Catholics Are Smarter Than Protestants

At Boston.com, the Boston Globe points out a startling fact or two or three regarding yesterday's Supreme Court nomination:

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has much to distinguish her, but one element of her biography stands out in the world of those interested in religion and the public square: she is Catholic, and, if approved as a Supreme Court justice, she will be the sixth Catholic on the nine-member court. That is a remarkable accomplishment for American Catholics, who make up 23 percent of the nation's population, and will now potentially hold 67 percent of the high court's seats. Two of the justices are Jewish; the resignation of Justice David Souter, who is an Episcopalian, will leave, amazingly given the history of this nation, just one Protestant on the Supreme Court, 89-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens.

What does this work out to?

• Catholics represent 2/3 of the Supreme Court seats, but 23% of the population, for a representation ratio of 2.9:1.
• Jews are 17% of the Court but 2.1% of the population, for a ratio of 8.1:1.
• And Protestants bring up a very small rear: 8% of the Court but something like 50% of the population, for a ratio of 0.16:1.

What of that lone Protestant? Apparently, he leaves it at that, naming no denomination in particular.

To make the equation even more fascinating, of the 103 Justices in the history of the Supreme Court, only 3 have belonged to a denomination that might be called evangelical: they were Baptists. Maybe you could count Huguenots, too, which were sort of evangelical, weren't they? There was one of those (Gabriel Duval, 1811-1835).

So this begets the question: Aside from Jews being so "overrepresented," what is it about Catholics that makes them better Supreme Court material than Protestants? Any why are evangelicals only slightly better represented than Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims (those three all at zero)?

If I were Catholic, I'd be crowing right now, claiming that the Catholic intellectual tradition is obviously superior to that of the Protestants. I would also say that the anti-intellectualism of contemporary evangelicalism has borne the fruit it deserves.

But I'm Protestant, and evangelical at that, so I'll ask, instead: Where are the brilliant evangelical jurists? Or is such a term a necessary oxymoron?

(An interesting site from which I got many of my statistics is adherents.com.)

A Spirited Debate, But Not A Spiritual Issue

If you live in Georgia and think you ought to be able to buy wine on Sunday for your communion service (or beer for your evangelistic barbecue), you can sign a petition online asking legislators to approve a bill that would allow the people in each county/city to vote on whether to allow such sales. The petition is here. It takes about 60 seconds.

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As I write this, there are 5400 signatures. That's up from about 3000 yesterday.

For some reason, our governor, lieutenant governor, several key legislators, and quite a number of evangelicals seem to think society will collapse if people can buy alcohol on Sunday afternoon. 47 other states have found otherwise.

If you were reading my blog a year ago, you know why I don't think Sunday alcohol sales is a religious issue. Rather than rehash everything, I'll just give you the link to my previous post, if you're interested.

In Europe, God is (Not) Dead

So says the Wall Street Journal, July 14-15, 2007. Check it out, and as you do, notice, among other things, the benefit of the separation of church and state, and the value of competition (even in the church world):

Late last year, a Swedish hotel guest named Stefan Jansson grew upset when he found a Bible in his room. He fired off an email to the hotel chain, saying the presence of the Christian scriptures was “boring and stupefying.” This spring, the Scandic chain, Scandinavia’s biggest, ordered the New Testaments removed.

In a country where barely 3% of the population goes to church each week, the affair seemed just another step in Christian Europe’s long march toward secularism. Then something odd happened: A national furor erupted. A conservative bishop announced a boycott. A leftist radical who became a devout Christian and talk-show host denounced the biblical purge in newspaper columns and on television. A young evangelical Christian organized an electronic letter-writing campaign, asking Scandic: Why are you removing Bibles but not pay-porn on your TVs?

Scandic, which had started keeping its Bibles behind the front desk, put the New Testament back in guest rooms.

“Sweden is not as secular as we thought,” says Christer Sturmark, head of Sweden’s Humanist Association, a noisy assembly of nonbelievers to which the Bible-protesting hotel guest belongs.

After decades of secularization, religion in Europe has slowed its slide toward what had seemed inevitable oblivion. There are even nascent signs of a modest comeback. Most church pews are still empty. But belief in heaven, hell and concepts such as the soul has risen in parts of Europe, especially among the young, according to surveys. Religion, once a dead issue, now figures prominently in public discourse.

God’s tentative return to Europe has scholars and theologians debating a hot question: Why?

...Some scholars and Christian activists, however, are pushing a more controversial explanation: the laws of economics. As centuries-old churches long favored by the state lose their monopoly grip, Europe’s highly regulated market for religion is opening up to leaner, more-aggressive religious “firms.” The result, they say, is a supply-side stimulus to faith.

“Monopoly churches get lazy,” says Eva Hamberg, a professor at Lund University’s Centre for Theology and Religious Studies and co-author of academic articles that, based on Swedish data, suggest a correlation between an increase in religious competition and a rise in church-going. Europeans are deserting established churches, she says, “but this does not mean they are not religious.”

...Most scholars used to believe that modernization would extinguish religion in the long run. But that view always had trouble explaining why America, a nation in the vanguard of modernity, is so religious.

...Now even Europe, the heartland of secularization, is raising questions about whether God really is dead. The enemy of faith, say the supply-siders, is not modernity but state-regulated markets that shield big, established churches from competition. In America, where church and state stand apart, more than 50% of the population worships at least once a month. In Europe, where the state has often supported — but also controlled — the church with money and favors, the rate in many countries is 20% or less. “The state undermined the church from within,” says Stefan Swärd, a leader of Sweden’s small but growing evangelical movement.

