Don't like the positioning of "good" and "bad", but thought the statistics were interesting.
The Religious Landscape is Undergoing Massive Change. It Could Decide the 2024 Election.
The new decennial Religion Census offers cause for hope — and alarm — for both parties.
In former Rust Belt states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, there is good news for the party — each of those states is much less religious today than it was just 10 years ago.
By RYAN BURGE 05/14/2023 07:00 AM EDT
Ryan Burge is an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and the research director for Faith Counts. He is the author of several books including The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going.
One of the most significant shifts in American politics and religion just took place over the past decade and it barely got any notice: the share of Americans who associate with religion dropped by 11 points.
It’s a development of tremendous impact, one that will ripple across the political landscape at every level — and especially in presidential politics. Why? Because of what it means for the God Gap — the idea that the Republican Party is the one that fights for the rights of religious individuals (primarily Christians), while Democrats have become increasingly secular over time.
Mormon David Nielsen left his job at Ensign Peak Advisors, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ investment firm, and filed an IRS whistleblower complaint. He speaks with Sharyn Alfonsi.
Nun’s body intact four years after death draws people to Missouri monastery
Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster’s body was exhumed and found to be ‘incorrupt’, a sign of holiness and later justification for sainthood
Hundreds of people in the US have traveled to a monastery in a small Missouri town to view a nun’s body that seemingly has no signs of decay four years after her death.
Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster was the founder of the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, a monastery in Gower, Missouri, about an hour outside of Kansas City.
Lancaster’s body was exhumed on 18 May so it could be moved to its final resting place in a monastery chapel, four years after her death in 2019, reported the Catholic News Agency.
But when the coffin was opened, Lancaster’s body was intact with almost no signs of decay. Lancaster’s body had never been embalmed and was buried in a cracked wooden coffin that exposed her corpse to moisture and debris, news media reported.
“We were told by cemetery personnel to expect just bones in the conditions, as Sister Wilhelmina was buried without embalming and in a simple wood coffin,” one of the sisters, who asked to be anonymous, told Newsweek.
Exhumers found a layer of mold on Lancaster’s body, likely due to condensation in the cracked coffin, reported Catholic News Agency. But little of Lancaster’s corpse or her habit decomposed while she was buried.
In Catholicism, bodies that defy the decomposing process are known as “incorrupt”, which is a sign of holiness and later justification for sainthood. The process for sainthood has not been started for Lancaster, said the Bishop Johnston, the Diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph, in a statement.
More than 100 bodies have been incorrupt, reported Catholic News Agency. But Lancaster is likely the first Black person in the US to be found in an incorruptible state.
“We think she is the first African American woman to be found incorrupt,” said Mother Cecilia, the abbess for the monastery, to Catholic News Agency. Cecilia was the first person to examine the coffin, as head of the monastery.
Some experts have said it isn’t uncommon for bodies to remain well-preserved in the first few years after death, even if they are not embalmed.
“In general, when we bury a body at our human decomposition facility, we expect it will take roughly five years for the body to become skeletonized,” Nicholas Passalacqua told Newsweek. Passalacqua is an associate professor and director of forensic anthropology at Western Carolina University.
Religious Threadjacks
Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2023 5:58 am
by RTH10260
A Texas bishop says a group of nuns is 'inciting hatred and animosity' against him after he accused one of breaking her chastity vow
Michelle Mark
Tue, May 30, 2023 at 10:33 PM GMT+2
A Texas bishop publicly accused a nun in Arlington of breaking her chastity vow.
The nun and her sisters sued Bishop Michael Olson and the Fort Worth Diocese for $1 million.
Olson is now accusing the nuns of pushing a false narrative and "inciting hatred and animosity against me."
A Texas bishop who publicly accused a nun of breaking her chastity vow is now complaining that the nun and her Sisters are "inciting hatred and animosity" against him by filing a lawsuit and drumming up media coverage, according to a letter obtained by Insider.
The nuns have sued Bishop Michael Olson and the Fort Worth Diocese for $1 million, alleging Olson invaded their privacy when he showed up to their monastery in April and interrogated them for hours, confiscated their phones and computers, spied on their texts, and made copies of the content on those devices.
