Are Americans among the most religious people in the world? The answer depends on which “world” you’re talking about. If you’re referring to the entire planet, the answer is plainly “no.”
Today is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and 2009 is 150th anniversary of the publication of his Origin of the Species. The debate between evolution and religious faith appears to be as American as apple pie.
Yesterday President Obama took action to reorganize the White House Office for Faith-Based Initiatives by changing the name, the way the office is structured and
President Obama kept the tradition of US Presidents attending and speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast. Obama chose to emphasize the common experiences shared by
Diana Butler Bass is the guest host at the USA Today forum on Faith and Reason today. Your can ask her questions about her research and what she is thinking about now. She says she will haunt the site and answer questions all day. She says her main topics are vital mainline churches and “beyond liberal and conservative” but people can ask about anything they want.
An analysis of more than 350,000 interviews conducted by Gallup in 2008 finds Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas to be the most religious states in the nation. Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts are the least religious states.
Virtually every US president since Washington in 1789 has renewed the covenant in his inaugural address, often in biblical terms. Obama’s was a textbook example. There was the reference to the Exodus, a journey through the wilderness that involved crossing a sea: “They packed up their few worldly possessions and travelled across oceans.” There was the covenant itself: “Our Founding Fathers . . . drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man.”
A sizable majority of the country’s faithful no longer hew closely to orthodox teachings, and look more to themselves than to churches or denominations to define their religious convictions, according to two recent surveys. More than half of all Christians also believe that some non-Christians can get into heaven.
Father Neuhaus, a Roman Catholic convert from the Lutheran Church died on January 8th of complications from his cancer treatments. Neuhaus was best known as
An ongoing lawsuit that claims the US military isn’t willing to take appropriate action in cases of religious discrimination and is overly lax in allowing