yallerdawg
yallerdawg's JournalSame-sex marriage has support among most American religious groups, study shows
Source: Religious News Service, by Jana Riess
Most religious groups now support same-sex marriage being legal, according to a study released today from PRRI, the Public Religion Research Institute. The survey, which was based on more than 40,000 survey responses collected throughout 2017, finds that twice as many Americans now support same-sex marriage as oppose it, 61% to 30%.
Not surprisingly, support is strongest among members of religious groups that tend to be politically liberal, such as Jews (77%), the unaffiliated (80%), and Unitarians (an overwhelming 97%).
What is more surprising is how quickly support for same-sex marriage has grown among religious groups that are more politically diverse. Two-thirds of Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and white mainline Protestants now say they are in favor.
What’s more, majority support now includes African Americans, whose support for same-sex marriage has increased from 41% in 2013 to 52% today. Hispanic Americans also saw double-digit increases, with support rising from 51% in 2013 to 61% today.
As support has grown, outright opposition has declined, the study shows.
Read it all at: https://religionnews.com/2018/05/01/same-sex-marriage-has-support-among-most-american-religious-groups-study-shows/
May Premieres and Returning Favorites
Be sure and add YOUR favorites!
Colony USA, May 2, Wednesday, 10-9CT Season 3, mysterious ET "colonizers" disrupt West Coast tranquility
2 new 1/2 hour series on Starz, May 6, Sundays
Sweetbitter 8-7CT Early foodie culture of NYC circa a decade ago
Vida 8:30-7:30CT Two Latina sisters and mother's death
Patrick Melrose Showtime, May 12, Saturday, 9-8CT 5 episode mini-series
Little Women PBS, May 13, Sunday, 8-7CT Masterpiece 3-part mini-series
Fahrenheit 451 HBO, May 19, Saturday, 8-7CT
The Tale HBO, May 26, Saturday, 10-9CT Stunning movie
100 Code WGN, May 29, Tuesday, 10-9CT
Reverie NBC, May 30, Wednesday, 10-9CT
Yang 2020. Let's put humanity first. It's time for Universal Basic Income.
Let's get paid for the wages they're taking from us and putting in THEIR pockets!
https://www.yang2020.com/
It's Time for Technology to Serve all Humankind with Unconditional Basic Income
Source: Medium, by Scott Santens
Imagine a year where what we’ve long taken for granted, that technology destroys jobs but also creates new and better jobs, is discovered to no longer be true. Instead, machines permanently displace human labor, and what new jobs are created, are mostly worse jobs.
An ever decreasing percentage of the population is employed, and for a majority of those left in the labor market, incomes decrease, hours worked increase, monthly income variance grows more extreme, time between jobs grows, jobs themselves become more akin to tasks, employer-provided benefits become more rare, and the bonds that hold society together begin to fray as inequality grows ever more extreme.
What year do you predict such a future comes to pass? 2030? 2040? 2050 and beyond if even then?
The answer will vary nation by nation, but in the US, the answer is right around 1990. Yes, it already happened. It’s not in the future. It’s in the past.
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Read the rest at: https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-for-technology-to-serve-all-humankind-with-unconditional-basic-income-e46329764d28
Study: Clinton Voters Twice as Likely to Leave Evangelicalism as Trump Voters
Source: Christianity Today, by Paul A. Djupe and Ryan P. Burge
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One in six Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton (16%) had self-identified as evangelical or born again at the beginning of the survey period but had dropped the labels (which overlap) by 2017. Clinton voters were almost twice as likely as Trump voters (9%) to stop identifying as evangelical or born-again Christians.
This trend indicates that Clinton voters did not see their choice as welcome among the evangelical community. Perhaps they felt marginalized among evangelicals to begin with, and the election provided additional motivation to find a new church home or none at all. In fact, among those who stopped identifying as evangelical or born again, 22 percent left religion altogether.
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The long-term fallout is not clear, but the consequences of the divide over Trump are bound to linger in America’s religious landscape. The continued rise of the religious nones has run in parallel to the involvement of the Christian Right in American politics. Marginal evangelicals, especially younger ones, have seen increasing numbers of their peers become unaffiliated in recent years, and their reasons to stay aligned with evangelicalism may be getting less and less persuasive.
