Tag: Religion in America

Neil Malhotra and Yotam Margalit writing in the Boston Review:

Putnam, author of the book “Bowling Alone,” which tracked the decline in civic and community engagement in America (exemplified by the diminution of bowling leagues), fears the reduction in religiosity could have widespread negative impacts. His research shows that people who go to church are much more likely to vote, volunteer and give to charity.

When a Pew Survey studied the growing stream of people leaving the religions of their youth and eventually becoming people not connected with any religious tradition at all, few noticed the ones who grew up nonreligious and joined a church later in life.

Most who left both the Catholic Church and Protestant denominations and remain unaffiliated did so because they no longer agreed with the conservative teachings from the church on issues like abortion, homosexuality, the Bible and social justice issues like poverty, war and the death penalty.

Church politics has gone viral, mirroring many of the trends and techniques of secular politics. Daniel Burke sees the election of Kevin Thew Forrester as Bishop of Northern Michigan as the latest example.

Cowboy church isn’t the punch line to a joke, it’s an old tradition in the Southwest that is starting to grow on folks. Created as

Newsweek has an extended essay focusing on the implications of a recent Pew finding that fewer Americans than ever are reporting they are religious. While

Despite the Roman Catholic Church’s official opposition to abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, a Gallup analysis finds almost no difference between rank-and-file American Catholics and American non-Catholics in terms of finding the two issues morally acceptable.