Many Americans believe our world’s becoming more secular. While that’s true, many of today’s fastest-growing religious denominations aren’t progressive—they’re traditional. Here’s what the data show.
In the 1990s, 90 percent of Americans identified as Christians on Pew surveys. Today, that number has fallen to about 67 percent. Among young adults, over 40 percent are religiously unaffiliated.
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The Pope declared that a London-born teenager who died of leukemia in 2006 is qualified to become the first millennial saint.
Carlo Acutis posted about the teachings of the Catholic church online and reportedly became known as “God’s influencer.”
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In February, Harrison Butker kicked the longest field goal in Super Bowl history—a massive 57-yard three-pointer—to help carry the Kansas City Chiefs to a rollicking win over the San Francisco 49ers.
Recently, he’s made headlines again—this time, arguably, for far more profound reasons.
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When the “The Exorcist” premiered 50 years ago, in December 1973, some theatergoers fainted or broke down in tears. A few even vomited.
The film, which cast a young Linda Blair as a girl claiming to be possessed by the devil, was an almost instant success, with moviegoers waiting in line for hours to secure tickets. It went on to gross over US$440 million worldwide.
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President Biden’s Summit for Democracy hasn’t yet provoked the sort of debate about Biden’s relationship to his church that abortion has. But questions about the president’s adherence to church teaching may be as applicable to democracy as it is to a woman’s right to choose since, in both cases, Roman Catholicism has much to say. In the case of democracy, Americans used to view Rome, a hierarchical church that had a long history of cooperation with emperors and monarchs, as an arch opponent of the nation’s democratic politics. Until the 1960s, the perception may have been accurate, but today it is a relic of an earlier era in church history.
One question that emerged after the Summit for Democracy is whether Biden’s faith might explain the presence of nations who seem to lean more authoritarian than democratic. As the story in the New York Times put it, “It was no surprise that China and Russia were not included, but the administration was second-guessed for its decision to invite other countries with checkered human rights records, like the Philippines and Nigeria, while excluding NATO allies Turkey and Hungary, both led by rulers with authoritarian streaks.”
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Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone rebuked Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi Thursday for calling herself a “devout Catholic” in her defense of taxpayer funded abortion.
“Let me repeat,” the San Francisco archbishop said in a statement. “No one can claim to be a devout Catholic and condone the killing of innocent human life, let alone have the government pay for it. The right to life is a fundamental — the most fundamental — human right, and Catholics do not oppose fundamental human rights.”
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Catholic parishes, schools, and dioceses have for years responded to transgenderism by simply ignoring the issue altogether. But that’s starting to change, largely because the problem is getting too big for churches to ignore.
“My sense is that nearly every parish includes families with loved ones grappling with identity issues or gender dysphoria,” Mary Rice Hasson told The American Spectator.
Hasson, who directs the Catholic Women’s Forum at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, recently founded an initiative called the Person and Identity Project, which aims to equip Catholic parishes and schools with resources to combat gender ideology.
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