Christianity

Imagine if Sonia Sotomayor, once she got on the Supreme Court, started ruling like Clarence Thomas. I know, I know, that’s like something out of The Twilight Zone or the Babylon Bee. But try to picture it. There’d be riots on the campus of every school she’d attended, and likely in DC, too. Democrats would drawing up articles of impeachment, and speaking of packing the court. And whatever social justice thinktank vets SCOTUS appointees for the Democratic National Committee would start chopping off heads. Scapegoats would be piling up on the unemployment line like pork chops at a slaughterhouse. But that’s precisely what just happened with Neil Gorsuch (and less, surprisingly, John Roberts) in the Bostock decision.

The most memorable footage of the Black Lives Matter protests, and perhaps the creepiest, doesn’t capture any acts of violence, any looting, any chanting of slogans or — so far as I can make out — any black faces.Instead, we see hundreds of mostly young people sitting in the parking lot of a public library in Bethesda, Maryland, raising both pasty-white arms in a gesture that suggests both surrender and worship.An invisible speaker is reciting a list of promises that the crowd repeats. This is what we hear: Speaker: '… about racism, anti-blackness or violence.' Crowd: '… about racism, anti-blackness or violence.

On Twitter yesterday, Donald Trump sent out the political equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. ‘Today we commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Saint John Paul II,’ tweeted the President. ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’ This was not just Trump being thoughtful about a great spiritual leader. It was an electoral appeal to Catholics on social media and a move that suggests Trump is worried about the Catholic vote. He’s right to be. There are endless debates about the extent to which America’s Catholics decide elections — or, indeed, whether the Catholic vote exists at all, given the diversity of the nation’s sprawling Catholic population.

The new Pew report doesn’t mince words in its headline: 'In US, Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace.' In 10 years, the percentage of Americans who identify as Christians of any kind has declined by 12 percent. In 2009, just over 50 percent of Americans identified as Protestant; today only 43 percent do. Catholics have declined from 23 percent to 20 percent of the adult population. The biggest declines in Christian identification by demographic group have been among millennials (down 17 points) and Democrats (down 16 points). But dwindling Christian commitments are in evidence across all categories: 'white people, black people and Hispanics; men and women; in all regions of the country; and among college graduates and those with lower levels of educational attainment.