her body into twelve pieces and sent the pieces out to the tribes of Israel as a warning of the depravity of the current age. No better example exists of how cultural context defines moral norms than the fact that this passage purports to tell the story of the moral breech of the code of hospitality that resulted in the attack on the Levite rather than the horror of a man offering up his sexual partner (or common-law wife) to be gang-raped all night to the point of death and then to cut her body into pieces to serve as a warning to his kinfolk. 

And don't get me started on Jesus' thoughts on marriage! He encouraged people to leave their wives, children, parents and families in order to follow him (Lk 18:28-30); encouraged followers to reject their families (Lk 14:26); and challenged conventional notions of family (Mt 10:34-39, not to mention prohibiting divorce (Mk 10: 10-12).

God protect us from Biblical sexual ethics, Biblical marriages, and Biblical literalists! 

The truth of the scripture is in its enduring message of justice and love as moral norms for humankind, marriage equality is surely an fitting expression both of these norms.

Muslim Extremists Are Not The Only Violent Theists

(The image above is from the Library of Congress, and happened in Texas in 1916. It is the photo referenced in the article below.)

Much has been made of the terrible burning death of a Jordanian pilot by muslim extremists. And some on the right would have you think that islam is a violent religion, while christianity is a peaceful one. Neither is true. Both religions have some good people and some violent ones (who are willing to do horrible things to other humans to support their sick beliefs). The inimitable Bill Moyers deftly points this out in an excellent article he wrote on his own website. He writes:

They burned him alive in an iron cage, and as he screamed and writhed in the agony of hell they made a sport of his death.

After listening to one newscast after another rightly condemn the barbaric killing of that Jordanian air force pilot at the bloody hands of ISIS, I couldn’t sleep. My mind kept roaming the past trying to retrieve a vaguely remembered photograph that I had seen long ago in the archives of a college library in Texas.

Suddenly, around two in the morning, the image materialized in my head. I made my way down the hall to my computer and typed in: “Waco, Texas. Lynching.”

Sure enough, there it was: the charred corpse of a young black man, tied to a blistered tree in the heart of the Texas Bible Belt. Next to the burned body, young white men can be seen smiling and grinning, seemingly jubilant at their front-row seats in a carnival of death. One of them sent a picture postcard home: “This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe.”

The victim’s name was Jesse Washington. The year was 1916. America would soon go to war in Europe “to make the world safe for democracy.” My father was twelve, my mother eight. I was born 18 years later, at a time, I would come to learn, when local white folks still talked about Washington’s execution as if it were only yesterday. This was not medieval Europe. Not the Inquisition. Not a heretic burned at the stake by some ecclesiastical authority in the Old World. This was Texas, and the white people in that photograph were farmers, laborers, shopkeepers, some of them respectable congregants from local churches in and around the growing town of Waco.

Here is the photograph. Take a good look at Jesse Washington’s stiffened body tied to the tree. He had been sentenced to death for the murder of a white woman. No witnesses saw the crime; he allegedly confessed but the truth of the allegations would never be tested. The grand jury took just four minutes to return a guilty verdict, but there was no appeal, no review, no prison time. Instead, a courtroom mob dragged him outside, pinned him to the ground, and cut off his testicles. A bonfire was quickly built and lit. For two hours, Jesse Washington — alive — was raised and lowered over the flames. Again and again and again. City officials and police stood by, approvingly. According to some estimates, the crowd grew to as many as 15,000. There were taunts, cheers and laughter. Reporters described hearing “shouts of delight.”

When the flames died away, Washington’s body was torn apart and the pieces were sold as souvenirs. The party was over.

Many years later, as a young man, I visited Waco’s Baylor University, often referred to as the Texas Baptist Vatican. I had been offered a teaching position there. I sat for a while in the school’s Armstrong Browning Library, one of the most beautiful in America, containing not only the works of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the acclaimed Victorian poets, but also stained glass windows, marble columns, and elegant ceilings that bring to mind the gorgeous interior of Michelangelo’s Laurentian library in Florence.

