GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Another Survey Confirms Increase In Godlessness In United States

Another study of Americans has documented the rise in the "religiously unaffiliated" which we like to call "godlessness" at this blog. The Houston Chronicle reports about a study commissioned by the Desert News (a Mormon-affiliated publication) and  the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University which documents that a plurality of Americans (the largest group in the survey) respond "None" when asked their religious affiliation.

34 percent of respondents said they had no religious denomination, compared to 33 percent who identified as Protestants and  21 percent who said they are Catholic.
[...]
Baptists made up the largest Protestant group, at about 32 percent, with 19 percent saying they belonged to a non-denominational or independent church. Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed consider themselves "born-again" or Evangelical Christians.
Thirty-seven percent of respondents say religion is very important in their lives, but only 24 percent say they attend religious services one or more times a week. Fifty-four percent said they seldom or never attend church.
Of those polled, 21 percent said one of the most important issues facing families is "decline in religious faith and church attendance.

Interesting results, eh? I wonder when public policy and politics will start responding to how Americans actually live their religious lives, instead of how people "wish" (or "believe") they do.

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: "Nones" Projected To Be Plurality In 2035

By 2030 the largest religious affiliation in the United States is predicted to be "none." A computer science professor has analyzed poll responses from the General Social Survey to this question "What is your religious preference: is it Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, some other religion, or no religion?" since 1972 and he makes the above prediction that America is becoming increasingly less religious and that sometime in the next two decades the non-religious will be the largest single religious group in the country.

In fact he says this is probably an under-estimate, for the following reasons:

1. Survey results like these are subject to social desirability bias, which is the tendency of respondents to shade their answers in the direction they think is more socially acceptable. To the degree that apostasy is stigmatized, we expect these reports to underestimate the number of Nones. As the visibility of nonreligious people increases, they might be more willing to be counted; in that case, the trends would go faster than predicted.

1. The trends for Protestants and Nones have apparent points of inflection near 1990. Predictions that include earlier data are likely to underestimate future trends. If we use only data since 1990 to generate predictions, we expect the fraction of Nones to exceed 40 percent within 20 years.

So even though it seems to godless people like yours truly that "believers" are trampling the rights of non-believers. Or at the very least the concerns of believers "trump" those of non-believers, it appears as if the tide will turn in the future.

Ireland Poised To Enact Marriage Equality By Popular Ballot This Week

Ireland is poised to become the first country in the world to enact marriage equality by popular vote if a constitutional amendment is approved by voters on Friday May 22.

The text of the measure is as follows:

“Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”

Polls have shown a large lead for the "Yes" side which would lead to a victory for marriage equality. All major parties have endorsed the Yes position and the coalition said that they would not be surprised to see a result of 60% in support of marriage.

This is an astonishing possibility in a country that is 85% Catholic and where abortion is still illegal and divorce was legalized only two decades ago.

Good luck, Ireland!

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Pew Documents Increase In "Religiously Unaffiliated"!

A report from the Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life is documenting the rapid change in the religious demographics of the U.S. population. Specifically, the percentage of "religiously unaffiliated" (what we like to call "Godless" around here) has risen from 16.1% in 2007 to 22.8% in 2014. The report indicates that the number of religiously unaffiliated has jumped from 36 million people in 2007 to roughly 56 million in 2014.


Before we get too cocky, one should recognize that although the fraction of the population that identifies as Christian is decreasing, it went from 78.4% to 70.6%. That is still a huge supermajority of the United States. The mechanism for the increase in the godless apparently is occurring from people primarily switching from being Catholic. The total number of Christians has declined from 178 million to 173 million.

Friendly Atheist notes that atheists and agnostics are a growing fraction of the unaffiliated:

Joe Jervis quotes from the report:

The decline of Christians in the U.S. has corresponded with the continued rise in the share of Americans with no religious affiliation (religious “nones”). People who self-identify as atheists or agnostics (about 7% of all U.S. adults), as well as those who say their religion is “nothing in particular,” now account for a combined 22.8% of U.S. adults – up from 16.1% in 2007. The growth of the “nones” has been powered in part by religious switching. Nearly one-in-five U.S. adults (18%) were raised as Christians or members of some other religion, but now say they have no religious affiliation.

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God and Friendly Atheist

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Time Person of the Year is Pope Francis

Time magazine has selected Pope Francis as the Person of the Year for 2013.

