c. 2004 Religion News Service

Poll: Protestant Numbers Shrinking, May Lose Majority Status

(RNS) Protestants could cease to be the majority religious group in the United States within the next year and their numbers already may have dipped below 50 percent, a new study by the National Opinion Research Center says.

From 1972, when the University of Chicago-based NORC began its General Social Survey, until 1993, the Protestant share of the population remained constant, averaging 62.8 percent. It then began to show a decline, reaching 52.4 percent in 2002.

The study attributed the decline to, among other things, the fact that fewer children were being raised in Protestant homes over the past four decades. The share of people who said they were raised as Protestants dropped from 64.7 percent in 1972 to 55.7 percent in 2002.

Among people born after 1980, less than half said they were raised Protestant, suggesting the downward trend would continue.

The study found that the retention rate for Protestants also fell over the years. In the 20 years leading up to 1993, a steady 90 percent raised in Protestant households remained Protestants as adults. That had dropped below 83 percent by the turn of the century.

However, not all churches report a decline in their congregations.

Sherri Doty, statistician for the Assemblies of God, said that between 1993 and 2003 the number of adherents grew by 20 percent, as reported by local churches. Increasing numbers of ethnic congregants contributed to the growth of the church, which had 2.7 million adherents in 2003, she said.

Immigration is another factor that has lowered the proportion of Protestants in the United States. The study found that only 24.5 percent of immigrants are Protestant, but said, “while it helps to sustain the current decline, it cannot explain the start of the decline in the mid-1990s or its recent rapid rate.”

The NORC study conducted personal interviews in 2002 with more than 2,650 respondents.

_ Jonah D. King

South African Church Council Says `Quiet Diplomacy’ Over Zimbabwe Fails

(RNS) In a rare, public break with President Thabo Mbeki, the South African Council of Churches has criticized the president’s policies on Zimbabwe, saying “quiet diplomacy” over Zimbabwe’s human rights record has proven a failure.

“The Council decries the tragedy of Zimbabwe, which has resulted in pain, suffering and dislocation for many people in Zimbabwe, as well as the erosion of human rights, the decline of the economy and the destruction of much of the natural heritage,” the council said in a statement last week at the end of its triennial conference in Johannesburg.

That statement _ as well as other recent public criticisms of Zimbabwe by South African church leaders _ further distanced the council from Mbeki, the African National Congress leader who has argued that behind-the-scenes diplomacy is needed in dealing with Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe’s government has long been accused of human rights abuses and crackdowns on political opponents, as well as mismanaging Zimbabwe’s economy.

The South African council, a key ally of the ANC during the anti-apartheid struggle of the 1970s and 1980s, has slowly been distancing itself from Mbeki on the Zimbabwe controversy, but the latest statement was the clearest indication of a break with Mbeki’s government on how to address the problems in neighboring Zimbabwe.

“Quiet diplomacy has failed,” Molefe Tsele, the SACC general secretary, told reporters June 14 at the end of the conference. He added that the council hoped it and the Zimbabwe Council of Churches could work with various parties to resolve the problems in Zimbabwe.

In response to the church criticism, Mbeki spokesman Bheki Khumalo said it is not helpful for the South African president to “shout over the fence, get good headlines but remain with the same problem,” reported Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based news service. “It is easy for other people to shout and walk away from the problem.”

Prior to the SACC conference, Cardinal Wilfred Napier, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Durban, suggested sanctions against Zimbabwe might be an effective tool for change. “The people of Zimbabwe already are suffering,” he said in a radio interview, reported by the Associated Press. “Perhaps under sanctions they would suffer for a shorter period of time.”

_ Chris Herlinger

McCarrick Meets With Catholic Lawmakers

WASHINGTON (RNS) Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington met Tuesday (July 20) with Catholic lawmakers who in May said threats of denying Communion to pro-choice politicians bring “great harm to the church.”

McCarrick, the archbishop of Washington and head of a task force on how the church should relate to politicians, met privately with a half-dozen House members and separately with Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.

“Some of the Democratic members had asked to meet with him several months ago and he said he would because (the task force) is hearing from a lot of different people,” said McCarrick’s spokeswoman, Susan Gibbs.

Last month, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops warned that Catholic politicians who support abortion on demand risk being “cooperators with evil” and should be denied public honors from Catholic institutions.

The bishops, however, left the door open for dissenting politicians to continue receiving Communion. The prelates, following McCarrick’s lead, left the choice on how best to respond to individual bishops.

Gibbs said McCarrick shared the bishops’ statement with the lawmakers, but declined to discuss any specifics from the meeting. McCarrick has previously met privately with presumptive presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

One of the House members to meet with McCarrick, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said it was “a real good meeting” but declined to elaborate. He said relations between the lawmakers and church leaders are “still a work in progress.”

In May, Stupak joined 47 House colleagues in a letter to McCarrick that said attempts to deny them Communion were “deeply hurtful.” “We would remind those who would deny us participation in the sacrament of the Eucharist that we are sworn to represent all Americans, not just Catholics,” the Catholic Democrats said in their letter.

