The Pew Forum has released a study suggesting that self-described Christians don’t know a whole lot about world religions — including Christianity.

Atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons — on average — score better on religious literacy tests than self-described Protestant Mainline, Evangelical or Catholic Christians.

Does this mean that most Christians are clueless? No. It means that Christianity is still the default position in the United States. So we’ve got tens of millions of Americans who are culturally (not spiritually) Christians. A lot of them live here in the South.

Many of them don’t know jack about Jesus. Never set foot in church. Never read the Bible. Could tell you more about Ground Hog Day than Good Friday. Know more about their horoscope sign than the Plan of Salvation. Nice people, a lot of the time; good people, perhaps; but absolutely clueless about religion.

People who have thought about religion enough to decide “I’m an atheist” or “I’m a Mormon” or “I’m a Jew” have gone against the cultural tide. They’ve taken a stand. And they’ve been asked, more likely than not, to defend their position.

It would be interesting to know how church-going Christians scored on this religious literacy test. My hunch — they probably score better than non-churchgoers.

h/t: David Duke

“APNewsBreak: 4th man sues Ga. megachurch pastor” (click below to read the story)

Another accuser has stepped forward. And the stories are all eerily similar.

These are all 1.) very young men who 2.) were taught that Eddie Long was God’s messenger to humanity; and that 3.) homosexuality is a dirty, foul, filthy, most abominable form of depravity.

These young men clearly had extraordinary access to Long. And they claim there’s a trail of cash and gifts and travel linking them to the preacher.

Let’s be clear. If you believe somebody is a righteous prophet of God and if that person has treated you with boundless compassion and kindness and generosity, chances are you’d lie to protect the person before you’d lie to destroy him.

You’d feel gratitude. You’d feel indebtedness. And — even if you were a (churchgoing) liar and a reprobate — you’d know that you’d be killing the golden goose by lying about your godly benefactor.

Plus, if you believed the messages you heard on Sundays, you’d panic about the word “homosexual” appearing in the same sentence as your own name.

Yes, our world has psychopaths. People who bite the hand that feeds them. And, perhaps, Bishop Eddie Long was unfortunate enough to surround himself with a young false accuser. And another. And another. And another.

Perhaps.

But the more accusers that come forward — with proof that they were in Long’s inner circle — the more tenuous will be Long’s grip on power.

My guess? Bishop Eddie Long won’t last long.

By GREG BLUESTEIN ATLANTA (AP) — A fourth young male member of Bishop Eddie Long’s megachurch says the prominent pastor coerced him into a sexual relationship.

Attorney B.J. Bernstein says she is filing a lawsuit Friday on behalf of a member of New Birth Charlotte. New Birth Charlotte is a satellite church run by Long in Charlotte, N.C. The man met Long in May 2005.

The lawsuit says the bishop took the teenager to Kenya in July 2005 when he was 17 and engaged in sexual activities with him. It said that Long later encouraged him to move to Atlanta, where the activity continued until early 2009.

The other three men who filed the lawsuit were 17- and 18-year-old members of the church when they say Long abused his spiritual authority to seduce them.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Gene Weingarten, the Pulitzer-Prize winning comedian/genius at the Washington Post recently wrote about the death of the English language — and particular words that annoyed him.

He heard back from readers who had plenty of their own linguistic pet peeves.

Perhaps the most-hated term, according to Weingarten: “went missing” (instead of “disappeared.”)

As I read Weingarten’s column, it occurred to me that there’s a lot of clunky religious language. Some of it is relatively new. For example “unchurched.” (When I was a kid, “unchurched persons” were “people who don’t go to church.”)

Or the word “dialogued.” (Until recently, people didn’t “dialogue” — they “talked.”)

Or the phrase “person of faith.” (Previously we called such persons “religious.”

There are others, including: “faith community”, “faith tradition”.

Can you think of some others?

Georgia preacher Eddie Long refused to cooperate with an investigation by U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley — and got away with it.

But now Long is facing new questions,CNN reports.

This is both an alleged money scandal and an alleged sex scandal. And, barring a quick out of court settlement, things could get very interesting.

Here’s what AP has to say:
(more…)

Outreach Magazine this week released its annual list of the 100 largest and fastest-growing churches.

