In case you haven’t noticed yet, the latest Religion Landscape Survey from Pew Research recently came out. PJ Media’s Rick Moran covered it in a recent article, in which he wrote, “the last four years have seen the number of Christians hold steady, hovering between 60% and 64%.”
In some ways, it looks like a plateau, while in other ways, it looks like Christianity is making a comeback of sorts. Of course, my friend and colleague Stephen Kruiser and I argue in the latest episode of “Faith All Over the Place” that we shouldn’t call it a comeback — we Christians have been here for years!
(While we’re quoting LL Cool J, let me say, “I gotta thank God / ’Cause he gave me the strength to rock hard.” I’m sure Kruiser would agree.)
Previously on Faith All Over the Place, Episode 4: We’re Just Glad We Don’t Have Diabetes
Kruiser and I also discussed the reasons why it looks like faith is “on the rise” (even though we still argue that faithful Christians haven’t diminished as much as the media would like you to believe). I shared the not-so-shocking divide between the percentage of conservatives who call themselves Christians and liberals who identify as such, and we speculated whether there’s a “shy liberal Christian” contingent that won’t speak up to pollsters.
We had an interesting discussion about parts of the world where Christianity is thriving despite persecution and difficult conditions, which shows that Christianity thrives in adversity. We even got ecumenical and wondered why some faithful Jews don’t support Israel, which served as a tease for something I’m thinking about writing later this week.
We also discussed Lent, which I think is the topic of next week’s episode. We’ll reveal what we’re doing for the season — that’s right, even I’m taking part this year! We closed things out with a discussion about Pope Francis — a topic we’ll return to in a future episode — and we speculated on papal succession when the pontiff does pass away.
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