Most Muslims in Region Reject Violence Against Civilians – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

The Pew Forum on Religion continues to bring us facts and figures to enlighten our view of the religious world which is often clouded by a sensationalist media and the rose colored lenses of young ambitious journalists trying to move up the career ladder or older ones stuck in yesterday’s phobias and mired in a short and myopic view of a changing modern world where the acts of the few motivate and move the masses through the loud megaphone that is our entertainment driven media establishment…. Read the Pew article and tell us what you think…

“A new Pew Research Center survey report finds high levels of concern about religious extremism among Muslims in the North Caucasus area of Russia and the neighboring Central Asian countries of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The survey also finds that few Muslims across the region support the use of violence against civilians in the name of Islam, though there is somewhat more support for suicide bombing and similar violence among Muslims in Kyrgyzstan than in Russia or Kazakhstan.”

via Most Muslims in Region Reject Violence Against Civilians – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

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Equating Islam with terrorism – chicagotribune.com

When the media feeds xenophobia, sensationalism, ethnocentrism and religious bigotry, the crazies and the extremists win.  The crazies and the extremists are such a minute minority but their acts are so big and their intentions are to cloud our judgement and make us crazy.  The media’s handling of these acts magnifies them and makes these pitiful bigots super heroes, if evil ones.  They become larger than life and feed our need to catch and conquer the proverbial boogyman.  Read the following article by a Chicago journalist for some clarity and what is happening to us every time we over state the role of religion in violent acts that are perpetrated by people who in the end are not very religious at all…

“Before we knew anything about the dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, we knew that he “recently became a devout Muslim who prayed five times a day.” This piece of information was placed in the lead of an Associated Press article published as the police were still on the hunt for Tsarnaev’s younger brother and alleged accomplice, Dzhokhar.

As the day went on with increasing panic and an intensifying sense of terror emanating from television and computer screens across America, and news outlets scrambled to release sound bites and tweetable articles with any information they could scrounge up on …”

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Suddenly, They’re All Gone – NYTimes.com

As the baby boom generation we have had all the benefits that come from the exercise craze and the health food awareness diet bonanza.  We have learned to drink skim milk, munch wholewheat bread, and eat our veggies…  Others have taken it further and have gone stock, lock and barrel into the Whole Foods, or “whole paycheck” abyss.

But it is not so much healthy living that is our biggest challenge… Perhaps it is facing mortality while seeing the previous generation die right before us… Since they were so much more likely to abuse salt, sugar and tobacco, their gerontological downfall is not pretty…  But the idea that life ends so absolutely, and that their life, perhaps, ends with relatively little meaning or impact, that kills us…  We are the baby-boomers and we learned to question everything, and we are perhaps the most spoiled generation….  If you think about black and white TV, how many toys kids got for the holidays prior to the 1960s and beyond,  you see a picture of how colorful our lives have been…. The end, however, may not have changed much for us … and when we see our loved ones leaving we have to face their mortality in a post modern world that is perhaps more complex, less spiritual and simply busy.

The Policy ThinkShop recommends the following read in the NYTs for those of us who are being forced to see and feel the inevitable end though our eyes and our nostrils…

“Caring for the old is just like parenting an infant, only on really bad acid. It’s all there: the head-spinning exhaustion, the fractured brain, the demands and smells. Only this time with the knowledge that it won’t …”

via Suddenly, They’re All Gone – NYTimes.com.

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Election 2012 Post Mortem: White Evangelicals and Support for Romney – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

American demographics and the urban vs. rural, North vs. South, and “White vs. other” dichotomies continue to paralyze an American political system that must transform its ways of raising resources and allocating them in the interests of an increasingly “non-White” society.  What does the new America look like?  How will it lead?  What does the future of a diverse America look like?  Does this re-election of an African American president mean that America has turned the “Real Americans vs. the rest” stultifying dichotomous past?

Religiously, the American landscape continues to get decided and the so called “rightwing” media continues to cement the rightwing, mostly White, mostly suburban and rural coalition.   The Pew Foundation continues to shed light on these developments as it reports on religious demographics and trends…

“There was considerable speculation during the 2012 primaries about the strength of support for Mitt Romney among white evangelical Protestants. A Pew Research Center analysis of exit poll data finds that white evangelical Protestants voted for Romney with as much enthusiasm as his other supporters did. In addition, white evangelical Protestants voted as heavily for Romney as they did for the GOP candidates in 2008 and 2004, and they made up about the same share of the electorate as they did in the two previous elections.”

via Election 2012 Post Mortem: White Evangelicals and Support for Romney – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

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Faith on the Hill: The Religious Diversity of the 113th Congress – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

In God we trust?  Who’s God?  The Pew foundation provides analysis and statistics describing religious diversity in Congress.  A second term “Black President” and a national government that is increasingly representative of a nation that reflects the ongoing dream of Lady Liberty…

The accomplishment include:

 

Congress’ First Hindu and Other Firsts

The New, 113th Congress  is the most diverse ever

 

The Pew analysis includes:

 

Differences by Chamber

Differences by Party Affiliation

First-Time Members

Looking Back

“The newly elected, 113th Congress includes the first Buddhist to serve in the Senate, the first Hindu to serve in either chamber and the first member of Congress to describe her religion as “none,” continuing a gradual increase in religious diversity that mirrors trends in the country as a whole. While Congress remains majority Protestant, the institution is far less so today than it was 50 years ago, when nearly three-quarters of the members belonged to Protestant denominations.”