Olson and the Fort Worth Diocese issued a statement on May 16 publicly accusing Reverend Mother Superior Teresa Agnes Gerlach of having "violated her vow of chastity with a priest," and announcing an ecclesiastical investigation. In Catholicism, both nuns and priests take vows to remain celibate, but the Diocese did not name the priest allegedly involved.
The Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Arlington have vehemently denied Olson's allegations regarding the chastity vow, and their attorney, Matthew Bobo, told Insider that Gerlach is in extremely poor health, uses a wheelchair and feeding tube, and likely has not even encountered more than four or five men in the last 25 years.
Olson also shut down the monastery to parishioners and canceled their daily Mass and Confession — a move that has been "devastating" to the nuns, who are accustomed to practicing their faith every day, Bobo told Insider on Tuesday.
A Texas bishop says a group of nuns is 'inciting hatred and animosity' against him after he accused one of breaking her chastity vow
Michelle Mark
Tue, May 30, 2023 at 10:33 PM GMT+2
A Texas bishop publicly accused a nun in Arlington of breaking her chastity vow.
The nun and her sisters sued Bishop Michael Olson and the Fort Worth Diocese for $1 million.
Olson is now accusing the nuns of pushing a false narrative and "inciting hatred and animosity against me."
A Texas bishop who publicly accused a nun of breaking her chastity vow is now complaining that the nun and her Sisters are "inciting hatred and animosity" against him by filing a lawsuit and drumming up media coverage, according to a letter obtained by Insider.
The nuns have sued Bishop Michael Olson and the Fort Worth Diocese for $1 million, alleging Olson invaded their privacy when he showed up to their monastery in April and interrogated them for hours, confiscated their phones and computers, spied on their texts, and made copies of the content on those devices.
Olson and the Fort Worth Diocese issued a statement on May 16 publicly accusing Reverend Mother Superior Teresa Agnes Gerlach of having "violated her vow of chastity with a priest," and announcing an ecclesiastical investigation. In Catholicism, both nuns and priests take vows to remain celibate, but the Diocese did not name the priest allegedly involved.
The Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Arlington have vehemently denied Olson's allegations regarding the chastity vow, and their attorney, Matthew Bobo, told Insider that Gerlach is in extremely poor health, uses a wheelchair and feeding tube, and likely has not even encountered more than four or five men in the last 25 years.
Olson also shut down the monastery to parishioners and canceled their daily Mass and Confession — a move that has been "devastating" to the nuns, who are accustomed to practicing their faith every day, Bobo told Insider on Tuesday.
Makes you wonder who's waxing the Bishop's bishop.
Religious Threadjacks
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2023 7:44 pm
by Suranis
St John’s Cathedral (Catholic) in NY:
pridechurch.jpg (173.11 KiB) Viewed 9249 times
Religious Threadjacks
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2023 7:51 pm
by Suranis
In other stuff, FOX posts about a little rainbow flag flying outside an office in the Vatican to “trigger the Catholics,” while the inside of a Cathedral is lit up in 200 ft high rainbows.
The United States Embassy to the Holy See celebrated the beginning of Pride Month by hanging a pride flag from the facade of its headquarters in Rome.
Religious Threadjacks
Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2023 7:06 am
by northland10
For the record, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. It is not Roman Catholic.
I am not expecting to see St. Patrick's lit that way.
Religious Threadjacks
Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2023 9:42 pm
by Volkonski
New York Times
There is a movement in the Southern Baptist Convention to purge women from its leadership. Some churches with female pastors have already been expelled. And this week, delegates are set to vote on a strict ban against women in church leadership.
This is an excerpt from “The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church” by Rachel L. Swarns. Published this week by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House.
The sky darkened as the moon obscured the sun. Enslaved people looked up on that sweltering September afternoon in 1838 and saw a blazing red ring of light surrounding the moon like a shimmering halo.
Some prayed that such heavenly spectacles meant their liberation was near. Others viewed them as omens, signs of agony to come. On the St. Inigoes plantation in southern Maryland, the Mahoney sisters needed no celestial sign to know of the darkness that lay ahead.
The sisters, Louisa Mahoney and Anny Mahoney Jones, had been sold, along with scores of other Black people enslaved by the nation’s most powerful Jesuit priests. The leaders of the Catholic order were convinced that the sale was the only way to save Georgetown College, the nation’s first Catholic institution of higher learning, from being crushed by its debts. Even opposition from many of their own priests did not deter them from the steps they were about to take.
