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According to recent polls, some 81 percent of adult Americans believe in heaven, and fully 80 percent expect to go there when they die. By comparison, about 61 percent believe in hell, but less than 1 percent think it’s likely they will go there. In other words, a slight majority of Americans still believe hell exists, but genuine fear of hell is almost nonexistent. Even the most conservative evangelicals don’t seem to take hell very seriously anymore. For decades, many evangelicals have downplayed inconvenient biblical truths, neglecting any theme that seems to require somber reflection. Doctrines such as human depravity,...

If I asked you to describe the state of Christianity in Europe, you'd probably answer "not good." And there'd be ample reason to do so. Most of us are familiar with the depressing statistics regarding church attendance in Western Europe and Scandinavia. But there is more to Europe than Britain, France, and Sweden. And in Central and Eastern Europe, a different story is being written. This story was the subject of a recent First Things article by Filip Mazurczak. In it, Mazurczak reveals to readers what is going on in former communist societies such as Hungary and Croatia. For instance,...

Divorce rate is higher among religiously conservative Protestants, and even among those living around them, finds a new study that examined all counties in the United States where divorces occurred and looked at what the characteristics of those counties were. Demographers Jennifer Glass at the University of Texas and Philip Levchak at the University of Iowa looked at the entire map of the United States, and found that a key factor predicting divorce rates is the concentration of conservative Protestants in a county. To be published in the American Journal of Sociology next month, the study notes that religiously conservative...

In spite of their advances in education and the workforce anxiety disorders are replacing happiness for American women. Sexual liberation was supposed to bring equality for females that expected fulfillment with the freedom to pursue lust without expecting committed relationships.

Equal protection under the law for pre-born human beings is headed our way - and from the work of a surprising demographic: adults under 30. A 28-year old dynamo working on college campuses across the nation, Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, exemplifies why hers is the "pro-life generation". Kristan feels deeply the loss of nearly one-third of her age group. “The undeniable fact is that nearly a third of my generation was killed by abortion. We are missing brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, husbands and wives…. But [we’re] determined to set it right. We’ve seen the ultrasounds of our...

Some tech industry heavyweights took to Twitter on Monday to vent their frustration with the user-unfriendly state of television in the broadband Internet age. The conversation pointed out the conflicts between the freedom to chose that users crave and the content gatekeepers who are reluctant to change from business as usual. BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield documented the Twitter conversation in a blog post Tuesday. It started when Jason Hirschhorn, CEO of Redef, complained about the cost of cable and what he received in return. "It's amazing to me that I pay a cable company $250/month and I can't view all...

Today, the National Right to Life Committee issued a new report, “The State of Abortion in America.”The best news from the report is that abortions have dropped 32 percent from their all-time high as Roe vs. Wade turns 41. The report summarizes key legislative developments at the state and federal levels, finds that the annual number of abortions continues to decline, and shows that a majority continue to oppose the vast majority of abortions allowed under the doctrine of Roe v. Wade. prolifeimage45“While the most recent data indicate a decrease in the annual number of abortions, tragically, more than 3,000...

Robert Reece has found that ignoring the Man Code has improved his life enormously. Not only does traditional masculinity oppress women but it also severely restricts the agency of men (a topic, I’ve written about in the past in the context of straight man love and hip-hop), often in simple, taken-for-granted ways. Straight men go to extreme lengths to perform masculinity. They avoid a wide variety of activities that they arbitrarily deem feminine or “gay” without analyzing the detrimental effects of this type of gender policing. Often mundane, seemingly inconsequential activities are heavily policed, inhibiting men’s ability to live freely...

The Devil’s Due: Satanic monument is inevitable by Daniel Clark In Oklahoma City, a group calling itself The Satanic Temple is proposing to erect a statue of Satan in front of the State Capitol. A design they’ve submitted depicts him as a goat-headed figure with wings, seated on a throne marked with a pentagram, and ministering to two small children. The Satanic Temple claims a right to do this, based on the presence of a monument of the Ten Commandments on Capitol grounds, which the ACLU is now suing to have removed. It’s not hard to see where this is...

Everyone agrees that the employment report last Friday was very bad. Unemployment went down to 6.7 percent, but that was because the Household Survey showed that 347,000 people left the labor force in December while only 144,000 found jobs. In a healthy growing economy you are supposed to get the work force increasing faster than the actual employment, as people join the labor force confidently looking for work.If you look at the data for the five years since President Obama was inaugurated, you can see that we are not just talking about a bad month. It's all bad, from...