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The study results also indicate that American churches could benefit from being a place that welcomes, tolerates, or charitably engages voters of either party. As research has shown again and again, churches tend to be diverse places where people have the chance to work with others around a shared mission and shared faith. There are clearly Democrats in evangelical churches, given that Donald Trump did not win all the evangelical vote.
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Read it all at: https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/april/clinton-trump-voters-evangelical-identity-2016-election.html
The poor don't have a prayer in today's Washington
Source: WaPo, by Dana Milbank
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House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) did not give a reason when his chief of staff this month told the Rev. Patrick Conroy, a Jesuit priest and House chaplain, to resign or face dismissal.
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He prayed to God that lawmakers would help “the least among us.”
He prayed for them to follow the example of St. Nicholas, “who fed the hungry, brought hope to the imprisoned, gave comfort to the lost.”
He admonished lawmakers “to serve other people in their need” and “to pray for the unemployed and those who work but still struggle to make ends meet.”
After an immigration deal collapsed, he urged “those who possess power here in Washington be mindful of those whom they represent who possess little or no power.”
He prayed for lawmakers to be “free of all prejudice” and, after the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, to “fulfill the hopes of those who long for peace and security for their children.”
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Only in this perverted time could a priest lose his job after committing the sin of crying out for justice for the poor. But then, look around: Everywhere are the signs of a rising kleptocracy. The $1.5 trillion tax cut did make winners of corporations and the wealthy. And actions since then show that the Trump administration is making losers of the poor.
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Read it all at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-poor-dont-have-a-prayer-in-todays-washington/2018/04/27/70f52bd8-4a43-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html
Lynching memorial leaves some quietly seething: 'Let sleeping dogs lie'
The brutal new memorial to the south’s dark side has left some in Alabama frustrated and angry at its insistence on confronting the past
Source: The Guardian, by Sam Levin
Black men were lynched for “standing around”, for “annoying white girls”, for failing to call a policeman “mister”. Those are just a few of the horrific stories on display at a new national memorial to lynching victims in Montgomery, Alabama.
One mile away, another historical monument tells a very different tale about the American south: the First White House of the Confederacy celebrates the life of “renowned American patriot” Jefferson Davis, who served as the president of the Confederate states, while making virtually no mention of the hundreds of black people he and his family enslaved.
The contradictions of Montgomery’s historical narratives were on full display this week as thousands of tourists and progressive activists flocked to the city to mark the opening of the country’s first memorial to lynching victims – while some locals quietly seethed, saying they resented the new museum for dredging up the past and feared it would incite anger and backlash within black communities.
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The angry and in some cases blatantly racist reactions to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and accompanying Legacy Museum provided a window into some white Americans’ deep resistance to confronting the nation’s brutal history of racial violence, from slavery to mass incarceration.
While celebrities and civil rights icons lauded the memorial as a powerful symbol of America’s shame and a turning point toward healing, some conservatives in Alabama rolled their eyes at the project, saying they were more concerned with saving Confederate monuments, now under threat from leftwing activists.
Alabama’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey, wasn’t present at the memorial launch, but did release a video promoting her efforts to preserve Confederate monuments a week prior.
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Read it all at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/28/lynching-memorial-backlash-montgomery-alabama
Paul Ryan dismissed the House chaplain. Wait, why does Congress even have a chaplain?
Source: Washington Post, by Sarah Pulliam Bailey
In the early days of the American Revolution, the Continental Congress approved the role of military chaplains, and it chose Anglican minister Jacob Duché to be its first chaplain in 1774. The founders debated how to pick someone among the different denominations represented, but they ultimately decided that the main question was whether the person supported the American Revolution.
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Why did they decide to open congressional sessions with prayer? In 1787, Benjamin Franklin proposed prayer as a way of encouraging discourse during the Constitutional Convention, citing how it helped during the American Revolution.
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In a 1983 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the practice of opening legislative sessions with a prayer offered by a paid chaplain. The case, Marsh vs. Chambers, involved a Nebraska lawmaker who had challenged the state legislature’s chaplaincy practice. In a 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court cited history and tradition in determining that the chaplain did not violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
In 2014, the Supreme Court determined in Town of Greece v. Galloway that town boards can begin sessions with prayer.