McCarrick also met with Durbin, who last month (June 2) issued a report comparing Catholic senators’ voting records with church teaching. That report said Kerry voted with the church 60.9 percent of the time, scoring the highest mark among all 24 Catholic senators.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Washington Forum Discusses Religion-Public Life Intersection

WASHINGTON (RNS) As the two presidential candidates continue to traverse the intersection of religion and politics, two nonpartisan research groups parked at a forum Wednesday (July 21) to contemplate the role of faith in public life.

“One Electorate Under God? A Dialogue on Religion and American Politics” was billed by its hosts _ the Brookings Institution and the Pew Forum on Religion and American Politics _ as a follow-up to their book of the same name.

For both the book and the discussion, the research groups solicited opinions from lawmakers, philosophers and columnists of every ideological stripe.

Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., contributed to the book and spoke at the forum Wednesday. The evangelical Christian said that “to ask me to check my Christian beliefs at the public door is to ask me to expel the Holy Spirit from my life when I serve as a congressman, and that I will not do. Either I am a Christian or I am not. Either I reflect his glory or I do not.”

Souder said that occasionally, the strictures of his faith run contrary to public opinion in his home district. Few among his constituency, for example, approve of foreign aid, Souder said. But, as a fundamentalist Christian, he is bound to support Israel, he said.

“I believe God gave Israel the land” and how the United States treats Israel will determine whether God views America as a “blessed” nation, Souder said.

Rep. David Price, D-N.C., said politicians must be wary of the “political pretensions” of claiming “divine sanction for their own political program.”

“Not only does that kind of religious arrogance violate the tenets of American pluralism and American democracy, it also violates the deepest insights of our religious traditions themselves,” Price said.

Chief among those insights is having the humility to refuse “to identify any particular ideology or political agenda with the will of God.”

The other speakers at the forum were David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, and E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and columnist for The Washington Post.

_ Daniel Burke

Michigan City Residents Affirm Call to Prayer Via Loudspeakers

(RNS) Residents of Hamtramck, Mich., have upheld an amendment to the city’s noise ordinance, a move considered a victory for those who favored permitting mosques to issue the call to prayer over loudspeakers.

The vote on Tuesday (July 20) was 1,462 to 1,200, or 55 percent to 45 percent, the Associated Press reported.

In April, the City Council passed the amendment after a mosque sought permission to start broadcasting the Arabic chants that are traditionally issued five times a day.

The council’s unanimous action prompted protests from some longtime residents of this once-predominantly Polish city of 23,000 people. In recent years the Detroit suburb has seen a rapid increase in immigrants from Yemen, Bangladesh and other nations.

The al-Islah mosque began the call to prayer in May. At least one other mosque in the city has begun similar broadcasts via loudspeakers.

“Either way, the call is going to continue to happen,” City Council President Karen Majewski said before the vote Tuesday.

Willy Jones, 67, who voted at a Catholic school across from the al-Islah mosque, differed with Muslim leaders who said the calls are similar to church bells.

“The church has been doing this for years,” he said. “This is not calling people to prayer. It’s (giving) the time of day.”

Lutful Choudhury, a Muslim who voted to maintain the ordinance, said the matter had been blown out of proportion by opponents.

“They’re trying to make it a big deal, but it’s not,” he said. “If you go two or three blocks, you can’t even hear it.”

Anglicans Establish Michael Ramsey Theological Prize

LONDON (RNS) A biennial $27,750 prize for new theological writing has been announced by Lambeth Palace.

The prize, named after Michael Ramsey, who was archbishop of Canterbury from 1961 to 1974 and known for his profound theological learning, is being sponsored by the Lambeth Fund and administered by the publishing house SPCK _ the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, founded in 1698.

The Lambeth Fund was set up in 1983 to support the work of the Church of England and particularly that undertaken by archbishops of Canterbury, and has funds of just over $5.55 million.

The new prize will be awarded by a panel of eight judges, one of whom will be the archbishop of Canterbury _ Rowan Williams, himself a theologian of some repute.

The aim is to select a new work written _ or published in English translation _ between January 2000 and June 2004 which says “something new and compelling at the cutting edge of Christian thinking” and which will “make a serious contribution to the faith and life of the church.”

Announcing the new award, Williams said, “I have been clear since I came into office that a real priority had to be the encouragement of excellence in the field of theological education.

“The opportunity to combine this with honoring Michael Ramsey, one of the great theological writers and thinkers of the Anglican Church in living memory, was simply too good to ignore. I hope that writers and researchers will be encouraged and that the Church will realize the great debt that we owe to those whose work is to deepen our understanding and strengthen our faith.”

_ Robert Nowell

Quote of the Day: New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof

(RNS) “People have the right to believe in a racist God, or a God who throws millions of non-evangelicals into hell. I don’t think we should ban books that say that. But we should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels. That’s not what America stands for, and I doubt that it’s what God stands for.”

_ New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, in a July 17 Op-Ed piece criticizing the “Left Behind” series’ final installment, “Glorious Appearing.”

DEA/PH END RNS