I haven’t seen my copy of Men On Strike for several weeks. I kept careful watch on the book until I finished interviewing her, but after that it disappeared into the Bowyer-Family-Book-Sharing Vortex from which it has not yet emerged. That’s because it is an easy read about a topic which is interesting in both a social science theory way, and in a figuring out how to get by in the current world kind of way. Men on Strike is pretty much what the title says it is, a book about how many men have decided not to participate in...

Although in recent decades women have made historic advances in nearly all areas of American public life, a staggering number of women across the country are still teetering on the verge of poverty and economic disaster, a new report released Sunday shows. The report, co-authored by NBC News special anchor Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, takes a wide-angle snapshot of a national economic crisis — seen through the eyes of women. The key findings paint a portrait of an estimated 42 million women — and 28 million dependent children — saddled with financial hardship. "These are not...

<p>CHICAGO (AP) -- It's an assertion that has been accepted as fact by droves of the unemployed: Older people remaining on the job later in life are stealing jobs from young people.</p> <p>One problem, many economists say: It isn't supported by a wisp of fact.</p>

At the beginning of this year (2013), I identified eight key dynamics that will play out over the next two to three years (2013-2015): Trend #1: Central Planning intervention in stock and bond markets will continue, despite diminishing returns on Central State/Bank intervention Trend #2:  The omnipotence of the Federal Reserve will suffer a fatal erosion of confidence as recession voids Fed policy and pronouncements of “recovery" Trend #3: The Mainstream Media (MSM) will continue to lose credibility as it parrots Central Planners’ perception management Trend #4:  The failure of what is effectively the “State religion,” Keynesianism, will leave policy makers in the...

A recent Gallup poll refutes the claim made by Barack Obama on March 9, 2008 that “we are no longer a Christian nation.” Gallup found that three quarters of all Americans - a supermajority - identify themselves as Christians, with only five percent saying they are practicing members of a non-Christian faith. “We find, looking at our data, that America does in fact remain a predominantly Christian nation,” Dr. Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, said of the poll released on Christmas Eve. “Now, our overall estimation of what percent of Americans identify with the Christian religion depends a little...

A lot has been made recently of the "Pajama Boy" advertisements released by Obama's former campaign arm, “Organizing for Action”. Upon viewing the image I immediately mocked it and made fun of it. However, upon further reflection I soon realized that young people are quite literally living in a "pajama economy." We are experiencing hard economic realities where the new norm is sitting at home with our parents drinking hot chocolate and wearing pajamas well into the afternoon. Job prospects are so bad for recent graduates, and for young people in general, that we can aptly coin the term...

On the 407th and final night of Lindsay Holy Family football, a mother bundled on the top bleacher looks out at the 35-yard line, where her son is writhing in pain. At kickoff, Sherri Frisch had cheered so loud you could hear it across the field. "Oh, we're gonna listen to that all night?" said one of the dads. "Shut up," Sherri fired back. "He's a senior. I'm gonna be emotional." Now, seven minutes into the game, she doesn't say a word, waiting for No. 99 to move his left knee. Waiting for Ben to get off the cold grass....

......"The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life has put hard numbers on the anecdotal evidence: One out of every 10 Americans is an ex-Catholic. If they were a separate denomination, they would be the third-largest denomination in the United States, after Catholics and Baptists. One of three people who were raised Catholic no longer identifies as Catholic........."Thankfully, although the U.S. bishops have not supported research on people who have left the church, the Pew Center has. Pew’s data shows that those leaving the church are not homogenous. They can be divided...

<p>Public’s Views on Human Evolution evolution2013-1According to a new Pew Research Center analysis, six-in-ten Americans (60%) say that “humans and other living things have evolved over time,” while a third (33%) reject the idea of evolution, saying that “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” The share of the general public that says that humans have evolved over time is about the same as it was in 2009, when Pew Research last asked the question.</p>

Newspapers are among the last places in America that have close to zero tolerance for [expletive deleted]. I could give you a hint about what word is between the brackets, but I’d best not for fear of arousing the ire of the editing Comstocks. About twice a year, I quote a profanity from a public figure, using just the first letter of the word and then some bowdlerizing asterisks for the rest. No dice, my editor tells me. You’re writing for a family newspaper. There was a time when such standards were the norm at major media institutions in America....