The other finalists were:

Bashar Assad, President of Syria (#4)

Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder

Ted Cruz, Texas Senator (#5)

Miley Cyrus, Singer

Barack Obama, President of the United States

Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services

Edward Snowden, N.S.A. Leaker (#2)

Edith Windsor, Gay rights activist (#3)

Very cool to see Edith Windsor, lead plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case of United States v. Windsor that resulted in the end of the federal government's refusal to recognize legally married same-sex couples for the purpose of federal law.

Godless Wednesday: Religious Affiliations of U.S. House On A Map

Buzzfeed has mapped out the religious affiliation of all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and displayed their religion in a map of their districts.

There are 31 religions represented in the House, including 26 different sects of Christianity. Catholics make up the largest group with 136 members, followed by Baptists with 66 members, Methodists with 45 members, Anglicans/Episcopalians with 35 members, Presbyterians with 28 members, and Jews with 22 members. There is only one atheist.

The majority of Catholics and Jews are Democrats, and the majority of Anglicans/Episcopalians, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Mormons. and Presbyterians are Republican. Among religions with more than more than five seats, Jews are the most partisan; 21 of the 22 Jews are Democrats. Mormons are the second most partisan; seven of the eight Mormons are Republicans.

Other than states with a single seat, Idaho and Utah are the only states to be represented exclusively by a single religion.

Do you really think there is only one member of the U.S. House of Representatives? Yet, it is religious people, not irreligious people who complain vociferously about being discriminated against and marginalized in the public sphere.

I think this map is a good counter argument to such spurious claims.

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God.

Godless Wednesday: Religion is Organized Bullsh*t

I'm sure many of you have been wondering what the difference is between "religion" and "spirituality." Embiggen the cartoon above by clicking on it and the answer will be revealed.

Hat/tip to The Atheist Pig

Godless Wednesday: Atheist's View of the Conclave

There are more than a billion Catholics around the world. Right now there are waiting for a 100-plus men to elect one of their own the leader of this group, somehow transforming from a Cardinal to "God's Representative on Earth" i.e. The Supreme Pontiff or Pope.

As an atheist, the extremely close attention paid to this ridiculous process is absolutely baffling. What do you think?

Queer Quote: Scottish Cardinal Confesses Sexual Sins

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, and one of the most prominent homophobes in Great Britain, suddenly resigned his post recently, leaving the country without a cardinal to represent them in the next conclave to select the next Pope. O'Brien's resignation came after the circulation of multiple anonymous accusations of improper sexual conduct between the cardinal (who was also an archbishop) and at least three priests. O'Brien denied the charges at the time but recently released this statement:

"In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me havebecome public. Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led meto contest them.
However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have beentimes that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of meas a priest, archbishop and cardinal.
To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness.
To the Catholic Church and people of Scotland, I also apologise.
I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no furtherpart in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland."

I think we'll take that as today's Queer Quote, shall we? O'Brien's case is stunning for its sheer hypocrisy, because he was proud to be the face and voice of the primary opposition to the marriage equality bill currently working its way through the British Parliament, calling marriage equality “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right” while all the time he was a gay man who had sex with men himself, men who were presumably under his authority, since they were Catholic priests and he was the top prelate in all of Great Britain.

That a virulent homophobe turns out to homosexual is no longer a surprise, it is almost a cliche. After all, for most people homosexuality is not a top issue of concern. So when someone is so vocally homophobic it is often motivated by a burning desire to eliminate some part of their own identity, or to try to be so anti-gay that no one would ever dare to think that such a person could be gay themselves. But a long history in gay activism has shown me that obsession with homosexuality is typically limited to homosexual, either openly so or not.

Spain's Top Court Upholds Marriage Equality Law

Good news! When the conservatives in the Popular Party (PP) won Spain's parliamentary elections last year they vowed to overturn the country's marriage equality law which has been in effect since 2005. They first did so by appointing conservative judges to Spain's high court which has been considering an appeal to the law's constitutionality that was filed shortly by the PP after the law went into effect more than 7 years ago.

Today comes word that by a vote of 8-3 the law was upheld by Spain's Constitutional Court in Madrid:

Spain’s Parliament passed the gay marriage law in 2005 when it was Socialist-controlled, with Popular Party deputies opposed. The Popular Party took power late last year after the Socialists were ousted over their handling of the economy. 