The Jesuits had made a list of the people they planned to sell: 272 enslaved men, women and children who labored on their Maryland plantations.
The prospective buyers were prominent men from Louisiana: Henry Johnson, a congressman and defender of slavery who’d once served as governor, and Jesse Batey, a doctor who had established himself as a planter.
Gifted.
Religious Threadjacks
Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2023 6:42 pm
by neeneko
Foggy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 16, 2023 9:25 am
What great advancements has the Muslim faith had lately?
Multiple nations where their word is law and they can imprison or kill people who disagree with them?
Religious Threadjacks
Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2023 8:33 pm
by neonzx
Foggy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 16, 2023 9:25 am
What great advancements has the Muslim faith had lately?
Hmm. Not much, except they control your cocaine oil addiction supply and laugh all the way to their palaces. Suckers.
Religious Threadjacks
Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2023 9:02 pm
by p0rtia
Apropos of various posts above: here is your semi-regular reminder that Islam is a religion, not a political party or a form of gov't or economic system. There is language available that allows for the condemnation of malign organizations that push an ugly version of Islam without insulting a quarter of the planet.
Religious Threadjacks
Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2023 12:19 am
by keith
p0rtia wrote: ↑Sun Jun 18, 2023 9:02 pm
Apropos of various posts above: here is your semi-regular reminder that Islam is a religion, not a political party or a form of gov't or economic system. There is language available that allows for the condemnation of malign organizations that push an ugly version of Islam without insulting a quarter of the planet.
True, however, Islam draws NO distinction between Mosque and State. NONE.
And that was hammered home to me by a former colleague who was finding it difficult to separate himself from his Immam over that exact issue.
And, by the way, neither do some other western religions we could name. Fortunately most of them have attempted to ameliorate that and started to accept some level of separation, but not without a fight and continuing pushback.
Religious Threadjacks
Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2023 8:57 am
by Foggy
I was taking the pastor at his word. He said that the Muslim faith had "advancements" because its practitioners are willing to strap bombs to their chests. And I just wondered, what advancements has the Muslim faith had because of suicide bombers?
I would argue that there aren't any. And violence isn't going to result in advancements for Christian idiots, either.
Religious Threadjacks
Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2023 9:19 am
by johnpcapitalist
Foggy wrote: ↑Mon Jun 19, 2023 8:57 am
I was taking the pastor at his word. He said that the Muslim faith had "advancements" because its practitioners are willing to strap bombs to their chests. And I just wondered, what advancements has the Muslim faith had because of suicide bombers?
I would argue that there aren't any. And violence isn't going to result in advancements for Christian idiots, either.
I would also point out that much of the fruit of Islamic extremism in Muslim countries has been driving people out of the mosques, so it's actually backfiring. I read recently that Iran, which has been a theocracy for almost 50 years, is seeing the number of people who regularly attend services continue to drop and it's now below 50% of the population and continuing to fall. Like everywhere else, the young and the urban are increasingly secular. External symbols of faith like making women wear head scarves aren't working, which is why the regime is so terrified of the wave of protests a few months ago over the woman who died in police custody.
And, of course, ISIS has leveled large portions of Syria and Iraq and made the lives of people living there infinitely worse.
Religious Threadjacks
Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2023 9:19 am
by keith
Foggy wrote: ↑Mon Jun 19, 2023 8:57 am
I was taking the pastor at his word. He said that the Muslim faith had "advancements" because its practitioners are willing to strap bombs to their chests. And I just wondered, what advancements has the Muslim faith had because of suicide bombers?
I would argue that there aren't any. And violence isn't going to result in advancements for Christian idiots, either.
So you dont adhere to the theory that most of the technological advancement in human history has been driven by the necessities of war?
Foggy wrote: ↑Mon Jun 19, 2023 8:57 am
I was taking the pastor at his word. He said that the Muslim faith had "advancements" because its practitioners are willing to strap bombs to their chests. And I just wondered, what advancements has the Muslim faith had because of suicide bombers?
I would argue that there aren't any. And violence isn't going to result in advancements for Christian idiots, either.
So you dont adhere to the theory that most of the technological advancement in human history has been driven by the necessities of war?
When one follows the history of Islam, their wars did not induce any technological advancements. Much of the teaching as tought by Mullahs are directly anti-science. How many Muslims are among the Nobel Price recipients?
