(RNS) Opposition to gay marriage is significantly lower in 2012 compared to the previous two presidential campaigns, a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows.

For the first time, the level of strong support for gay marriage is equal to the level of strong opposition, researchers report. In the April 4-15 survey, 22 percent of Americans say they strongly favor permitting legal marriage for gays and lesbians; an identical percentage said they strongly oppose it.

In 2008, strong opposition was twice as high as support — 30 percent vs. 14 percent.

In 2004, when a host of anti-gay marriage ballot measures helped propel social conservatives to the polls, opposition was more than three times higher than support, 36 percent to 11 percent.

In comparison to the changes in views on gay marriage, not much has changed concerning support for legal abortion. In 2009, less than 50 percent of Americans favored legal abortion but that support rebounded to more than half of the U.S. population and has generally fit trends dating to 1995.

This time around, as in recent election cycles, voters say social issues — such as gay marriage and abortion — are not as important as the economy and jobs. While more than 80 percent of Americans cite the economy and jobs as top voting issues, far fewer rated abortion (39 percent) and gay marriage (28 percent) as very important.

The survey on gay marriage was based on interviews with 1,514 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

(RNS) Back in John Kerry’s ill-fated 2004 presidential campaign, Democrats tried to attract so-called “NASCAR Dads” – white, working-class, mainly Southern fellows – to try to blunt George W. Bush’s re-election and show folks that Kerry was not a wealthy patrician who only appealed to “soccer moms.”

Now Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition is trying to corral what might be called “NASCAR Christians” in hopes that social conservatives will give Mitt Romney a crucial boost in November.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition is pitching its voter drive on the ad space of a Ford to be driven by Reed Sorenson on Saturday (April 28) in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series race at the Richmond (Va.) International Raceway.

“There are an estimated 75 million NASCAR fans, many of whom live in battleground states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. This vote has significant overlap with the evangelical and Tea Party vote,” Reed said.

“An estimated 20 percent of NASCAR fans are not registered to vote. They tend to be pro-family, patriotic, and conservative in their values.”

But will they vote for Romney? He has much the same baggage that Kerry had – a Massachusetts political lineage, lots of money and some difficulty trying to connect with Joe Six-Pack, not to mention the evangelicals who are frequently suspicious of Romney’s Mormonism and conservative bona fides.

Romney’s own venture onto this turf didn’t go so well. Stopping by the Daytona 500 in February, Romney made a silver-spoon gaffe by saying that he doesn’t follow the sport that closely, “but I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners.”

Still, Romney can’t afford to lose this demographic, and key Christian conservatives are trying to rally white evangelicals to a candidate that many have never fully embraced.

Orit Sklar, an FFC spokeswoman, did not provide figures on how much the NASCAR sponsorship cost, but said it would be worth it given the number of potential conservative votes at stake.

“We try everything and we like to see results,” Sklar said. “I can foresee us, if this is a successful venture, doing it again.”

The Faith and Freedom name and logo will appear on the Ford’s hood and rear quarter panels, along with texting information. FFC volunteers will provide voter registration forms and voter guides to the crowd of 150,000 in Richmond, while an estimated 6 million viewers are expected to watch at home, FFC said.

This isn’t the first time that the NASCAR demographic has been targeted by those looking for conservative Christians. Back in 2004, marketers behind Mel Gibson’s controversial movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” covered Bobby Labonte’s Daytona 500 car with ads for the film, which went on to become a huge box office hit.

(RNS) For two years of her life, Louise Allison says she looked and felt like trash. She was a straggly-haired teenager sold for sex on Dallas streets. Her traffickers often drugged her and dumped her in a park to await customers.

Storm Ervin (below) places her handprint on the canvas freedom banner at the Freedom Movement booth on the University of Missouri campus Monday, April 23. The Freedom Movement is part of a nationwide effort on university campuses to end human trafficking.

Allison is one of millions of people who have been trafficked—or sold into slavery—for underage sex or forced labor. Now she directs Partners Against Trafficking Humans, a Little Rock, Ark.-based Christian nonprofit that provides safe housing for human trafficking survivors.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told a Little Rock audience earlier this week (April 25, 2012) that the Justice Department would have zero tolerance for forced labor and underage prostitution—problems that plague the United States as well as developing nations.

The cause of human trafficking has gained traction within the faith community, especially among college students who are working across faith lines toward a goal of eradicating the bonds that enslave an estimated 27 million people.

