Anger

A good reflection on anger and sin at Better Living: Thoughts from Mark Daniel:

Q: Is it wrong for Christians to become angry?

A: For some people, anger is a way of life. Filled with a sense of personal inadequacy, unable to cope with life, they lash out at others, usually spouses or children. Through outbursts of anger, they think that they can control their lives.

But anger isn't always bad. This may come as a surprise to some people, Christian as well as non-Christian.

If you are a Christian, you may have had the experience of becoming angry with a family member or co-worker and then hearing them indignantly say, "And you call yourself a Christian?"

The Christian may feel ashamed, thinking that they've given a bad witness of their faith because they lost their cool.

But they may have no reason for shame. An interesting passage in the New Testament tells us, "Be angry but do not sin." The very phrasing of that admonition should tell us that there's nothing inherently wrong or sinful about getting angry. It's possible to be angry without engaging in sin.

One clearly legitimate reason for being angry is when we see an injustice. ....

We can also be angered when a person treats us inconsiderately. Is that wrong? Not, apparently, if we use our anger as an occasion to work things out with the other person. "Be angry, but do not sin." Anger can lead to sin when we nurse it, feed it, and allow it to cause us to be sanctimonious or to be disrespectful of the person with whom we're angry. It's a sin to be self-righteous or hateful.

The same New Testament verse that advises, "Be angry but do not sin," says that when we do get angry we shouldn't let "the sun set on [our] anger." In other words, resolve your differences. [read it all]

Thanks to Mark Olson for the reference.

Better Living: Thoughts from Mark Daniels: Q-and-A: Is It Wrong for Christians to Become Angry?

"Your blog wastes my time."

The Internet Monk offers "Ten Reasons I Don't Read Your Blog." They make sense. Now for some introspection.

internetmonk.com » Blog Archive » Ten Reasons I Don’t Read Your Blog

"...Until they find their rest in you."

Fred Sanders posts an introduction to Augustine's thought as comic strip. This is the final panel.

Find it all here.

Meet the Theologians: Augustine | The Scriptorium Daily: Middlebrow

Bibles

For those of us who love books, the smell, the feel, the typography, the binding - not even considering the contents - pictures like this approach being a kind of pornography. Bible Design and Binding is a truly wonderful site.

Bible Design and Binding

Luther and the Pope

This is a very different Catholic approach from the description of Luther I remember reading in my youth - something like "Luther was a drunken monk who lusted after a nun...." Of course Protestants were guilty of similar anti-Catholic absurdity. Things have been getting better for some time.

Orthodox believers increasingly emphasize what we have in common in contrast to the enemies of Christianity and those who would appease them.

Times Online:

Pope Benedict XVI is to rehabilitate Martin Luther, arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity but only to purge the Church of corrupt practices.

Pope Benedict will issue his findings on Luther (1483-1546) in September.... According to Vatican insiders the Pope will argue that Luther, who was excommunicated and condemned for heresy, was not a heretic. [....]

Cardinal Kasper said: “We have much to learn from Luther, beginning with the importance he attached to the word of God.” It was time for a “more positive” view of Luther, whose reforms had aroused papal ire at the time but could now be seen as having “anticipated aspects of reform which the Church has adopted over time”. [....]

Luther challenged the authority of the papacy by holding that the Bible is the sole source of religious authority and made it accessible to ordinary people by translating it into the vernacular. He became convinced that the Church had lost sight of the “central truths of Christianity”, and was appalled on a visit to Rome in 1510 by the power, wealth and corruption of the papacy.

In 1517 he protested publicly against the sale of papal indulgences for the remission of sins in his “95 Theses”, nailing a copy to the door of a Wittenberg church. Some theologians argue that Luther did not intend to confront the papacy “in a doctrinaire way” but only to raise legitimate questions - a view Pope Benedict apparently shares.

Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X, who dismissed him initially as “a drunken German who will change his mind when sober”.