Sitting there, I found it hard to reconcile the beauty and quiet of that sanctuary with the photograph that I had been shown earlier by a man named Harry Provence, publisher of the local newspaper. Seeing it, I realized that as young Jesse Washington was being tortured, students his own age, some of them studying for the ministry, were just finishing their spring semester. In 1905, when another black man had been lynched in Waco, Baylor’s president became a leader of the anti-lynching movement. But ugly memories still divided the town.

Jesse Washington was just one black man to die horribly at the hands of white death squads. Between 1882 and 1968 — 1968! — there were 4,743 recorded lynchings in the US. About a quarter of them were white people, many of whom had been killed for sympathizing with black folks. My father, who was born in 1904 near Paris, Texas, kept in a drawer that newspaper photograph from back when he was a boy of thousands of people gathered as if at a picnic to feast on the torture and hanging of a black man in the center of town. On a journey tracing our roots many years later, my father choked and grew silent as we stood near the spot where it had happened.

Yes, it was hard to get back to sleep the night we heard the news of the Jordanian pilot’s horrendous end. ISIS be damned! I thought. But with the next breath I could only think that our own barbarians did not have to wait at any gate. They were insiders. Home grown. Godly. Our neighbors, friends, and kin. People like us.

The Number Of Christians Continues To Shrink In The U.S.

There have been several surveys showing that the percentage of Americans that are religious (particularly christian) has been shrinking with each generation -- and that currently about 20% of the general public in the United States say they are not religious (although some claim to be "spiritual"). Among the millennials, this is about 30% or slightly more.

That actually makes christianity look pretty good. There is less than 10% of the population belonging to religions other than christianity, so it makes it look like over 70% of the United States populace is made up of practicing christians. That is simply not true though, and this is pointed out in a new book called Churchless, written by David Kinsman and George Barna. These are not atheists attacking christianity, but christians worried about what is happening to the church in this country.

To come up with their figures, they studied about 20 polls done in the last few years by the Barna Group. Each survey contained a random sample of more than 1,000 adults, and has a margin of error of 3.1 points. Instead of asking people if they were religious, they divided the respondents into "churched" and "unchurched". The results they found are illustrated in the charts above. They first divided survey respondents into four groups:

Actively Churched (49%) -- This group regularly attends church (at least once a month).

Minimally Churched (8%) -- This group attends church infrequently and unpredictably. This would include those who go only on Easter and Christmas, and maybe a couple of more times in a year.

De-Churched (33%) -- These people used to attend church, but no longer belong to a church or attend one at all. Some of them may say they are christian if asked, but they don't act that way -- basically leading secular lives.

Purely Unchurched (10%) -- These people have never attended any church, and have no desire to attend one.

This means that active christians make up only 57% of the United States population, and many of them only attend church once a month or even less -- while 43% of the population don't attend church at all, and lead secular lives by choice (christians in name only, those claiming to be spiritual but not religious, agnostics, and atheists).

When you look at christianity in this way (churched and unchurched), it is easy to see that christianity is in trouble in this country. Kinsman and Barna go on to say that the numbers of new members claimed by some churches reflects basically only people moving from one christian church to another, and includes very few people who were unchurched and became churched -- because the number of unchurched Americans is growing. This unchurched group becomes larger with each generation.

That is illustrated in the bottom chart above -- which shows the Elder generation (born in 1945 or earlier) with 28% unchurched, the Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) with 35% unchurched, the Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1983) with 40% unchurched, and the Millennials (born in 1984 or later) with a whopping 48% unchurched.

The truth is that on any given Sunday significantly less than half of all Americans will go to church. Christians, especially evangelicals, like to claim the United States is a christian nation -- but the fact is we are a secular nation, and we are becoming more secular all the time.

Some Of The Dumbest Things That Christians Say

(The image at left is from ClipartPal.)

The following was not written by an atheist or skeptic. It was written by Tiffany Willis, who is a practicing christian. It turns out that many christians, like Ms. Willis, are embarrassed by the dumb things that come out of the mouths of some christians (mainly right-wing evangelicals). Here is what she has to say about those people -- and what she believes are the dumbest things they say:

Evangelical Christians have become stupid.