The largest — with 43,500 weekly attendance — is Lakewood Church in Houston.

Other megamega churches include:

2. North Point Community Church (in Alpharetta, Ga.) — 24,325

3. Second Baptist Church (Houston) — 24,041

4. Willow Creek Community Church (South Barrington, Ill.) — 24,000

5. Southeast Christian Church (Louisville) — 19,230

The largest Arkansas churches on the list:
(more…)

The Assemblies of God today unambiguously denounced Saturday’s planned Koran burning. [AP reported around 5 p.m. ET that the church is canceling the event.]

The Assemblies of God’s statement is notable because: (more…)

Romenesko has posted a memo from an Associated Press muckety-muck. It’s a heads-up to let everybody know that AP won’t be moving any pictures of Qurans being burned in Gainesville, Fla. The memo states:

“Should the event happen on Saturday, the AP will not distribute images or audio that specifically show Qurans being burned, and will not provide detailed text descriptions of the burning. …

AP policy is not to provide coverage of events that are gratuitously manufactured to provoke and offend….”

That last line was certainly worth a chuckle. HOW MANY THOUSAND STORIES has the Associated Press written about Fred Phelps? How many thousand photos of “God Hates Fags” signs has AP shipped to every corner of the globe?

How many photos has AP moved of U.S. flag burnings and Ku Klux Klan cross burnings? How many images did AP transmit of Nazis marching in Skokie, Illinois?

AP, on a regular basis, covers events that are gratuitously manufactured to provoke and offend. And it’s done so for decades.

A more honest memo would have simply said: We’re afraid. We’re afraid innocent people are going to die if this Quran burning happens. We’re afraid we’ll be adding fuel to the fire by taking photos and disseminating them around the globe. We’re afraid radical Islamists will target and kill our employees and blow up our buildings.

AP’s decision is not, primarily, about having good manners or respecting diversity or promoting toleration. This is pure primal fear. And if I were an AP executive, I’d be scared, too.

This is dynamite we’re playing with.

I assume that there’ll be violence if a Gainesville, Fla. church burns copies of the Koran on September 11.

I wonder how many people will die in the resulting protests.

A 22-year-old New York Man has quite a story to tell. He jumped out of a high rise building, plummeted 39 stories, reached speeds of above 125 miles per hour — and lived to tell about it.

Who deserves credit? An American made car? Or a rosary? Details here.

I was visiting one of Madrid’s great museums back in February 2005 and came upon a painting of Moses the Law Giver. As I recall, he was holding the Ten Commandments and sprouting horns.

Yes. Horns.

The painting, which was hundreds of years old, really puzzled me. [This isn't the painting I saw, but it'll do.]

The Madrid painting seemed awfully anti-Semitic — even by 15th century Spanish standards. I asked around and nobody at the museum could explain why Moses had horns.

The painting continued to mystify me. Until today. Reading Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, by Diarmaid MacCulloch, I learned how Moses got his horns. Apparently, St. Jerome gave them to him.

The translator of the Vulgate version of the Bible misinterpreted a Hebrew word in the book of Exodus. Instead of saying that Moses’ face “shone” after his descent from Mt. Sinai, the Vulgate said that Moses’ face “had horns.”

Mystery solved.

(The Jewish Encyclopedia offers more details.)

Two of the three largest newspapers affiliated with religious organizations, the (Salt Lake) Deseret News and the Washington Times, appeared to be making sweeping changes this week.

The Deseret News, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced that it is cutting its staff roughly in half.

Half a continent away, there were reports that the Washington Times will be sold to investors loyal to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon — for one dollar. [The group of Moon associates currently running the paper were apparently unwilling to keep subsidizing it in perpetuity.]

Meanwhile, in Boston, the daily Christian Science Monitor has transitioned from print to the internet.

A question I’ve been pondering — the U.S. doesn’t have a Catholic paper, a Southern Baptist paper or a United Methodist paper. Why didn’t the nation’s largest religious bodies failed to build daily newspapers of their own?

A second question — The Mormon Church, as far as I can tell, is one of the most successful institutions in America numerically and financially. Why would it make such sharp cuts to its paper when the church, itself, appears to be flourishing?