That Martin Luther? He wasn’t so bad, says Pope -Times Online

Evangelicals, abortion and the election

Douglas Groothuis is afraid that younger Evangelicals are ready to ignore the primary moral issue of our time:

It appears that millions of evangelicals, especially younger ones, are experiencing fetus fatigue. They are tired of the abortion issue taking center stage; it is time to move on to newer, hipper things - the sort of issues that excite Bono: aid to Africa, the environment, and cool tattoos. Abortion has been legal since they were born; it is the old guard that gets exercised about millions of abortions over the years. So, let's not worry that Barack Obama and Hillary are pro-choice. That is a secondary issue. After all, neither could do that much damage regarding this issue.

Evangelicals (if that word has any meaning), for God's sake, please wake up and remember the acres of tiny corpses you cannot see. .... Since Roe v. Wade, approximately 50 million unborn humans have been killed through abortion. Stalin said, "One death is a tragedy. A million dead is a statistic." Too many are now Stalinists on abortion. The numbers mean nothing, apparently. ....

The Democratic contenders are both militantly pro-abortion. If one wins, he or she will likely appoint several Supreme Court judges. If so, you can forget about overturning Roe v. Wade, which would return the legality to the states. .... [more]

Thanks to Justin Taylor for the reference.

The Constructive Curmudgeon: Recovering from Fetus Fatigue

New Baptist Covenant, once more

A report from Christianity Today, "The Other Baptists," about the recent meeting of the "New Baptist Covenant:

Headlined by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the New Baptist Covenant meeting in January attracted about 15,000 Baptists to Atlanta. Although speeches throughout the event called for nonpartisan cooperation on social issues like poverty and racism, critics saw the covenant's launch as politically motivated.

An informal alliance of Baptist organizations brought together by Carter, the covenant includes 30 partner churches and organizations, four of which are historically African American. All told, it represents up to 20 million Baptists. By comparison, the more conservative Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which was invited to the conference but did not officially attend, has 16 million members.

The Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, my denomination, was one of the bodies represented. Although I have every confidence in the good intentions of those who represented us, I do share these concerns:

...SBC president Frank Page said that the covenant seemed intended to unify only one wing of Baptists.

"I have concerns when it seems this is organized and promoted by only those who are from a more moderate theological perspective," Page said. "One has to wonder if there is a true openness to a dialogue and an inclusion of conservatives." ....

The timing of the event—scheduled for an election year, right before Super Tuesday—raised eyebrows among observers, as did the speakers. Former Vice President Al Gore joined Carter and Clinton, while Mike Huckabee withdrew from the event last May, citing the left-leaning speakers and his disapproval of Carter's public criticism of President Bush.

"It suggests there was some political motivation," said John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Clinton's presence in particular signaled a political agenda, Green said, because Clinton is generally not seen as seriously religious and because he has been actively campaigning for his wife's presidential bid.

The convention's social-justice emphasis and avoidance of issues like abortion, homosexuality, and women's ordination were also markedly different from the traditional concerns of conservative Baptists, Green said. (more)

The Other Baptists | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Being forgiven

Jared Wilson:

Darryl Dash said it. ....

It's popular to say that we need to forgive ourselves, but is that a valid concept?

I'd suggest that the desire for ourselves to be forgiven is a valid one, but we don't have the power to forgive ourselves. Telling someone that they have to forgive themselves before they forgive others doesn't make sense, just like forgiving myself for a debt I owe to the bank is silly. Forgiveness has to come from outside of myself.

[....]

I have found in my own life that when I am most burdened by the sins and failures of my past, it's not because I am not forgiving myself, it's because I am not yet grasping how immense God's grace is and I have not yet really trusted that He has forgiven me.

There's an ironic pride in there, a sense of thinking that, well of course Jesus died for the sins of the world, but it's as if my sin is too big for Jesus to cover.

The Gospel-Driven Church: You Don't Need to Forgive Yourself; You Just Need to Repent

Obsessed with size

Jared Wilson on size and importance and what can be learned from the "little guy":

.... We are obsessed. We are obsessed with bigger, better, faster. We define success according to quantity and presentation. We reckon churches increasing in size as effective.

And so our heroes are the big church guys. They speak at the conferences, they publish the books, they exert the influence.

But the guys at the "little churches" have just as much, if not more, to teach us about how to shepherd and how to disciple. [....]

He offers some of the reasons "we ought to seek out and listen well to the guys who pastor 'small' churches."

