“The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man’s”*…
The American religious landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation. White Christians, once the dominant religious group in the U.S., now account for fewer than half of all adults living in the country. Today, fewer than half of all states are majority white Christian. As recently as 2007, 39 states had majority white Christian populations. These are two of the major findings from this report, which is based on findings from PRRI’s 2016 American Values Atlas, the single largest survey of American religious and denominational identity ever conducted…
From the non-profit, non-partisan, non-sectarian Public Religion Research Institute, a fascinating– and illuminating– report on the state of the sacred in the United States: “America’s Changing Religious Identity.”
[TotH to @timoreilly]
* Mark Twain
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As we direct our prayers, we might recall that it was on this date in 506 that the Council of Agde ended at the the Basilica of St. Andrew ( in the Hérault , in Languedoc-Roussillon in France). A gathering of Bishops from across the Visigothic Kingdom (roughly, Southwestern France and much of Spain), it issued 47 canons. One forbade ecclesiastics to sell or alienate the property of the church whence they drew their living, and seems to be the earliest indication of the later system of benefices. Another banned marriage between first and second cousins.
The Basilica of St. Andrew today