Belatedly I have just read a report issued in June 2011 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, an organization that has been producing interesting survey data about worldwide religion with astounding frequency. This one is titled “Evangelical Protestant Leaders”. It contains the results of a survey of Evangelical leaders from all over […]
Peter Berger
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Religion & Other Curiosities
February 29, 2012
February 22, 2012
Contraception and the Culture War
For a week or so in early February religion was once again at the center of media attention (this time unrelated to the lingering issue of Mitt Romney’s Mormonism). Using powers given her by the “Obamacare” legislation, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human services, issued a regulation concerning the requirement that all employer-provided health […]
February 15, 2012
Is Confucianism a Religion?
On February 5, 2012, the New York Times carried a story about a Confucian academy in South Korea. It is one of some 150 such academies (seawon) in the country. Their main program consists of retreats, especially for schoolchildren. The program, apparently quite rigorous, is to provide training in moral behavior and etiquette (the two […]
February 8, 2012
Blasphemies
In common usage blasphemy means words and actions which constitute an insult to God or other sacred entities. To the modern mind the term may seem obsolete, a leftover from primitive superstition. It is anything but obsolete to many people in the contemporary world. Toward the end of January two stories involving the issue of […]
February 1, 2012
Evangelical Democrats?
As the absurd theater of the Republican primaries continues its itinerary from state to state, it at least serves one useful purpose: It puts to rest the notion that religion no longer matters in American politics. Actually the GOP is now dominated by two varieties of fundamentalism—the religious one, focused single-mindedly on matters south of […]