1. The little guy who's been little for a while can teach you about contentment. ....
2. The little guy knows about pastoring. As in, actually pastoring. ....
3. The little guy makes for a better mentor. ....
4. The little guy who's been little for a while is seasoned. ....
5. The little guy knows what really matters. ....

Wilson elaborates on each of those points. Read it all here.

The Gospel-Driven Church: Listening to the Little Guy

The Obama exegesis

In response to a question about public policy with respect to homosexual unions, Obama said that the Sermon on the Mount should take priority over St. Paul's explicit statements about homosexual acts - that it is "more central than an obscure passage in Romans." John Mark Reynolds disagrees:

The Sermon on the Mount supports homosexual civil unions.

The Book of Romans is less important and is an obscure part of Scripture.

So says Barack Obama arguing for civil unions and if he is the last best hope of America, then it must be true. But for the rest of us, who like him, but are not of Obama, these statements seem bizarre at best and messianic at worst.

Obama could be messianic, ignorant, way left of center, or just guilty of a silly blunder. Here is hoping he soon admits that he spoke badly. The other alternatives should lead Democrats to reconsider their chances in November.

It is the habit of messiahs, true and false, to clarify the ancient scriptures and to introduce new. Charity can only hope that Obama has not taken plaudits in the press so seriously that he has decided to issue his own theological reinterpretation of the Bible. ....

We already know that Obama reads the Constitution looking for what he wishes were there. Liberal ideology affirms the Constitution as “good,” but then is troubled when the actual document contradicts what the liberal believer asserts should be in a good document. If the Constitution does not affirm a right to abort, then our reading of the Constitution must be mistaken. As a result, leftists “find” their goals in ever more weird readings of the text.

Obama is doing the same thing with the Bible. He wants, like the liberal establishment, to justify civil unions so he uses the phrase “Sermon on the Mount” to stand in for all the good things he wishes were in Scripture. Sadly for him, this will not work out well.

He is using his own wishes to ignore a clear passage condemning homosexual practice (Romans 1) in order to justify a weird reading of the Sermon on the Mount that says nothing about homosexuality. This is bad exegesis and worse for a political leader. .... [more]

Update: I've revised my words in the first paragraph for clarity.

Obama: Messiah, Badly Read, Very Liberal, Or Guilty of a Gaffe? | The Scriptorium Daily: Middlebrow

Post-denominational

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is President of the Chicago Theological Seminary [UCC]. Her reactions to the recent Pew study have been posted at On Faith. She says that "sociologically speaking" Protestants have won. I don't find that very reassuring.

It is clear from this Pew study that the old denominational affiliations no longer apply. The religious landscape in the U.S. is best described these days as “post-denominational.” Post-denominational means that it is far less important whether you are Methodist or Baptist, or even Catholic, than where you fall along the continuum of fundamentalist to evangelical to progressive (liberal) to secular or unaligned. While some faiths or denominations generally are more evangelical or more liberal, each tradition has a wide spectrum within it. If you are a liberal Christian in a conservative Protestant denomination, you may have more in common with a Reformed Jew than with the Christians in your own denomination. ....

....Protestant churches cannot count on their members knowing anything about the history and faith commitments of their particular tradition. These folks who are migrating from Catholic to Protestant or from liberal to evangelical or evangelical to progressive or whatever the pattern know more what they don’t want in a church than what they do want or believe. ....

These trends are examples of both strengths and weaknesses within the American religious experience. Clearly, the church I describe above where people don’t know the basic structure of Protestantism let alone its doctrines is a problem. It is also fraying the connections between the local church and the regional and national bodies of the church and also fraying the connections with church institutions (like seminaries). ....

So while the Pew study indicates that the “United States is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country,” these trends toward self-direction in faith is the distinctly, even uniquely Protestant ethos.

We may be declining in numbers, we Protestants, but sociologically speaking, in the U.S. we won.

Thanks to Gene Edward Veith for the reference.

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite: OnFaith on washingtonpost.com

God-centered preaching

Darryl Dash, on his site Theocentric Preaching, is posting an article he wrote for Evangelical Baptist magazine. His introduction demonstrates why so much preaching misses the mark:

David Neff, an editor of Christianity Today, tells of visiting a church one summer on his vacation. The first week, the preacher spoke on the story of God’s call to Moses at the burning bush. In this passage, God reveals how he will fulfill his promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through Moses. He also reveals his ineffable name. It is a “pivotal point in the Bible,” Neff writes, “a hinge on which the door of sacred history swings.”