Or they’ve chosen to be stupid. Or they’re just plain crazy. Or…I don’t know. Rather than believing that God is an intelligent designer, they seem to believe he was a wizard with a magic wand. Instead of seeing God as the Great Scientist, they seem to think God is stupid and can’t have possibly created the heavens and the earth with science rather than wizardry. Evangelical Christians are guilty of making those of us who are sane Christians look stupid. They’re giving us a bad name. They are effectively turning us into the most hated group of religious people in the world. . .

The fact is, I hear and see Christians saying really stupid things. It’s embarrassing. Here’s the best of the best. Or the worst of the worst

1. Evolution is just a theory. By that reasoning, belief in a Biblical God is also a theory — at least to non-believers.
2. If you don’t believe in God, you don’t know right from wrong. Ridiculous. Every day, we hear stories about pastors and other religious figures in a scandal of some sort. Infidelity, theft, child molestation, etc…Their belief in God didn’t help them be more moral, did it?
3. You can’t prove God doesn’t exist. Can we prove that he does? Most non-believers say that the burden of proof is on us who are theists.
4. Anything said while speaking in tongues. I grew up in an Assembly of God church. Speaking in tongues was a common practice. The way it works is that one person supposedly gets taken over by the Holy Spirit and begins to chant gibberish. Then after a few minutes, another church member “translates” the message from God. OK, so the omniscient being (God) that I worship doesn’t know English? This is a great example of Christians implying that God is stupid.
5. Nothing can come from nothing, so an intelligent being must have created it. I personally agree, but did it genuinely definitely happen in seven 24-hour days? I don’t believe it did.
6. A Godly home guarantees Godly children. No. Just no.
7. When someone dies, they become an angel. This is completely not Biblical. Human beings and angels are completely different creatures. The Bible is very clear about this.
8. Put God back in schools. Again, he is an omniscient being. If he wants to be there, he’s there.
9. Keep the Christ in Christmas. Um…no. Man put the Christ in Christmas.
10. We’re in the end times — Jesus is coming soon. The Bible is very clear that no one knows the time of Christ’s return.
11. If you have enough faith, you’ll be healed. I’ve known many people who had lots of faith and they weren’t healed. If non-believers die of horrible disease, Christians say that they didn’t have faith enough to be healed. If Christians die of horrible disease, Christians say that “God healed them completely and took them home” or “God needed them in heaven.”
12. God told me to _______. This isn’t provable on any level. If God did tell you to do something, that was a conversation with no witnesses. It’s asking a lot to expect people to believe that.
13. It’s un-Christian to question anything in the Bible. God (the omniscient being) gave you a brain. Use it.
14. God destroyed ______ with a hurricane (or fire or whatever). That’s very much a logical fallacy, because when it’s done to Christians, they say that the devil is testing them. Or God is testing them. Yet when it happens to anyone else, it’s God punishing the victims. Shut up.
15. If you’re not ashamed to say you believe in God, share this photo (or status or whatever). Because God is spending all of his time on Facebook patrolling memes?
16. Kangaroos were the first to sink during the great flood because they have pouches that filled up with water. Stupid. Just stupid.
17. Most homosexuals molest children. Actually, the horror stories we hear more often than not involve a heterosexual adult who has preyed on a child.
18. The miracles that happened in the Bible prove that God exists. Do the miracles that happen in a Harry Potter book prove that, too? Again, we have to refine our argument if we expect non-believers to take us seriously in any way.
19. Graffiti is a sign of the abandonment of God. What…?
20. Animals ended up on different continents by making rafts out of logs that were knocked down by the great flood. To float across oceans. Um…yeah.
21. Fossils were put here by God to test our faith. Yes, someone actually said this to me. My ex-husband is finishing up his degree in Geology. One of his professors has a father who is an evangelical Christian. When the professor asks his Dad “well how do you explain fossils, etc…if the world is only 7,000 years old?” His Dad’s response? “God put all of that stuff here to test our faith.”OK so, God really enjoys messing with people’s heads and playing games? Pin the tail on the belief? Shut up. Why would anyone want to be a part of our religion if this kind of nonsense were true?
22. Our Founding Fathers were Christians. Nope. At least not all of them were.

“Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies.” – Thomas Jefferson

“In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.” – James Madison

“Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.” – Benjamin Franklin

“I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.” – George Washington

“The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.” – John Adams