Society & Culture

“Children in poor families tend to have better outcomes than children raised in foster homes, as I noted in a piece for Psychology Today. This is striking because when it comes to important outcomes like graduation rates, drug use, future earnings, and criminal behavior, much of our focus is on economic factors.” - IFS

“A bipartisan three-day summit of persecuted religious minorities, advocates and politicians kicks off Tuesday in Washington, D.C., seeking to continue the momentum established by the U.S. State Department’s two ministerials promoting religious freedom worldwide.” - C.Post

“56% of Americans believe hell is a real place where certain people will be punished forever. Belief in the biblical place of judgment has been steady since 2014 in the biennial study.” - Lifeway

“Goldman’s book is a thoughtful extended essay on the idea of nationalism … for Goldman, nationalism entails that if the motto e pluribus unum—one out of many—is indeed meaningful, the unum must be some intelligible unifying principle or other…. Goldman proceeds to trace three rival conceptions of American national identity” - John Ehrett

“The proportion of white Christians hit a low point in 2018, at 42%, and rebounded slightly in 2019 and 2020, to 44%. That tick upward indicates the decline is slowing from its pace of losing roughly 11% per decade.” - PRRI

“As a result, our culture values fragility over strength, and embellishes a constant good-versus-evil conflict, even over the smallest of issues. From elections to Facebook posts to hygiene practices — almost everything takes on the emotional temperature of a religion.” - Stonestreet

Included in Ohio’s new budget: “a medical practitioner, health care institution, or health care payer has the freedom to decline to perform, participate in, or pay for any health care service which violates the practitioner’s, institution’s, or payer’s conscience as informed by the moral, ethical, or religious beliefs or principles held by the practitioner, institution, or payer.” -

Yoga is “mentioned in ancient, sacred scriptures of Hinduism” and encouraged by the Indian government. “Still, a new Pew Research Center survey shows that most Indians do not practice yoga. Just about a third of Indian adults (35%) say they ever practice yoga” - Pew

“President Joe Biden signed into law June 30 a measure under the Congressional Review Act that rescinded the ‘true-lender’ rule, which enabled payday lenders to collaborate with out-of-state banks and thereby avoid bans on predatory loans in states that had outlawed them.” - BPNews

The rejected resolution “used language that legitimized Palestinian terrorism as a ‘heroic struggle’ in the fight to combat alleged Israeli ‘military repression’ and ‘ethnic cleansing.’ It also urged the NEA to ‘publicize its support for the Palestinian struggle for justice and call on the United States government to stop arming and supporting Israel.’” - National Review