WASHINGTON (RNS) A growing tide of young Americans is drifting away from the religions of their childhood — and most of them are ending up in no religion at all.

One in four young adults choose “unaffiliated” when asked about their religion, according to a new report from the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.

But most within this unaffiliated group — 55 percent — identified with a religious group when they were younger.

“These younger unaffiliated adults are very nonreligious,” said Daniel Cox, PRRI’s research director. “They demonstrate much lower levels of religiosity than we see in the general population,” including participation in religious rituals or worship services.

Some of them will return to their faiths as they age, “but there’s not a lot of evidence that most will come back,” added Cox, who said the trend away from organized religion dates back to the early 1990s.

The study of 2,013 Americans ages 18-24 focused on the younger end of the cohort commonly known as the “Millennials” or “Generation Y,” which generally includes young adults as old as 29. Interviews were conducted between March 7 and 20.

Across denominations, the net losses were uneven, with Catholics losing the highest proportion of childhood adherents — nearly 8 percent — followed by white mainline Protestant traditions, which lost 5 percent.

Among Catholics, whites were twice as likely as Hispanics to say they are no longer affiliated with the church.

White evangelical and black denominations fared better, with a net loss of about 1 percent. Non-Christian groups posted a modest 1 percent net increase in followers.

But the only group that saw significant growth between childhood and young adulthood was the unaffiliated — a jump from 11 percent to 25 percent.

The study also posed a wide range of questions to the group, from their views on the Tea Party to labor unions to same-sex marriage.

It also delved into more philosophical territory, questioning whether younger Millennials’ moral views are more universal (there is always a right and wrong) or contextual (it depends on the situation).

The researchers found a morally divided generation, with 50 percent of respondents placing themselves in the contextual category and 45 percent believing in universal rights and wrongs.

Answers to questions on the nature of morality varied widely depending on political party affiliation, education and religion, with the most dramatic differences correlating with religion.

An overwhelming majority of white evangelical Protestants (68 percent) said they believe that some things are always wrong, compared to 49 percent of black Protestants, 45 percent of Catholics and 35 percent of the unaffiliated.

More specifically, on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, younger Millennials hardly think as a group. “We see some really stark divides,” said Cox, which he said belies the conventional wisdom that bills this as the “Kumbaya” generation, in which everyone understands each other and gets along.

“It’s something to watch as these folks start moving through society and start to vote regularly,” he said.

Specifically:

– A sweeping majority of the religiously unaffiliated (82 percent) said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. More than two-thirds of religiously affiliated non-Christians agreed.

– White evangelical Protestants were most opposed to abortion, with nearly 9 in 10 (88 percent) saying it should be illegal in all or most cases. Among Latino Protestants, 71 percent shared this belief. Catholics were more divided, with 48 percent saying abortion should mostly be legal and 51 percent disagreeing.

– On same-sex marriage, nearly six in ten younger Millennials (59 percent) approved, with distinctions among religious groups generally mirroring those on abortion.

Read the report here: Millennials Survey Report

(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).

(RNS) Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention’s top public policy ethicist, apologized Monday  for failing to give proper attribution for material he used on his live radio show in which he criticized President Obama and black civil rights leaders for exploiting the Trayvon Martin shooting.

Land, the president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said, “On occasion I have failed to provide appropriate verbal attributions on my radio broadcast, Richard Land Live!, and for that I sincerely apologize,” in a written statement.

“I regret if anyone feels they were deceived or misled. That was not my intent nor has it ever been.”

In his radio show, Land described activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as “racial ambulance chasers” who, along with fringe groups like the Black Panthers, are fomenting a “mob mentality” in the Trayvon Martin case that is akin to what the Ku Klux Klan used to do to blacks in the South.

“This situation is getting out of hand,” Land said. “There is going to be violence. When there is violence it’s going to be Jesse Jackson’s fault. It’s going to be Al Sharpton’s fault. It’s going to be Louis Farrakhan’s fault, and to a certain degree it’s going to be President Obama’s fault.”

The plagiarism came to light when Baptist blogger and Baylor University Ph.D. student Aaron Weaver posted a partial transcript from one of Land’s shows on his blog, TheBigDaddyWeave.com. The unattributed remarks were made on Land’s March 31 show about media, race and Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black Florida teenager who was shot and killed by a neighborhood security guard.

Weaver discovered that more than half the material for Land’s short segment was quoted nearly verbatim from Jeffrey Kuhner’s March 29 Washington Times Op-Ed, “Obama foments racial division.”