The gay marriage law angered the predominant Roman Catholic Church but opinion surveys showed most Spaniards backed it. Belgium and the Netherlands approved gay marriage laws before Spain. 

More than 22,000 gay marriages have taken place in Spain.

The PP could still try to pass a new law through Parliament repealing marriage equality in the country, but since then other countries in Europe have also ratified marriage equality, including neighboring Portugal in 2010, Sweden in 2009, Denmark in 2012 and Norway in 2008. In 2010 fellow Spanish-speaking country Argentina enacted marriage equality and France is poised to consider legislation to do so soon, although the political debate and religious opposition is growing more fractious as the possibility of marriage equality becomes more realistic in that country.

Regardless, today we can celebrate that Spain has marriage equality, which is one of the reasons why my husband and myself spent a week visiting the country (Barcelona and Madrid) earlier this year!

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Atheists Sue 9/11 Memorial

This above image of two girders found in the wreckage of the collapse of the World Trade Center's twin towers a few days after 9/11 has become the subject of a lawsuit between those who believe it should be included in the National September 11 Memorial & Museum as an "artifact" and those who believe that a government-sponsored entity should not be supporting the reification of a religious symbol.

CNN reports:

In documents submitted to the court, the museum defends the inclusion of the cross, saying that “the 9/11 Museum is an independent nonprofit corporation. Its curators’ decisions to display particular objects, such as the Artifact, in the Museum are not state actions to which Constitutional protections apply.”

In the same documents, the museum argues that even if constitutional protections apply, “there is no legal authority for the proposition that a museum is prohibited from displaying an item with historical, cultural or artistic significance merely because that item also has religious significance.”

Silverman [of American Atheists] rejects that argument. “The argument that this is not a religious symbol is asinine and arrogant,” he says. “They want 9/11 to appear to be an attack on Christianity, and it was not.”

Shortly after plans for a 9/11 museum started to be worked out, Silecchia, the construction worker [who first found the object in the ruins], and the Rev. Brian Jordan, a priest who ministered to firefighters and emergency responders at ground zero, began to press to the inclusion of the World Trade Center cross in the memorial and museum.

“First of all, it is an artifact of ground zero,” Jordan told the Irish Echo, a small publication in New York, in 2002. “And secondly, it is sacred ground, for God’s sake.”

Jordan declined interview requests, saying in an e-mail that “after a careful period of reflection, I have decided not to make any public comment at this time.”

In the same interview, Jordan argued that the reason it should be included is because most of the victims were Christians - “the plurality of which were Catholic,” Jordan said. The cross was first displayed near the edge of ground zero, until on October 5, 2006, the cross was moved to St. John’s Church, where it sat on the corner of Barclay and Vesey streets.

What do you think, Gentle Readers? Is it a cross or a "girder set"? And should it be included in a museum created with our taxpayer dollars ?

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: U.S. Godlessness at 19%

A study of religious affiliation of Americans from Pew Center for the People and the Press indicates rapid growth in the category of "None" to 19% of all respondents.

USA Today reports about the results:

Barry Kosmin, co-author of three American Religious Identification Surveys, theorizes why None has become the "default category." He says, "Young people are resistant to the authority of institutional religion, older people are turned off by the politicization of religion, and people are simply less into theology than ever before."

Kosmin's surveys were the first to brand the Nones in 1990 when they were 6% of U.S. adults. By 2008 survey, Nones were up to 15%. By 2010, another survey, the bi-annual General Social Survey, bumped the number to 18%.

[...]

The 19% count is based on aggregated surveys of 19,377 people conducted by the Pew Research Center throughout 2011.

The article notes that religious sects like Catholics, Baptists, Methodists and Lutherans all show either a decrease in affiliation or no change during the same period of growth in the Nones category. It also explains that the main way the category of non-religious grows is through switching of 10% of people who grow up in religious households but become unaffiliated.

The Freedom From Religious Foundation applauded the survey results:

“With nonbelievers at about 20% of the population, there is no longer any excuse for leaving us out of the equation. Public officials cannot continue to assume ‘all Americans’ believe in a deity, or continue to offend 20% of the population by imposing prayer at governmental meetings or government-hosted events. These surveys now show that ‘In God We Trust’ is a provenly inaccurate motto. Nonbelievers should not be treated as political pariahs,” [FFRF Co-Director Annie Laurie] Gaylor said. 