Across the United States, dozens of colleges and high schools planned spring or fall events to bring attention to the problem of human trafficking.

Many of these events, including a Freedom Movement Week held April 23-27, were inspired by Passion 2012 earlier this year. Passion 2012, a 42,000-student worship conference in Atlanta last January, centered on human trafficking and raised more than $3.3 million from the mostly student attendees to support nonprofits that fight human trafficking.

Claude d’Estree, who directs the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Denver, has watched a growing number of faith-based groups take up this issue since he began human trafficking work in 1998. D’Estree noted the importance of religious leaders in U.S. fights over slavery 150 years ago.

“It’s not surprising to me that religious groups got involved again,” d’Estree said.

Texas A&M junior John Amini, 21, prayed about how to spend Spring semester at Texas A&M while attending the Passion 2012 conference. After hearing speakers on human trafficking, he decided to unite college campuses in a national battle against it.

Amini and friends soon had more than 30 U.S. college campus partners. In addition to the five universities participating in Freedom Movement Week this month (April 2012), other schools are creating programs for fall and raising money.

At Texas A&M, students created an anti-slavery benefit album with sales benefiting anti-trafficking nonprofits Tiny Hands International and Unlikely Heroes. Amini said the Texas A&M chapter hopes to raise $25,000, with about $6,000 raised so far.

Amini said that although Freedom Movement is driven by Christian values, non-Christians are welcome. On other campuses, Jewish and Muslim student-centered groups are joining the fight against human trafficking.

Sophomore Jane Carter (right) paints Zane Vandnais’ (left) hand green for the hand-printing event at the Freedom Movement booth in Lowry Mall on the University of Missouri campus Monday, April 23. The Freedom Movement is an organization on campuses across the U.S. that raises awareness to prevent human trafficking.

Seattle-based Robert Beiser, who directs social justice programs at the University of Washington Hillel, said Jewish students identify with the retelling of the Biblical story of Moses leading slaves out of Egypt by groups fighting human trafficking.

“Students were really getting energized about the idea that they could use our cultural identity as Jews and Passover as a starting point to work on this issue,” Beiser said. University of Washington students helped launch the national Freedom Shabbat in collaboration with Not for Sale, a nonprofit group.

Students reached out through social media and other means to get more than 100 synagogues and other Jewish communities active in Freedom Shabbat, usually held around Passover.  The group also works to encourage grocery stores to carry fair-trade gelt—the chocolate coins given during Hanukkah—in order to guarantee that no slaves helped produce the cocoa.

Not for Sale working most closely with the Jewish community is looking for Muslim leaders to build a Freedom Salat movement for Muslim students and groups.

Kevin Austin, who manages Not for Sale’s faith outreach, said seven Muslim communities have pledged to participate once Freedom Salat is fully launched.

Trafficking Graphic2

(RNS) As nearly 1,000 delegates from across the world gather in Tampa, Fla., for the United Methodist Church’s General Conference, gay and lesbian activists have printed pamphlets promoting their cause in five languages, including Portuguese and Swahili.

The UMC’s global reach, stretching from the Philippines to Philadelphia, compels the multilingual lobbying. Nearly 40 percent of the delegates, who meet through May 4, live outside the United States, according to church leaders.

“We see it as a challenge to deal with the cultural differences,” said Bishop Rosemarie Wenner of Germany, who will be installed in Tampa as president of the UMC’s Council of Bishops. “But we also see it as a gift.”

Convened every four years, General Conference legislates decisions on everything from pensions to prayer books. But few debates garner as much attention and acrimony as the role of gays and lesbians in the UMC.

The homosexuality debate dates to 1972, when a phrase calling homosexual activity “incompatible with Christian teaching” was added to the Book of Discipline, which contains the denomination’s laws and doctrines. The UMC also bans noncelibate gay clergy and same-sex marriage.

The UMC’s long and painful membership decline in the U.S. looms over the debate, as church leaders search for ways to reverse the decades-long drop.

Gay rights activists argue that the UMC must become more inclusive to attract young Americans who view the sexuality prohibitions as hypocritical. Conservatives counter that only churches that hold fast to traditional doctrines are growing.

United Methodists who support gay rights have proposed about 100 resolutions this year that would lift the bans and excise the “incompatible” phrase from the Book of Discipline. Leading up to General Conference, they argued that momentum is on their side.