After that discovery, Weaver listened to the third hour of the same program and discovered that Land again used unattributed material, this time from an article in “Investor’s Business Daily.” He discovered a third example in Land’s Feb. 4 show in which Land quoted from a Washington Examiner editorial.

Land said it is his practice to post the articles he uses on his website, and the show for March 31 does include a link to the Kuhner column on the “full show notes” page. Weaver called the link insufficient.

“Land made no mention of Kuhner during the segment,” Weaver said. “Listeners did not know that he was quoting Jeffrey Kuhner word for word.”

In his statement, Land explained that listeners familiar with the show understand his methods.

“While I do not use a script,” Land wrote, “listeners familiar with the program know that both the audio of the program and material I reference during the program are posted on the program’s website during or immediately following the broadcast. During the program I encourage listeners to share these links and content among their circle of influence. This has been standard operating practice for the program since its launch in 2002.”

Weaver said he suspects more examples will come to light. In an interview with The Tennessean, Weaver said “This isn’t someone stealing a few lines. It’s his whole commentary. He was so smooth doing it – it has to be something he has done in the past.”

Land concluded his statement by saying he is grateful the “oversight” was brought to his attention. “One can always do better, and I certainly pledge to do so,” he wrote.

SPOKANE, Wash. (RNS) Archbishop Desmond Tutu is slated to deliver the commencement address next month to Gonzaga University’s graduating class. A group of alumni, however, are saying he isn’t welcome and are urging administrators to withdraw the invitation.

Patrick Kirby, a 1993 Gonzaga graduate, said Tutu is pro-abortion rights, has made offensive statements toward Jews and supports contraception and the ordination of gay clergy and shouldn’t be honored by a Catholic institution.

Retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu (pictured). Religion News Service file photo by J. Carrier

The university plans to give Tutu an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at commencement.

Kirby, a local attorney, said Tutu’s visit violates the U.S. bishop’s 2004 policy, “Catholics in Political Life.”

The policy states that Catholic institutions should not honor those “who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles.”

Kirby and his wife, Maureen, who is a Gonzaga alumna, launched an online petition lobbying for the university to choose a different commencement speaker. Nearly 700 people worldwide have signed the petition, which was delivered to Gonzaga President Thayne McCulloh on Friday (April 13).

“I don’t have any realistic expectations that they’ll do that (cancel Tutu’s invitation). The goal for me is to bring attention to it and hopefully remind administrators at Gonzaga about their Catholic identity and how far they’ve wandered away from it,” Kirby said.

He said Catholic institutions all across the U.S. are choosing popularity over morality by honoring and hiring people who do not represent Catholic values, which he said sends an unclear message to students.

Gonzaga administrators are not commenting on the petition. In a February press release, however, McCulloh said Tutu was “a living exemplar of Gonzaga’s historic commitment to the ideals of equality and a free society as a Catholic, Jesuit and humanistic University.”

(Tracy Simmons is editor of SpokaneFAVS.com)

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.

(RNS) A coalition of 11 Christian student groups at Vanderbilt University are insisting their leaders should be chosen based on shared faith — the newest front in a growing battle over “religious freedom.”

The campus groups, who call themselves Vanderbilt Solidarity, joined together to oppose the university’s “all-comers” policy, which says student groups must be open to all students, including in leadership, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or religion.

The religious groups say they cannot be led by students who do not share or profess their group’s faith.

Vanderbilt University entrance. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“Until recently, Vanderbilt explicitly protected the freedom of all student organizations to select members and leaders who shared and supported the group’s purpose, including — for religious groups — its faith,” the Solidarity groups said in a statement on Monday (April 9).

Claiming the policy violates “the central tenets of our faith,” the faith-based groups applied for registered status on campus, but included their own constitutions containing faith-based requirements for leadership positions. If the school does not recognize the constitutions, the groups would be considered unregistered next year.

Solidarity’s decision comes two weeks after another campus group, Vanderbilt Catholic, decided not to register as an official student organization because of the school’s policy.

“All registered student groups at Vanderbilt must be open to all students, and members in good standing must have the opportunity to seek leadership positions,” said Beth Fortune, vice chancellor for public affairs. “This debate is about nondiscrimination, not religious freedom, and we stand behind our policy.”

The group of 11 urged the university to respect their religious freedom as they continue to share their beliefs on campus.