“ ‘Nones’ in fact were at the time of the last ARIS survey, the second-largest ‘denomination’ in the nation,” Barker said, “following Catholics at 25% and tied with Baptists at 15%. According to the new PEW study, nonbelievers now outrank Baptists.”

I wonder what it will take to get agnostics, atheists and other non-believers the respect their numbers deserve.

Hat/tip to Friendly Atheist

NC's Amendment 1 Backers Fueled By Religious Dogma

The list of the top funders to the supporters of North Carolina's Amendment 1 has been revealed (By Good As You's Jeremy Hooper) and it is dominated by groups seething with unbridled homophobia and fuled by extreme religious dogma. Some of religious extremist and heterosexual supremacist groups that have poured tens of thousands of dollars in enacting their faith-based view of marriage on all citizens of North carolina regardless of religious belief are: Christian Action League ($300,000), National Organization for Marriage ($300,000), 2 Roman Catholic Dioceses ($50,000 each) et cetera, et cetera.





As Think Progress notes, this is not surprising because the entire argument of the proponents of the anti-gay Amendment 1 is based on the Bible (and one specific vision of faith and religion). Just look at their television ads, both of which mention "God" and depict the Bible.

It's a good thing we don't live in a theocracy, huh? What part of civil marriage do these people not understand?

Godless Wednesday: Catholic Charities Got $2.9B in 2010 Federal Funds

The New York Times recently ran an article summarizing a new front in the ongoing kulturkampf (culture wars): the claim by Catholic officials that they are being discriminated against due to their religious beliefs by advances in LGBT equality.

This graf in particular struck my eye:

Catholic Charities is one of the nation’s most extensive social service networks, serving more than 10 million poor adults and children of many faiths across the country. It is made up of local affiliates that answer to local bishops and dioceses, but much of its revenue comes from the government. Catholic Charities affiliates received a total of nearly $2.9 billion a year from the government in 2010, about 62 percent of its annual revenue of $4.67 billion. Only 3 percent came from churches in the diocese (the rest came from in-kind contributions, investments, program fees and community donations).

In Illinois, Catholic Charities in five of the six state dioceses had grown dependent on foster care contracts, receiving 60 percent to 92 percent of their revenues from the state, according to affidavits by the charities’ directors. (Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Chicago pulled out of foster care services in 2007 because of problems with its insurance provider.)

The federal government is providing nearly three billion dollars in U.S. taxpayers monies to an organization which refuses to acknowledge basic tenets of science and aggressively seeks to force its world view upon others, discriminating on the basis of sex and sexual orientation in the process.

Ugh. It makes me nauseous to think that there are people who think they can accept funds (hello, some of which must be coming from LGBT people) and wants to use that money actively discriminating against those people, all in the name of "serving children." Is this not the text book definition of hypocrisy?

We had previously covered the conflict in Illinois between Catholic Charities heterosexist policies and the state's new civil union law on Godless Wednesday but had not seen an eye-dropping quote from religious extremist side before like this one (bolded):

Critics of the church argue that no group has a constitutional right to a government contract, especially if it refuses to provide required services.

But Anthony R. Picarello Jr., general counsel and associate general secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, disagreed. “It’s true that the church doesn’t have a First Amendment right to have a government contract,” he said, “but it does have a First Amendment right not to be excluded from a contract based on its religious beliefs.”

This is not just a text-book definition of hypocrisy but also hubris! It's shocking to me the Catholic Bishops dude mentions the First Amendment (twice!) in his statement to the New York Times. Has he read it recently?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If your free exercise of religion involves discriminating against other citizens' "equal protection of the laws" and can be construed to contribute to an "establishment of religion" since you are attempting to propagate and promote your religious beliefs to children then it is pretty clear that you lose. And to think that you want federal money to do so is simply sickening.

Godless Wednesday: IL Catholic Orgs End Lawsuit On Foster Care

Ha, ha! Over the summer MadProfessah.com and other LGBT blogs reported about the obnoxious lawsuit by a number of Catholic dioceses in Illinois who were suing the state for the right to obtain payment from the government to offer foster and adoption services which would illegally discriminate against same-sex couples in civil unions.

The lawsuit was laughable on its face and last week even the religious extremists and heterosexual supremacists at the Catholic Dioceses of Joliet, Springfield and Belleville recognized that fact and dropped their lawsuit and ended their foster care services in the state.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Since March, state officials have been investigating whether religious agencies that receive public funds to license foster care parents are breaking anti-discrimination laws if they turn away openly gay parents.  