For example, last year a UMC court barely punished a Wisconsin minister who sanctioned a same-sex marriage; more than 1,200 retired and active UMC clergy have pledged to perform gay marriages; surveys show young Christians generally support gay rights; and other mainline Protestants — including Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians — have adopted gay-friendly policies in recent years.

Conservatives counter that all of those churches have subsequently split, with traditionalist congregations packing up and starting new denominations.

Gay and lesbian Methodists acknowledge that their church’s complexity presents unique challenges. For example, their General Conference includes delegates from states where gay marriage is legal, but also from countries like Liberia, where “voluntary sodomy” is a crime.

“Our structure is different, so that has impacted how we move on these concerns,” said Ann Craig, a United Methodist and gay activist who witnessed votes by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Presbyterian Church (USA) to allow partnered gay clergy.

“We’re going to move together when we move,” Craig said of her own UMC.

But others argue that trends favor traditionalists.

For example, the UMC’s membership in the United States has fallen to 7.8 million, while it has grown to 4.4 million abroad, mainly in Africa and the Philippines, where homosexuality is denounced. As those numbers shift, so does the balance of power, since delegates to General Conference — the only church body that can change the homosexuality bans — are apportioned based on membership.

Compared to the 2008 General Conference, this year there are 100 fewer delegates from the U.S. and 100 more from abroad, according to Mark Tooley, a United Methodist and president of the conservative Institute on Religion & Democracy. “With that lineup, a major shift would be unlikely,” said Tooley.

In addition, UMC growth is stronger in the Bible Belt than in the relatively liberal West and Northeast, said Russell Richey, co-author of a two-volume history of Methodism in the United States and former dean of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.

Some United Methodists argue that policy should be set by regional conferences and reflect local mores.

For example, pastors who live where gay marriage is legal should be permitted to wed same-sex couples in their congregations, said the Rev. Dean Snyder, senior pastor of Washington’s Foundry United Methodist Church.

Foundry proposed a resolution that would allow churches in six states and the District of Columbia to celebrate same-sex marriage, and sent 50 volunteers to Tampa to lobby for it.

Snyder said his church has celebrated about 10 same-sex weddings since 2010, when D.C. legalized gay marriage. That admission could place the longtime pastor’s career in jeopardy if UMC policy is not changed at General Conference.

“We are really praying that General Conference makes some movement,” Snyder said. “It’s going to be very disappointing if there is no movement at all.”

MORRISTOWN, N.J. (RNS) After more than an hour of dramatic testimony from those who knew and loved a longtime Catholic priest, a judge on Friday ordered that troubled church janitor Jose Feliciano, 66, spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole in the priest’s murder.

Judith Ann Conk, who knew the Rev. Edward Hinds for 40 years, found no solace in the life sentence.

“Who will share our sorrows, triumphs and tragedies?” Conk said, addressing the court. “This terrible loss will not go away.”

Feliciano worked at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Chatham, N.J., for 20 years. He admitted to stabbing the priest 44 times inside the St. Patrick rectory Oct. 22, 2009, shortly after the priest fired him.

Prosecutors said the 61-year-old pastor had discovered Feliciano had an arrest warrant in Philadelphia from the 1980s for sexually touching a child and had used aliases and fake identification over the years to hide his past.

Feliciano claimed the killing was provoked, alleging that Hinds had been blackmailing him for four years by forcing him to perform sex acts in exchange for keeping the criminal charges quiet.

In December, after just five hours of deliberation, a jury rejected that defense, convicting Feliciano of murder, felony murder, robbery, hindering and weapons charges.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Manahan told Feliciano he was required to impose life without parole because of the jury’s verdict, but that it gave him no pause.

“It has nothing to do with the fact Father Hinds was a Catholic priest,” the judge said. “This crime was heinous. His conduct deceitful. The court would most certainly have sentenced him the same.”

(Alexi Friedman writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

SPOKANE, Wash. (RNS) After nearly 700 people tried to push Gonzaga University to rescind its commencement speaker’s invitation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, supporters of the anti-apartheid hero responded with 11,000 signatures of their own.

Opponents claim the Jesuit school had lost sight of its Catholic values by inviting the former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, to speak at next month’s commencement and receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

Now a second petition is circulating, this one protesting the anti-Tutu petition.

Desmond Tutu at One Young World.