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Israel and Gaza: Edging closer to war | The Economist

The Obama victory and the Arab spring have ushered in a new era for the Middle East as the extremes write the next chapter …  What’s next?

“IF THE latest round of violence between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamists who run Gaza, were to end this weekend, everyone involved—except for the families of the …”

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State of denial | The Economist The Policy ThinkShop Proposes that there is now a “NEW AMERICAN ELECTORATE”

The London Economist provides some sober analysis on the Republican meltdown that represents the Presidential Election of 2012.  The Republican disconnect between the young, women and Latinos could spell a new era of demographic consequences that are now clearly irreversible and that will mandate Republican philosophical change that may not be possible for another generation.  Millionaire money, gerrymandering and voter suppression is clearly not enough to the blossoming diversity and generational succession that is now apparent in the “NEW AMERICAN ELECTORATE.”

“FOR conservatives casting about for comfort, there are plenty of plausible reasons to dismiss talk of a crisis. Mitt Romney could have run a better campaign. He reacted slowly when Barack Obama defined him as a heartless plutocrat, and flip-flopped on policies so frequently that even campaign allies struggled to keep …”

 

This Economist article is only one soul-searching conservative attempt to explain the current state of the Republican mind.  It may take Conservatives, Tea Party stalwarts and Right Wingers another decade to figure it out.  By then, the NEW AMERICAN ELECTORATE may have moved on.  America is moving forward right past the right, its billionaires and its antiquated vision of “a real america”.

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2012 Exit Polls: How the Faithful Voted – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

The Pew Foundation website gives us a nice overview of Religion and the 2012 election … Read the story or navigate the entire report at:

 

Navigate this report:

Vote Choice by Religion and Race

Vote Choice by Religious Attendance

Religious Composition of the 2012 Electorate

In his re-election victory, Democrat Barack Obama narrowly defeated Republican Mitt Romney in the national popular vote (50% to 48%)1. Obama’s margin of victory was much smaller than in 2008 when he defeated John McCain by a 53% to 46% margin, and he lost ground among white evangelical Protestants and white Catholics. But the basic religious contours of the 2012 electorate resemble recent elections – traditionally Republican groups such as white evangelicals and weekly churchgoers strongly backed Romney, while traditionally Democratic groups such as black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, Jews and the religiously unaffiliated backed Obama by large margins.

via 2012 Exit Polls: How the Faithful Voted – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

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A Third of Young Adults Not Affiliated with a Religion – Pew Research Center

32% – A Third of Young Adults Not Affiliated with a Religion

The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public — and a third of adults under 30 — are religiously unaffiliated today.

The growth in the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans — sometimes called the rise of the “nones” — is largely driven by generational replacement, the gradual supplanting of older generations by newer ones. A third (32%) of adults under 30 have no religious affiliation, compared with just one-in-ten who are 65 and older (9%).

Young adults today are much more likely to be unaffiliated than previous generations were at a similar stage in their lives. These generational differences are consistent with other signs of a gradual softening of religious commitment among some (though by no means all) Americans in recent decades.

Pew Research Center surveys conducted over the last 10 years, for example, find modest growth in the number of people who say they seldom or never attend religious services, as well as a declining number who say they never doubt the existence of God. Read more …

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Syria’s civil war: The killing fields | The Economist

IS IT because America and Europe have tired of their own wars that they have started to turn their back on other people’s? The number of dead in Syria has passed 30,000. Some days over 250 bodies are added to the pile, which brings to mind Iraq at the insurgency’s peak in …

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Latinos Religion and Campaign 2012:Catholics Favor Obama, Evangelicals Divided – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Latinos are divided by religion in their preferences in the upcoming presidential election, according to the latest survey by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, both projects of the Pew Research Center. Three-quarters of Latino Catholics and eight-in-ten religiously unaffiliated Latinos support President Barack Obama’s re-election. However, among Latino evangelical Protestants, who account for 16% of all Latino registered voters, just 50% prefer Obama, while 39% support his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.

These same patterns are reflected in Latinos’ partisan affiliations. Eight-in-ten religiously unaffiliated Latino voters (who make up 15% of the Latino electorate) and seven-in-ten Latino Catholics (57% of the Latino electorate) are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party. Among Latino evangelical voters, identification with the Democratic Party is lower; about half are Democrats or lean Democratic, while about a third are Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party.

As the presidential election approaches, many Hispanic churchgoers say they are hearing from their clergy about various political issues and, to a lesser extent, about candidates and elections. Roughly half of Latinos (54%) who attend religious services at least once a month say they have heard their clergy speak out about abortion, while 43% have heard from the pulpit about immigration, and 38% say their clergy have spoken out about homosexuality. A smaller proportion, roughly three-in-ten, report hearing from their clergy about candidates and elections.

via Latinos Religion and Campaign 2012:Catholics Favor Obama, Evangelicals Divided – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

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Seeing a Homosexual Agenda, Christian Group Protests an Anti-Bullying Program – NYTimes.com

On Mix It Up at Lunch Day, schoolchildren around the country are encouraged to hang out with someone they normally might not …

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