“Even while taking this action, we — the religious students and ministries represented by Solidarity — continue to pray that our much beloved University will change course.”

LONDON (RNS) The British government has fast-tracked a move to restore the rights of towns and cities to hold prayers as part of their official business, effectively overriding a High Court order to stop the practice.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles spearheaded the introduction of a new “general power of competence of local authorities in England” that gives new powers to local governments to resume prayers and to sidestep the court ruling that was issued two months ago.

The parliamentary order took effect immediately when Pickles signed it on Friday (April 6).

In its own decision against Bideford Town Council, in southwest England, the High Court said in February that it was illegal for town halls to continue with the centuries-old practice of conducting prayers at the start of official meetings.

The British government now says that “Parliament has been clear that councils should have greater freedom from interference.”

In broadening these new powers to town and parish councils, it adds, it enables them to “innovate” and “hands them back the freedom to pray.”

The action outlined by Pickles infuriated Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Council, who accused the government minister of “behaving like some sort of dictator.”

While Pickles said the measure “sends a strong signal that this government will protect the role of faith in public life,”  Wood hinted at a possible legal challenge, saying the government is at “risk of being in contempt of court.”

(RNS) Is it okay to ask God to do harm to another person? The theology of such “imprecatory prayer” may be a matter of debate, but a Dallas judge has ruled it is legal, at least as long as no one is actually threatened or harmed.

District Court Judge Martin Hoffman on Monday (April 2) dismissed a lawsuit brought by Mikey Weinstein against a former Navy chaplain who he said used “curse” prayers like those in Psalm 109 to incite others to harm the Jewish agnostic and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and his family.

Hoffman said there was no evidence that the prayers by Gordon Klingenschmitt, who had been endorsed for the Navy chaplaincy by the Dallas-based Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches, were connected to threats made against Weinstein and his family or damage done to his property.

According to the lawsuit, Klingenschmitt posted a prayer on his website urging followers to pray for the downfall of MRFF.

Former Navy Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt has used imprecatory prayer against his critics. Religion News Service file photo courtesy of Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt.

“I praise God for religious freedom because the judge declared it’s OK to pray imprecatory prayers and quote Psalm 109,” Klingenschmitt said after the ruling, according to The Dallas Morning News. Psalm 109 calls for the death of an opponent and curses on his widow and children, among other things.

Hoffman’s ruling did not actually turn on constitutional questions as much as it did on Weinstein’s claims that the prayers incited the threats and vandalism. 

Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has had grafitti sprayed on his house, dead animals left on his lawn and shots fired through his window. Critics’ prayers against him, he said, are the least of his worries. Religion News Service file photo.

Weinstein, a former Air Force lawyer who started the foundation to battle what he sees as undue religious influence in the armed forces, said Friday (April 6) that “a very aggressive appeal is highly likely.” He said he has received numerous death threats, had swastikas painted on his house, and that his windows have been shot out and animal carcasses left on his doorstep as a result of his activism.

“We are disappointed in the ruling because we believe the judge made a mistake in not understanding that imprecatory prayers are code words for trolling for assassins for the Weinstein family,” Weinstein said. “I don’t think the judge understood that these are not regular prayers,” he added, comparing imprecatory prayer to a radical Islamic fatwa.

Imprecatory prayers have a long if complicated history in religious traditions. But this type of prayer, and Psalm 109 in particular, has become a hot topic since President Obama’s election as a number of religious conservatives have invoked it against him.

In the most recent case, the Speaker of the House of Representatives in Kansas, Mike O’Neal, sparked an outcry in January when he sent Psalm 109 to Republican colleagues, writing, “At last – I can honestly voice a biblical prayer for our president!”

“Thankfully, the district court recognized that if people are forced to stop offering imprecatory prayers, half the churches, synagogues and mosques in this country will have to be shut down,” said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a legal advocacy group that helped defend the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches.

DSB/KRE END GIBSON

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (RNS) A satirical student newspaper is under investigation by Rutgers University after publishing a column in praise of Adolf Hitler and attributing it to a Jewish student activist.

An article titled “What about the good things Hitler did?” appeared in The Medium on April 4 alongside Rutgers student Aaron Marcus’ name and photo. A self-described Zionist, Marcus writes columns for the independent Rutgers student newspaper, The Daily Targum, which the Medium sought to spoof.

Marcus told WWOR-TV the article hurt him and his family, and that some of his relatives died in the Holocaust. “To say anything praiseworthy of someone like Hitler, and to have people actually believe it was coming from me, even in a satirical manner, is just really painful,” Marcus told the station.