“For some time now the religious right, and Catholic right in particular, has been succeeding in creating these ridiculous controversies around who speaks on Catholic college campuses,” said Michael Sherrard, director of Faithful America, an online community sponsored by Faith in Public Life.

The original petition, spearheaded by Spokane attorney Patrick Kirby, called Tutu an inappropriate choice because he supports abortion rights, has made offensive statements toward Jews, and supports contraception and the ordination of gay clergy.

In response, Faithful America launched its own petition urging Gonzaga administrators not to back down. Within 48 hours, the petition gained 11,000 signatures.

Gonzaga President Thayne McCulloh said the university would continue with commencement as planned.

“We are very much looking forward to having him,” he said. “I really believe that this is very consistent with what both the church and Jesuits want for its institutions; and of course in any community people will have different points of view around that. But we believe what’s most important here is celebrating the achievements of our graduates and faculty.”

McCulloh said the archbishop is an example to all Christians, particularly for his work fighting apartheid. “We’re not just simply choosing somebody who people know,” McCulloh said.

(Tracy Simmons is the editor of SpokaneFAVS.com)

(RNS) Belief in God is slowly declining in most countries around the world, according to a new poll, but the truest of the true believers can still be found in developing countries and Catholic societies.

The “Beliefs about God Across Time and Countries” report, released Wednesday  by researchers at the University of Chicago, found the Philippines to be the country with the highest belief, where 94 percent of Filipinos said they were strong believers who had always believed.

At the opposite end, at just 13 percent, was the former East Germany.

“The Philippines is both developing and Catholic,” said Tom W. Smith, who directs the General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. “Religion, which is mainly Catholic, is very emotionally strong there.”

The report covered data from 30 countries that participated in at least two surveys in 1991, 1998 or 2008.

In 29 of the 30 countries surveyed in 2008, belief increased with age: Belief in God was highest for those ages 68 or older (43 percent), compared to 23 percent of those younger than 28.

While overall belief in God has decreased in most parts of the world, three countries — Israel, Russia and Slovenia — saw increases. The report said religious belief had “slowly eroded” since the 1950s in most countries of the world.

Atheism and unbelief was most prominent in northwest Europe and some former Soviet states, with the exception of majority-Catholic Poland (just 3.3 percent).

The United States (60.6 percent) was ranked in the top five countries for people who said they knew God existed and had no doubts. Besides the Philippines, the other countries were Chile (79.4 percent), Israel (65.5 percent) and Poland (62 percent).

LONDON (RNS) London’s mayor has axed an ad campaign spearheaded by two conservative Christian groups because their ads suggest homosexuality is a disease that can be cured through prayer.

The groups Core Issues Trust and Anglican Mainstream made posters reading “Post-gay and proud. Get over it!” and had planned to plaster them on the sides of London’s iconic double-decker red buses.

The slogan mimicked a recent drive by the pro-gay rights group Stonewall, which used the line, “Some people are gay. Get over it.”

The Christian groups’ campaign had been scheduled to cover the sides of buses for two weeks starting Monday.

But the British capital’s mayor, Boris Johnson, stepped in to ban it. “It is clearly offensive to suggest being gay is an illness someone recovers from,” the mayor said in a statement on Thursday. “And I am not prepared to have that suggestion driven around London on our buses.”

Core Issues and Anglican Mainstream both fund “reparative therapy” for gay men and lesbians to “cure” them of homosexuality.

This campaign would not have been the first time London’s buses have been used in a religious war of words. Two years ago, atheists launched a similar offensive with a bus slogan reading: “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy life.” Christian charities responded by posting their own rival ads on the buses.

WASHINGTON (RNS) Americans feel the “Christian faith” has a positive impact on help for the poor and raising children with good morals, according to a new poll, but it gets a bad rap on its impact on sexuality in society.

In a new study conducted by Grey Matter Research, more than 1,000 American adults were asked if the Christian faith had a positive, negative, or no real impact on 16 different areas of society, such as crime, poverty and the role of women in society.

Strong majorities (72 percent) said Christianity is good for helping the poor and for raising children with good morals. Around half (52 percent) said Christianity helps keep the U.S. as a “strong nation,” and nearly as many (49 percent) said the faith had a positive impact on the role of women in society.

Although Christianity has been criticized for its traditional views on abortion, contraception and gender roles, “Americans aren’t buying into it,” said Ron Sellers, president of the Arizona-based Grey Matter Research.

