American Culture

“The latest Gallup survey of Americans’ opinions and trust of specific occupations found clergy improving from 37% last year to 40% in 2020, marking the first increase in a decade. Overall, medical practitioners dominate the top of the list, with nurses ranked highest (85%) for the 18th straight year.” - Facts & Trends

“Though people have more money, better health care, better health, better housing and more education, and live longer than at any time in history, they — especially young people — are unhappier than at any time since data collection began.” - National Review

“While the church has more to offer an addict, even many Christians turn to 12-step programs (like Alcoholics Anonymous). Why? According to Dunnington, one reason is that churches aren’t calling people to confess their sins or admit they are sinners” - TGC

“When politics does come up from the pulpit, a majority of those in the pews (62%) say they agree with their leaders. The political overlap is particularly strong among evangelical Protestants, three-quarters of whom (76%) say they agree with their pastor’s political opinions, the survey found.” - Christianity Today

“In addition to identifying a steep increase in the rate of alcohol-related deaths, the study’s authors also presented other findings showing an increase in the annual number of alcohol-related injuries.

“The stats that Siegel cites are bleak: anxiety ‘rose 36 percent’ between 2016 and 2017, while America’s ‘suicide rate increased by 33 percent between 1999 and 2017.’” - Intellectual Takeout

“Both sides of the “Christian America” debate employ the same strategy: posit a world in which everyone is either a Christian or a deist, show the American founders weren’t in your opponent’s camp, and then claim, as a result, that they must’ve been in yours.” - TGC

“Kass, quoting Irving Kristol, notes that our society has produced ‘a world prosperous beyond all previous imaginings,’ but ‘this world, with every passing decade, has become ever more spiritually impoverished. That war on poverty is the great unfinished task before us.’” - The Public Discourse

“At the end of every year, the Associated Press polls its reporters and editors to determine the year’s top stories. To help us in looking back, here, in order, are the AP’s top stories of 2019” - Gene Veith

“The 21st century has given us great abundance and almost unlimited choices but a minimum of meaning. Again, Sacks writes: ‘Science tells us how but not why. Technology gives us power but cannot guide us as to how to use that power.’” - IFWE