Dear Friend,
What is the atheist’s favorite Christmas movie?
Coincidence on 34th Street.
Thank you. I like to open with a joke, I just don’t usually have one. If you’re interested in a scholarly study on whether atheists and Christians have different senses of humor, you can find one here in the journal Humor. Read sentences like,”The overriding determiner of funniness was found to be the inherent comical quality of individual jokes as well as, to some degree, the joke category from which humorous passages were drawn, rather than the presence or absence of Christian faith among the joke recipients.” That’s right, it’s in a publication called Humor.
Regular readers of this feature will recall the October 11th installment that looked at the question, Is Demography Destiny? (They are all in the Blog.) Last week we got new demography. OK, demographics. A new study from the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian is down to 63 percent and the number who identify as religiously unaffiliated is up to 29 percent. Read it here. Maybe the Hallmark Channel will back off on those Christmas movies. Maybe radio stations won’t start the Christmas music before Thanksgiving. Perhaps not quite as many people telling you Merry Christmas. Who says we’re not winning the "War on Christmas"?
Thank you to everyone who responded to our Action Alert concerning a provision that prevents religious organizations from discriminating in childcare programs they run if they receive federal childcare funding from the Build Back Better legislation. That bill, the President’s enormous social welfare effort (education, childcare, healthcare, and more) has stalled in the Senate. There just aren’t enough votes to pass it this month.
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