The preacher rose to speak on this passage. Moses was afraid to walk through the door set before him, said the preacher, but he walked through it anyway. We must do the same. “End of message,” Neff writes. “No God. No divine plan revealed. No theophany. Just stages in the life cycle.”

The next week, Neff returned to hear a different preacher. The sermon text was the story of Jesus calming the storm, thereby revealing that he is Lord over creation. The preacher chose to speak about the fear of travel. “The sermon many have soothed some fears,” Neff writes, “but theologically it crashed and burned. I didn’t come back the next Sunday.”

Neff argues that these two sermons are not isolated examples of bad preaching. Evangelicals, he writes, often strip miracles of their biblical significance, reduce parables to lessons for effective living, and hand out moralisms and three-step how-to’s.

Two decades ago, Preaching and Pulpit Digest studied 200 sermons preached by evangelicals. The study analyzed how many of the sermons were grounded in the character, nature, and will of God. Only 19.5% met this test. Reflecting on this study, theologian David Wells writes:

The overwhelming proportion of sermons - more than 80 percent - were anthropocentric. It seems that God has become a rather awkward appendage to the practice of evangelical faith, at least as measured by the pulpit. Indeed, from these sermons it seems that God and the supernatural order are related only with difficulty to the life of faith. He appears not to be at its center. The center, in fact, is typically the self. God and His world are made to spin around this surrogate center, for our world increasingly is understood within a therapeutic model of reality. (No God but God: Breaking with the Idols of Our Age)

I do not know how many sermons today are grounded in God’s character, nature, and will, but my guess is that things have not improved. [more]

Theocentric Preaching » Blog Archive » God-Centered Preaching - Introduction

What is an Evangelical?

Somewhat frustrated by journalistic imprecision with the term, J.P. Moreland reiterates the definition of "Evangelical":

... as Roger Olson has noted, an Evangelical is one who satisfies five characteristics: (1) biblicism (adherence to the supreme authority of the Bible regarding everything it teaches when properly interpreted); (2) conversionism (belief in the essential importance of radical conversion to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior); (3) the centrality of the cross of Jesus and the forgiveness it provides in attempts to grow in character and spirituality; (4) persuasive, respectful evangelism and social action on behalf of the poor, oppressed, and powerless, including the unborn; (5) a respect for but not slavish dependence on the history of Christian tradition and doctrine.

Evangelicals are not Fundamentalists. While they share many beliefs in common with Evangelicals, contemporary Christian Fundamentalists differ from Evangelicals in that Fundamentalists are far more black and white, they are deeply suspicious of culture and anything that smacks of compromise with contemporary thought, they are too confrontational, narrow, rigid, judgmental, and harsh for Evangelicals. Fundamentalists tend to elevate minor areas of Christian teaching to the status of central dogmas and militantly fight all who compromise. The texture and tone of Fundamentalists differ sharply from those of Evangelicals. Fundamentalists tend to be defensive while Evangelicals tend to be more mercy-oriented towards outsiders.

Evangelicals are not the Religious Right. For one thing, there is more political diversity among Evangelicals that one finds in the Religious Right. For another, even where Evangelicals would agree with conservative political thought, they are careful to derive their views and express their allegiance to radical discipleship unto Jesus....

What, Exactly, is an Evangelical? | The Scriptorium Daily: Middlebrow

"You are not ugly to me"

It is easy for those of us who are not suffering to offer insufferable false comfort and easy spiritual justification for the existence of pain. Those who are suffering are far better qualified to reflect on its meaning.

William Stuntz at Less Than the Least:

.... Job – the book of the Bible that is centrally about pain – makes the link clear as can be. In Chapter 1, Job suffers the death and destruction of nearly all he holds dear – which is a pretty clear signal not to stand in Job’s vicinity: suffering, like the ugliness that follows in its wake, is catching. Then in chapter 2, Job himself gets boils so bad he sits scraping his own dead skin with broken pottery, “as he sat among the ashes.” Death and dirt and disgust are joined in equal measure, and all attach to Job’s person. Job hurts, Job is repulsive, and – last but definitely not least – Job is repulsive BECAUSE he hurts.

