Pew Research study

I was happy to see many church parking lots filled this morning as I was out driving. Being in Mississippi it's mostly the Baptist churches that I see locally, including a large one right down the road, and it's a blessing.

The "Mobile Press Register" newspaper had a great article called "Faith Matters" in its Religion section on Saturday, and it reports that Mississippi has the highest number of believers per capita in the USA at 91 percent, with Alabama the 2nd most believers at 86%. The South and the Midwest should be very proud of holding fast to their beliefs and trust in God. It's one reason I settled here for the past year plus, because I weary of the unbelieving and cynical north.

By the way, the article correctly points out a problem with the Pew methodology about tolerance of "other religions." Many respondents thought "other religions" refer to other denominations of Christian faiths, so their expression of support does not mean that one should conclude that "anything goes" when a high level of belief in alternate "ways to God" is expressed. I know some in the media have liked to spin that part of the survey so that it looks like most Americans think, "Woo hoo, as long as they are 'spiritual' then their religion is as trustworthy as mine." Er, not so much. I figured that would be one of the spin objectives of this survey and I was right. In fact it is the Baptists, who I much admire for their faith, who have been pointing this problem with the survey out in the press.

Greg Smith for the Pew admits that the word "religion," as in "other religions" "was not defined for the respondents" and that "researchers were limited by time" and that "researchers plan to explore the matter in the future." Gosh, that's good of them. I guess they have plenty of time to spin the results to the media to make it look like Christians think good pagans are on the right track, but they did not have time to "define religion" in the margin of questionnaires (it would have been really hard to add a whole sentence that would explain if you meant other denominations within your basic faith of Christianity, Islam or Judaism or not). Wow, that took a whole lot of thought.

Question: Does a Jew feel different about salvation of other "denomination" of Jews (Orthodox, Conservative or Reform) versus a completely other religion like Hindu?

I mean, how difficult would it have been to print an example like that to define if you meant "other religions" to include "other denominations of the same basic faith" or not?

But hey, the secular spin organizations look for whatever grist for their mill that can mushy up faith and belief in God.

So that gripe aside, I applaud, as I have been, those people of the USA who have held close and dear to their faith and trust in God, and that is at least good news from this "research study."