He could not be reached for comment over the weekend.

Federal courts have extended “broad protection” to student media, Rutgers president Richard McCormick said in a statement, but The Medium article went too far. It is “particularly despicable,” he said, in light of Marcus’ faith.

The article “is extremely offensive and repugnant,” McCormick said. “No individual student should be subject to such a vicious and provocative and hurtful piece, regardless of whether the First Amendment protections apply to such expression.”

The university is investigating the column as a bias incident, he said.

The spoof states “history has given the Third Reich a bad rap” and notes the irony in celebrating Columbus Day, considering Christopher Columbus “slaughtered countless natives, raped their wives and enslaved their children.” Hitler was responsible for genocide, it states, but also experimented with rocket science and helped start the auto company Volkswagen.

The same day The Medium published the satire, The Targum published a column actually written by Marcus criticizing the Palestinian National Authority for refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Medium is run as a club and is funded in part with money from the university, while The Targum is an independent newspaper run as a not-for-profit company.

Two editors at The Medium declined to comment, referring questions to a faculty adviser, Ronald Miskoff. Reached by e-mail, the journalism lecturer said he does not approve content or see it before it goes to press. He does critique The Medium after it is published.

“I can’t explain the humor in the article. I suppose it’s more about the irony of a Jewish activist writing something that is the complete opposite of what he really believes,” Miskoff said.

This isn’t the first time The Medium has come under fire for anti-Semitic material. In 2004, it ran a full-page cover drawing showing a man throwing a ball at another man – mimicking a carnival game – sitting on an oven.

Miskoff had not had contact with administrators yet about the column as of late yesterday. If any action is taken, he said he hoped “it will be with the understanding that college is a time in people’s lives when they test boundaries and learn the results of errors prior to taking on full adult responsibilities.”

(Jessica Calefati and Ryan Hutchins write for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

(RNS) Gabe Lyons thinks Christian culture warriors are on the wrong path.

His sixth annual Q Conference, which opens Tuesday (April 10) in Washington, D.C., is an attempt to do things differently. With 700 participants gathered in a stately downtown auditorium, Lyons will play host to a distinct kind of Christian conference, one that seeks a respectful, constructive conversation on a host of issues confronting the nation.

Q, which stands for “question,” will allow 30 different culture leaders — from New York Times columnist David Brooks to Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter — to present their ideas for the common good during a two-and-a-half day confab.

“We feel we have a role to play in renewing the culture and holding back the effects of sin,” said Lyons, founder of Q, a nonprofit organization based in New York City. “We’re not to do it in an antagonistic way. We hope to do it in a hopeful way that gives witness to the rest of the world in how things ought to be.”

Part Clinton Global Initiative, part TED Talk, the conference is designed to highlight the best ideas rather than condemning the nation’s ills. Presenters are allocated three, nine, or 18 minutes to talk. Participants sit at round tables instead of rows, and time is built in for participants to reflect and talk about what they’ve heard.

That kind of format allows Q to include both Richard Land from the religious right and Jim Wallis from the religious left; both will share the stage Tuesday to discuss areas of potential agreement.

Lyons, a Liberty University graduate, said he realized nine years ago how little most Americans respected Christianity. That realization prompted him to acknowledge that the nation’s religious pluralism was here to stay, and that if Christians wanted their views to be given a thoughtful hearing, they had better quit resisting and start creating a culture that allows God’s love to break though.

His 2010 book, “The Next Christians: The Good News About the End of Christian America,” was a kind of manifesto calling Christians to quit cursing the darkness and start lighting a candle.

Land, who heads the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said he appreciates Lyons’ point, but thought it was overly simplistic. “Jesus called us to do both; He called us to be salt and light,” Land said. “We can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Land said his own denomination, which is often cast as a judgmental culture agitator, is also among the nation’s largest providers of emergency disaster relief. In addition, its members give a higher proportion of their incomes to charity.

But Q participants are not about to compromise their evangelical convictions. On Thursday, participants will fan out across Washington to press Congress, the White House and the State Department on issues they deem important.

The difference, Lyons said, is the tone.

“It’s more civil, less fear-based,” he said. “There’s more appreciation for the intellect and a commitment to let the best ideas win out.”

(The Q Conference will provide a free video stream of its opening day sessions from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and from 7 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. at http://www.qideas.org/live/).