After the civil union bill went into effect in June, Catholic Charities told the state that accommodating prospective foster parents in civil unions would violate Catholic Church teaching that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.  

Catholic Charities said it would instead refer gay couples elsewhere and only license married couples and single parents living alone.  

The agency has pointed to a clause in the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act that they believe protects religious institutions that don't recognize civil unions. 

But lawyers for the Illinois attorney general said that exemption only shields religious clergy who don't want to officiate at civil unions. The policy of Catholic Charities violates state anti-discrimination laws that demand couples in civil unions be treated the same as married couples, they said.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Thankfully, there are plenty of secular foster care agencies who care more about helping children then promoting religious-based homophobic ideology.

Catholic Charities Sue Ill. For Right To Anti-Gay Discrimination

Today in religious hubris news, three chapters of Catholic Charities (based in Peoria, Joliet and Springfield) have decided to sue Illinois in order to gain the right to take state money (as much as $30 million) but discriminate in who they provide adoption and foster care services to. As you may recall, on June 1, Illinois' civil unions law went into effect. In response, some local Catholic Charities have announced they would suspend foster care and adoption services altogether unless they have the right to violate Illinois Human Right Law which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (and race and marital status).

Simply astonishing. The Advocate has the deets:

In the suit, Catholic Charities for the dioceses of Springfield, Joliet, and Peoria claim that their state-funded adoption services are exempt from the civil unions law under provisions of the legislation as well as existing state religious freedom protections.

"Same sex couples' and unmarried cohabiting couples' application for adoption or foster care referrals could be fully and adequately serviced and accommodated (as they are now) by [the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services] referring them to other providers which do not share [our] conscientious religious objections," attorneys for the dioceses wrote in their complaint.

"On the other hand, the harm to plaintiffs and to the poor, needy and vulnerable third parties whom they serve, should no injunctive relief issue, would be severe and ... even unconscionable," they wrote.

The suit was prompted in part by a March 8 letter from Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan's office inquiring into Catholic Charities of Springfield's existing policies and whether they violate the law.

"Please be advised that the Illinois Human Rights Act makes it a civil rights violation for any person to 'deny or refuse to another the full and equal enjoyment of facilities, goods, or services of any public place of accommodation' on the basis of unlawful discrimination," which includes sexual orientation and marital status as protected characteristics, the letter read in part.

In a Tuesday statement, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office said of the suit, "Organizations that receive taxpayer funding to provide public services must comply with the law. Unfortunately, instead of working with the state to ensure compliance with child protection and civil rights laws, the dioceses have opted to go to court."

Filed on behalf of the dioceses by attorneys from the Thomas More Society in Chicago, the lawsuit comes after the announcement late last month that Catholic Charities in Rockford was pulling out of adoption services entirely — a decision described by one source as a possible "trial balloon" from the church to put pressure on the state assembly and attorney general's office. But "there's nothing to indicate that the governor or the assembly is interested in providing an exemption" for religious groups contracted by the state for adoption services, the source said.

Meanwhile, Catholic Charities' claim that Illinois is undermining its religious freedom in state adoption contracts has been criticized by several national LGBT legal and advocacy groups.

"It's outrageous," said Camilla Taylor, national marriage project director for Lambda Legal. "They're asking permission to put their desire to discriminate ahead of the welfare of children in state care. And they're asking to do this at taxpayer expense. It's a tragic result for children."

Even the head of Catholic Charities in Illinois, Anthony Riordan, recognizes that the position stated in the lawsuit is nonsensical, making this statement:

That the Catholic Charities adoption contracts in question are not private but rather funded to the tune of a reported $30 million annually by the state is not ultimately what this is about, he argued. "I think it's certainly a reasonable point: If you receive state funds, you have to follow the directives and the rules of the state," Riordan said. "But our position is that faith-based charities have religious liberties and certain rights of conscience."[emphasis added]

I wonder how far Catholic Charities would like these alleged religious liberties to go? The right to be exempt from age of consent laws? Statutes of limitation on child molestation lawsuits? Why stop at the human rights law and try to get exemptions for every law that they don't agree with?

It should be noted that the notion that religious beliefs should trump the concept of "equal justice under the law" and the underlying principle of public accommodations civil rights laws has been rearing it's ugly head in other contexts, most notably the fight to legalize marriage equality in New York State.