My back and right leg have hurt, nonstop, for several years now. Since the surgery to remove the tumor, my gut hurts worse than either. And I cannot shake the sense of ugliness. It clings to me, like a stain that cannot be cleansed. My friends and family members may not see the worst of it, but I see – and even I’m repulsed. God only knows how repulsive it must be to one who can see more clearly.

Which is why I’ve come to believe that the sweetest sentence in the English language is not “I love you”: that one’s too simple; love is too often utterly blind. No, far sweeter are the words “you are not ugly to me.” I hear those words and think: really? Nahh, it isn’t possible. Too good to be true.

And then I read the rest of Job’s story, and I think: Far from being this awful tale of a cold God gambling over his creatures’ pain, this may be the kindest, most loving story I’ve ever read, short of the gospels themselves. For what happens at the tale’s end? God wraps His arms around the ugly one, the one who picks at his sores in the ashes. He calls him “my servant Job” – makes him a member of the divine Household. Beauty and ugliness are turned upside down, inside out.

I think this is an important piece of redemption that contemporary Christian culture mostly misses. We’re very big these days on the idea that Jesus died for my sins – and He did, and that matters enormously. But more is going on here than a transaction involving the Creator, lots of individual creatures, and a balance sheet. Supreme ugliness entered the universe a very long time ago, and attached itself to us and to our world in the deepest ways imaginable. Inexpressible Beauty could have turned His back on all of it, but He didn’t: He wrapped His arms around it – more amazing still, he dove into the worst of it, swam in it, emerged with it dripping from His very pores. And, somehow, the ugliness itself was changed. .... [more]

Pain and Ugliness-- Stuntz (Less than the Least)

Ain’t Gonna Go to Hell for Anybody

The invaluable RightWingBob provides a YouTube of a 1980 Dylan performance of Ain't Gonna Go to Hell for Anybody:

"But it don't serve my purpose, it ain't my goal
To gain the whole world and give up my soul."

RightWingBob.com » Ain’t Gonna Go

Good intentions are not enough

Several prominent Evangelicals have taken strong public stands on global warming, arguing that Christians have an obligation to support policies that will reduce it. Richard Cizik, head lobbyist for the NAE, is perhaps the most vocal.

Christians should take stands on matters of public policy, but when the correct position cannot be determined without reference to complex, and perhaps unknowable, technical information, caution is in order.

The man-made disaster may not be what is produced by greenhouse gases but, rather, what we do to reduce them.

First Things posts an account by Thomas Sieger Derr of a debate he had with Cizik on the subject and, in the course of the article, he summarizes many of the problems with the arguments of the global warming true believers.

.... I then ran through my litany of objections to the reigning paradigm that human activity is causing dangerous global warming: the earth’s long history of natural climate swings; the probability that solar cycles are the principle driver of warming and cooling periods; the fact that climate swings do not correspond to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere; the fact that glaciers grow and recede all the time and their melting will not cause serious sea level rise; that rising temperatures will not cause more severe storms; the fact that warming will save more lives than a cooling planet and be otherwise beneficial. ....

.... any serious effort to reduce emissions by any significant amount, let alone the 60-80% called for by the European Union and some of our presidential candidates, would destroy economies all over the world and condemn the poor to perpetual poverty – which is why China and India will have nothing to do with emissions caps. .... Economic growth, which requires energy, and is not possible if greenhouse emissions are severely curtailed, is what will permit us to adapt to the climate changes which nature has always produced naturally and which we cannot stop.

.... Conservation and environmental cleanliness are worthy goals which I fully support; and they can be, and are, addressed by mostly sensible public policies. But cutting “greenhouse gas” emissions drastically would be an epic disaster. ....

Frankly, if I wanted to worry about climate change, I would worry about global cooling again, since the sun is behaving very weakly just now, and sun-watching scientists have even dared to suggest that a reprise of the Little Ice Age is in the offing. Maybe earth is already cooling. We’ve had ten years without a temperature rise, and this past winter, in both hemispheres, has marked a substantial downturn. And the sea ice is back, both in the Arctic and Antarctic. It’s too soon to tell if this is the beginning of a long trend, and we’d better hope it isn’t. But we have no more control over that than we do over warming.