Sellers said he wasn’t surprised that Americans hold their most negative perception for how Christianity impacts sexuality: 37 percent felt there was a negative impact, compared to only 26 percent who felt it was positive.

In six of the 16 areas, sizable numbers of Americans said Christianity had little or no impact, including the environment, business ethics, civility and substance abuse. Americans were roughly split, at about one-third each, on Christianity’s impact on racism.

“What’s real concerning to me, from the perspective of a religious leader,” Sellers said, “is when people say, `Eh, it hasn’t had a real impact.’”

The total sample of 1,011 adults selected at random from all 50 states had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

CENTREVILLE, Va. (RNS) It’s been five years since Celeste Peterson’s only daughter was killed in a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech and she’s finally made peace with God.

Which is not to say it’s been easy.

The five-year anniversary of the nation’s most deadly shooting spree — which claimed the lives of 18-year-old Erin Peterson and 31 other victims on April 16, 2007 — is still too fresh.

“Whether we’re talking year one or year five, it still feels like yesterday,” said Celeste Peterson, noting that it’s been five years “since I heard her voice or held her hand.”

The darkened hours of night are sometimes the worst. When Erin went away to college, the one thing her parents asked of her was a call every night, which sometimes came in as late as 1 a.m. Mother, father and daughter would swap prayer requests or updates from home. Their last call, Celeste Peterson remembers, ended in “I love you. I love you, too. See you tomorrow.”

If Erin’s mother had her way, she’d hear that voice again.

“When someone so close to you has passed, why can’t God allow them to make a phone call home at least once? If I could just hear her voice again, I would love that.”

The attention from the media and the community that finds the Petersons this time of year can trigger the tears that were once in a constant free fall at just the mention of Erin’s name. In time, Celeste Peterson says, finding a way forward in the midst of grief can still weigh her family down. But her lifelong faith has helped her through.

“It is what I knew about who God is and my personal relationship with him that really kept me going,” she said. “I know that people say that all the time in situations like this, but I say it with ease.”

Raised in the church and a lifelong believer, Celeste Peterson learned early to rely on God. But in the days and months following her daughter’s death, she barely talked to God. And when she did, it wasn’t because she really wanted to.

“Thank you for this day. I’m not talking to you. Amen” was how the conversation usually went until she was again ready to talk to God again.

When that day finally came, “I never felt like I had missed a beat. He knew how I was feeling at the time. God was my friend and I told him that I thought he left me high and dry. And he told me that he had a plan.”

On the eve of the fifth anniversary, the Petersons will gather with hundreds of friends, family, and faith groups that have turned out for the past four years to pay tribute to Erin during what they call a jubilant gospel concert and dance celebration hosted at their church here.

“We’ve been celebrating with a gospel concert because Erin was a Christian. She was what I called a cool Christian and a realist. It was an easy thing for her to talk about Christ and to tell people that they needed to pray,” said the mother, who doubts that her own courage and faith could have compared to Erin’s when she was her daughter’s age.

Even as a kid, Erin was comfortable sharing her faith at school, said her elementary school teacher, Francie Donnell. She recalled when Erin came to her with an idea for a gospel medley that her classmates could perform at their eighth-grade graduation. She can still see Erin’s tall brown frame towering over her mostly white classmates as she pleaded with them to stop looking down at their feet when they sang, and instead, feel the spirited music and just clap and sway.

Donnell’s son, William, was a junior at Virginia Tech that fateful April day. And like Erin, he had class scheduled in Norris Hall, where most of the victims were gunned down. Five years ago, both families descended on the campus in Blacksburg, Va., in search of their children. When they met at a hotel, Celeste Peterson’s first question was about Donnell’s son.

“She was concerned about our family even though she had just lost her daughter. That’s the kind of special caring person that she is,” said Donnell, who delivered one of the eulogies at Erin’s funeral.

Last month, a jury awarded the Petersons and another family $4 million each in their wrongful death suit against Virginia Teach.

Celeste Peterson no longer has the daughter she called her “gift” and the 6-foot-1 basketball center her husband called his best “buddy.” In 2007, they started a nonprofit group, the Erin Peterson Fund, in their daughter’s memory to award scholarships to promising high school students.

“Erin accepted no limitations when it came to helping those in need,” her mother said. “I understand, now, how she felt.”