Brooklyn Mutt

“Stewart comes at religion with buckets of derision, but I do not find him offensive, nor should anyone who enjoys comedy. Like so many of the best comedians, he is an equal-opportunity hater. Sometimes it’s atheists he cannot stand, as in his bit about the beams in a shape of the cross that survived the Ground Zero wreckage, which the American Atheists did not want displayed. Sometimes it’s the Catholic church, which last November proved a useful point of comparison for the football culture at Penn State: “I get that it’s probably hard for you to believe that this guy you think is infallible, and this program you think is sacred, could hide such heinous activities, but there is some precedent for that,” Stewart said, referring to coach Joe Paterno and the sex-abuse scandal. “Yeah, and just like with the Catholic Church, no one is trying to take away your religion, in this case football. They’re just trying to bring some accountability to a pope, and some of his cardinals.” In both cases, it was the culture of certainty that Stewart was mocking, not the belief system itself. It was the human tendency toward hubris.”

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A growing number of Americans are uneasy with the amount of religious talk they’re hearing from politicians, according to a new poll released by the Pew Research Center yesterday.

Thirty-eight percent of respondents said that there has been too much expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders — the highest number since Pew began asking the question in 2001. Thirty percent of respondents said there is too little.

The numbers have nearly reversed since Pew last asked the question two years ago, when 37 percent said there was too little religious expression by politicians, while 29 percent said there was too much.

“It amazes me to find an intelligent person who fights against something which he does not at all believe exists.”

“I spent the better part of a week in prayer and just saying, ‘God show me something,’ some things I’ll share with you. I think he showed me the next me the next president but I’m not supposed to talk about that so I’ll leave you in the dark—probably just as well—I think I’ll know who it will be. I’m going to read just as I wrote down as if I’m hearing from the Lord these words.

Your country will be torn apart by internal stress, a house divided cannot stand. Your president holds a radical view of the direction of your country which is at odds with the majority, expect chaos and paralysis. Your president holds a view that is at odds with the majority, it’s a radical view of the future of this country, so that’s why we’re having this division.”

“Republican conservatives should be worried. Evangelical churches that frequently support conservative candidates are finally admitting something the rest of us have known for some time: Their young adult members are abandoning church in significant numbers and taking their voting power with them.

David Kinnaman, the 38-year-old president of the Barna Group, an evangelical research firm, is the latest to sound the alarm. In his new book, “You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith,” he says that 18- to 29-year-olds have fallen down a “black hole” of church attendance. There is a 43% drop in Christian church attendance between the teen and early adult years, he says.”