.... My final word, then as now, is this: Global warming is slight, is natural, cannot be stopped, and is on the whole beneficial. Trying seriously to stop it would waste billions of dollars that ought to be spent addressing real human needs.

It was a debate, and I have left out Derr's description of Cizik's part in it. That can be found here.

First Things » Blog Archive » Debating Mr. Cizik

William F. Buckley Jr. 1925-2008

William F. Buckley Jr. died yesterday. This was included in a collection of quotations from him at the National Review site.

...here is the end of his 1970 Playboy interview, coming after a long, intense grilling about Vietnam, civil rights, Communism, etc.:

PLAYBOY: Don’t most dogmas, theological as well as ideological, crumble sooner or later?
BUCKLEY: Most, but not all.
PLAYBOY: How can you be so sure?
BUCKLEY: I know that my Redeemer liveth.

Thanks to Stand to Reason for the reference.

NRO Staff on William F. Buckley Jr. on National Review Online

"Do pastors rebuke any more?"

Jared Wilson:

Okay, okay, it's not very pastoral. :-)

We should restore sinners gently (Gal. 6:1). But I do think that sometimes, in our desires to bear burdens, extend grace, restore gently, counsel toward disciplines, we can inadvertently coddle some who best need stern rebuke.

Do pastors rebuke any more?

Thanks to Jared Wilson at The Gospel-Driven Church, not only for the video and comment, but also for Mark Driscoll's account, which set the context.

The Gospel-Driven Church: Just Stop It

Narnia - Prince Caspian

NarniaWeb provides production images from Prince Caspian. To reach the gallery of pictures, click here or on the picture.

NarniaWeb - Image Gallery

Unaffiliated and uncommitted

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has released the results of an extensive survey about religion in America. Things are changing:

More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion - or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, roughly 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.

The survey finds that the number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.

Among its specific findings:

• Men are significantly more likely than women to claim no religious affiliation. Nearly one-in-five men say they have no formal religious affiliation, compared with roughly 13% of women.
• The Midwest most closely resembles the religious makeup of the overall population. The South, by a wide margin, has the heaviest concentration of members of evangelical Protestant churches. The Northeast has the greatest concentration of Catholics, and the West has the largest proportion of unaffiliated people, including the largest proportion of atheists and agnostics.
• People not affiliated with any particular religion stand out for their relative youth compared with other religious traditions. Among the unaffiliated, 31% are under age 30 and 71% are under age 50. Comparable numbers for the overall adult population are 20% and 59%, respectively.
• By contrast, members of mainline Protestant churches and Jews are older, on average, than members of other groups. Roughly half of Jews and members of mainline churches are age 50 and older, compared with approximately four-in-ten American adults overall.
• Members of Baptist churches account for one-third of all Protestants and close to one-fifth of the total U.S. adult population. Baptists also account for nearly two-thirds of members of historically black Protestant churches.

Albert Mohler summarized some of the other findings:

• Most Americans (78.4%) identify themselves as Christians of some sort. This Christian majority seems to be a settled fact for some time to come, with trends such as Hispanic immigration bolstering these numbers.
• America's Protestant majority - a mainstay of American life from the colonial era to the present - is in decline and Protestant Christians will soon become a minority. The survey revealed that only 51.3% of Americans now identify as Protestants.
• Evangelicals are now the largest single group of American Christians (26.3%).
• Roman Catholics (23.9%) are the second-largest Christian grouping, though almost a third of those born into Catholic homes no longer consider themselves as Catholic. In all, almost 10% of all Americans are "former Catholics."
• Mainline Protestant churches and denominations continue to lose membership and now represent only 18.1% of the population.
• Those identifying as "unaffiliated" represent a fast-growing segment of the population (16.1%), including atheists (1.6%), agnostics (2.4%) and "nothing in particular" (12.1%).
• At least 27% of families are interfaith to some extent. The percentage rises to 37% if spouses of different Protestant denominations are included.
• Among younger Americans (ages 18-29) almost a quarter claim no religious affiliation.

Thanks to Albert Mohler for the reference.

Update: Veith posted these charts illustrating some of the findings. Click on the chart for the full-sized version.Pew Research Center: The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey Reveals a Fluid and Diverse Pattern of Faith