...Just a few blocks away, Passion Church, an eight-month-old evangelical outfit, fizzed with fervor. Nearly 100 young Swedes rocked to a high-decibel band: “It’s like adrenaline running through my blood,” they sang in English. “We’re talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

Passion, set up by Andreas Nielsen, a 32-year-old Swede who found God in Florida, gets no money from the state. It holds its service in a small, low-ceilinged hall rented from Stockholm’s Casino Theatre, a drama company. Church, says Mr. Nielson, should be “the most kick-ass place in the world.”

There's more where that came from. To read
the entire article, you can go here.

Getting Any? Single Evangelicals Have Sex More Often Than Nonevangelicals

You heard it here, first. Or maybe not.

An article on the Slate website says that evangelical teens are statistically more likely to engage in premarital sex than nonevangelical teens.

Evangelical teens are actually more likely to have lost their virginity than either mainline Protestants or Catholics. They tend to lose their virginity at a slightly younger age—16.3, compared with 16.7 for the other two faiths. And they are much more likely to have had three or more sexual partners by age 17: Regnerus reports that 13.7 percent of evangelicals have, compared with 8.9 percent for mainline Protestants.

Why is this happening? Well, the author lists several influences, most of them cultural, that make it difficult for evangelicals to think differently from others.

But partly the problem lies in the temptation-rich life of an average American teenager. The fate of the True Love Waits movement, which began with the Southern Baptist Convention in the '90s, is a perfect example. Teenagers who signed the abstinence pledge belong to a subgroup of highly motivated virgins.

But even they succumb. Follow-up surveys show that at best, pledges delayed premarital sex by 18 months—a success by statistical standards but a disaster for Southern Baptist pastors.

Evangelical teens today are much less sheltered than their parents were; they watch the same TV and listen to the same music as everyone else, which causes a "cultural collision," according to Regnerus. "Be in the world, but not of it," is the standard Christian formula for how to engage with mainstream culture. But in a world hypersaturated with information, this is difficult for tech-savvy teenagers to pull off.

There are no specific instructions in the Bible on how to avoid a Beyoncé video or Scarlett Johansson's lips calling to you from YouTube, not to mention the ubiquitous porn sites. For evangelicals, sex is a "symbolic boundary" marking a good Christian
from a bad one, but in reality, the kids are always "sneaking across enemy lines," Regnerus argues.

To that, I'd add that a church environment is all about building relationships. When you're hanging around with people, sharing your lives and your struggles, attachments will develop. Many of those attachments would be called community or fellowship, but as closeness develops, it can tempt toward fornication, as well. This is what I'd call an unintended consequence. Kids could avoid this by staying home alone, reading books, watching TV, or even cruising the internet for porn, but hermitage is a poor substitute for relationships, even when the relationships provide some temptation. There's a middle ground (a balance, if you will) in the pursuit of healthy relationships, knowing the difference between close and too close.

And here's the part of the article that I think is most relevant to our earlier discussion of evangelical divorce rates. Notice that not all evangelicals are created equal:

What really matters is not which religion teenagers identify with but how strongly they identify. After controlling for all factors (family satisfaction, popularity, income), religion matters much less than religiosity. Among the mass of typically promiscuous teenagers in the book, one group stands out: the 16 percent of American teens who describe religion as "extremely important" in their lives. When these guys pledge, they mean it. One study found that the pledge works better if not everyone in school takes it. The ideal conditions are a group of pledgers who form a self-conscious minority that perceives itself as special, even embattled.

I recently spent a year among some evangelical teenagers who belong to this elite minority, and I can attest to the inhuman discipline they exert over their hormones. They can spend all evening sitting on the couch holding hands and nothing more. They can date for a year, be alone numerous times in a car or at the movies, and still stick to what's known in the Christian youth literature as "side hugs," to avoid excessive touching. Muslims have it easy compared to them. At least in Saudi Arabia the women are all covered up, so there's nothing to be tempted by. But among this elite corps of evangelicals, the women are breezing around in what one girl I know called "shockingly slutty conservative outfits" while the men hold their tongues. (No, they don't hold anything else.)

As usual, I encourage you to read the entire article rather than rely on my snippets. But here are my own conclusions:

• Evangelicals are in the world and exposed to the same cultural influences that nonevangelicals are.


• Evangelicals are being taught what's right and wrong, but their thinking is not being transformed. Typically, the church teaches the rules and the lists and the "steps to ___," but doesn't teach its people how to learn God's logic and be transformed by His Spirit.


• Unmarried teens and married adults both think that fulfillment and romantic love are higher values than commitment, obedience, and integrity. When presented with the opportunity for premarital sex or the challenges of a difficult marriage, the tendency (i.e., temptation) is to opt for the "self-actualizing" approach, rather than the one of chastity or fidelity.


• Plus, there is, no doubt, a spiritual warfare component to what's going on - which would give the evangelicals an adversary that the others might not have.


• It's not all bad news, though. Teens who are truly committed and not just mouthing words are avoiding sex before marriage at a rate better than nominal evangelicals. A different mind (or mindset) and the power of the Holy Spirit do make a difference.


• I suspect there's a similar pattern in marriage: although evangelicals as a group are divorcing at a rate similar to their non-evangelical neighbors, the rate among "true believers" is probably better than among those who simply talk the talk and act the walk.