The Pew Research Center released a new report stating: “African Americans see a widening gulf between the values of middle class and poor blacks, and nearly four-in-ten say that because of the diversity within munity, blacks can no longer be thought of as a single race.” Here are the key findings: • Asked whether blacks can still be thought of as a single race, given the increasing diversity within the munity, 53% of blacks say they can, but 37% of...

A recent survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project finds that “religion is less likely to be central to the lives of individuals in richer nations than poorer ones” (HT). Given the Bible’s many warnings about the danger presented by wealth, specifically the temptation to no longer rely on God and his providential care, that probably isn’t surprising. But what might be more surprising is that “the United States, the wealthiest nation, was ‘most notably’ an exception, scoring higher in...

A while back I made note of the ing beatification of the Italian Catholic liberal (in the old European sense) priest, Antonio Rosmini. Rome-based Church-watcher Sandro Magister has a fuller treatment today at his site. On offer in the Acton Bookshoppe is a new translation of Rosmini’s reflection on natural law, the market, and society, The Constitution Under Social Justice. ...

“People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, ‘Let the little e to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ And he took the children in his arms, put...

After attending GodblogCon last week, largely due to the efforts of Rhett Smith, “New Media Ministry to the MySpace-Facebook Generation: Employing New Media Technologies Effectively In Youth Ministries” (a podcast of his talk is here), I started a Facebook page. But I also urge you to read the experience of Agnieszka Tennant, a relatively new columnist at CT with whom I’m quite impressed, who writes that she “yielded to peer pressure and have begun to lead a modestly active Facebook...

I’m not typically a big fan of litigation. But that option needs to be there for some cases that can’t be solved in other ways. It’s a big stick that should only be used when absolutely necessary and only when appropriate. I’m glad that option was there for Stephanie Hoffmeier of Colonial Forge High School in Stafford, Virginia. When Stephanie applied to register a student club at the school, the administration denied her request, “on the grounds that it was...

In this edition of GWCW: Brian Williams gets all syrupy sweet; so what are you going to do to stop AGW?; yet another bought-and-paid-for shill for big oil; Al Gore vs. the IPCC; and Anak Krakatoa vs. the Climate. It looks like we have a clear frontrunner for this year’s award for the most mawkish over-sentimentalization of environmental issues – NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams: I made my annual pilgrimage to the Time magazine luncheon designed to narrow down...

I stumbled across this article at David Thompson’s blog, where he notes that the article’s author, Jay Rayner, is pondering “…the whereabouts of dramatic radicalism in an age of state subsidy”: The actor Julian Fellowes, who wrote the script for the Oscar-winning country house whodunit Gosford Park and the book for the stage musical of Mary Poppins, is a good place to start. He’s professionally posh. He has a son called Peregrine. His wife is a lady-in-waiting to Princess Michael...

In a bit of an addendum to my review of the HBO series Deadwood in the current issue of Religion & Liberty, “A Law Beyond Law: Life Together in Deadwood,” I couldn’t help thinking of this bit from Clement of Alexandria when describing George Hearst, the über-robber baron of the Old West. In that piece I write, “Hearst fancies that he is doing his fellow man a service in his devotion to mining gold, to acquiring ‘the color.'” There’s a...

After the jump is the (hyperlinked) text of a column I filed last week from GodblogCon. Here are some related items worth exploring: “Evangelicals and Evil Empires: Religious voters have long had an interest in foreign policy,” OpinionJournal (HT: CT Liveblog).“Rudy’s Gamble: Giuliani’s audacious strategy for the nomination,” OpinionJournal.“Evangelical flocks on their own at the polls,” LA Times (HT: J-Walking).“On second thought, conservatives give Huckabee an amen,” LA Times.“Clarifying Media Distortions,” Focus on the Family.“Robertson for Rudy,” God’s Politics.“The Robertson...