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(On the dismissal of Rev. Conroy by fellow Catholic Paul Ryan: )
Some have speculated that Conroy comes from a more progressive end of the spectrum while Ryan, who is also Catholic, comes from the right. The tension among Catholics right now, said Raymond Arroyo of the Catholic network EWTN, is not about politics but, rather, about Catholic doctrine and Pope Francis’s pastoral approach over Catholic teachings on marriage, divorce, communion and other issues.
“People go to their political corners and try to politicize it,” Arroyo said of the debate within the church, “but it’s foundational issues that make people nervous.”
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Read it all at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/04/27/paul-d-ryan-dismissed-the-house-chaplain-wait-why-does-congress-even-have-a-chaplain/
Most Americans believe in a higher power, but not always in the God of the Bible
This just has to include an awful lot of Democrats, doesn't it? I mean, utilizing logic and reason, of course.Source: Washington Post, by Yonat Shimron
Then there are the hardcore disbelievers: about 10 percent who say they don’t believe in the God of the Bible or a higher power.
But among the so-called “nones” — a broad category of atheists, agnostics and those who answer “none of the above” on questions about religion — fully 72 percent believe in a higher power of some kind.
Read it all at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/04/25/most-americans-believe-in-a-higher-power-but-not-always-in-the-god-of-the-bible/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.95d2a3926d34
No Sympathy for the Devil: 'The Exorcist' Director William Friedkin Looks Back
With a new documentary, 'The Devil and Father Amorth,' the filmmaker returns to his original sinSource: Rolling Stone, by Kory Grow
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For about 17 minutes, as shown in The Devil and Father Amorth, the priest sits next to the woman. He literally thumbs his nose at the Devil and begins to pray at which point Cristina's voice drops significantly, sounding very much like Regan's demon voice in both the movie The Exorcist and how it was described in Blatty's book as "deep and thick with menace and power." Cristina shouts "Stop it" in Italian.
"Surrender to the will of God," Amorth commands as several men restrain her as she attempts to leap forward. "Surrender to the will of the Virgin Mary. Surrender to the will of Jesus. … The Virgin Mary will destroy you, Satan." It's not quite "The Power of Christ compels you" with Linda Blair floating in the air as Holy Water rips her skin apart, but it's still arresting. Cristina's demon tells Amorth that it is Satan Himself but also that there are many demons inside her. "We are legion." When it's done, Cristina appears to return to normal until Amorth exorcises her parents in case the demon moved to another person and she lashes out again.
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To understand it all better, Friedkin took his home-movie exorcism to various experts – brain surgeons, psychiatrists, representatives of the church – and interviewed them for the second half of The Devil and Father Amorth. Dr. Neil Martin, then the chair of neurology staff at UCLA, described Cristina as experiencing an "major force within her." He added that Cristina seemed to be suffering delirium and, when Friedkin asks if she would be better helped by brain surgery than this ritual, the doctor says, "unlikely." "I haven't seen this kind of consequence from any [regularly treatable] disorders," he explains.
A group of shrinks referred Friedkin to their bibles: the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the World Health Organization's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. Dissociative Identity Disorder, as defined in DSM-V, is "an experience of possession." It explains: "Possession-form identities in D.I.D. typically manifest as behaviors that appear as if a 'spirit,' supernatural being or outside person has taken control, such that the individual begins speaking or acting in a distinctively different manner. … An individual may be 'taken over' by a demon or deity, resulting in profound impairment, and demanding that an individual or a relative be punished for a past act, followed by more subtle periods of identity alteration." Moreover, it says, "The identities that arise during possession-form D.I.D. … are not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice," dovetailing even deeper into Friedkin's mystery of faith. One of the doctors compared exorcism to "placebo response" – "If you believe something is more likely to work, it's more likely to work." To that point, it's worth noting, too, that because the diagnosis is faith-based, people who aren't Christian, such as Muslims or Jews, are unlikely to be seeking a Catholic exorcist.
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Read it all at: https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/exorcist-director-william-friedkin-horror-documentary-devil-possession-w519493
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