... if I had a different body and mind. (I'm coping with a tough concurrence of dental pain and kitchen remodeling this week. Either would be distracting; both make deeper thought nearly impossible.)
The map above is quite a picture of where racial anxiety of the classic U.S. variety -- white antagonism to people of African descent -- still holds sway. Even if every individual imprisoned for life is really a bad, bad guy, where's something fishy here. None of these are majority Black states. They aren't all former slave states either.
Okay, so we know that religious beliefs, if we go in for that sort of thing, are supposed to underlie our actions in the world. But I find myself more and more haunted by the insight I took from the sociological study, American Grace, that people in this country are likely to use our religious freedom of choice to migrate to a church grouping that accords with our politics, rather than having our politics shaped by religious precepts. Think about that for a minute ... if true, it says a lot about what we think religious beliefs are for.
Ah well -- at least the findings suggest that in one arena liberals are the people with more intensity ... this too agrees with American Grace.
The graphic comes from a study from Faith Communities Today that suggested that ALL religious bodies are losing the young.
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