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When it Comes to Kids, Marijuana, Faith Matters Print E-mail
Written by Paul Dean   
Saturday, 25 October 2008
From the story:

Parents who hope that their efforts to communicate and involve their children in their faith will keep them from falling prey to the temptations of drug use have some good news from a new study to be released tomorrow: It works. The national study, conducted by two sociology professors from Brigham Young University, finds that religious involvement makes teens half as likely to use marijuana as their peers without religious participation. Their results settle a question that has been debated for years. While many intuitively believe religious training, particularly if it delivers a strong message against substance abuse, will deter teens from experimenting, the fact is the question has remained unsettled, scientifically.

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Sarah Palin and Evangelical Pragmatism Print E-mail
Written by Paul Dean   
Friday, 17 October 2008
"The Palin selection is the single most dangerous event in the conscience of the Christian community in the last 10 years at least," said Doug Phillips, president of Vision Forum, a Texas-based ministry. "The unabashed, unquestioning support of Sarah Palin and all she represents marks a fundamental departure from our historic position of family priorities -- of moms being at home with young children, of moms being helpers to their husbands, the priority of being keepers of the home."
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Maybe We Should Blame God for the Subprime Mess Print E-mail
Written by Paul Dean   
Friday, 10 October 2008
From an article this week in Time:
Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That's what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity's central promise — that God will "make a way" for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe "God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house." The results, he says, "were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers."

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Celebrity Worship: Good for Your Health? Print E-mail
Written by Paul Dean   
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Shira Gabriel, a psychologist at the University at Buffalo, conducted a series of three studies on celebrity worship, focusing specifically on how admiration from afar may affect the admirer's self-esteem. "It was seven or eight years ago during the Michael Jackson trial," she says, "and I was fascinated by the people who were obsessed with him, who flew to the trial and made banners. I thought, What would bring somebody to do something like that?" One possible reason, which Gabriel decided to explore, was the vicarious pleasure that regular people get from following the lives of famous people; for some fans, there is something uniquely satisfying about carrying on an intense, albeit unrequited, relationship with celebrities. "Perhaps some people who don't feel good about themselves and are not able to get what they want out of a real relationship because of a fear of rejection can feel a connection with a celebrity and get something positive out of that," says Gabriel.Write Comment (0 Comments)
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Religion: Praise the Lord and Pass the Business Plan as God Embraces Mammon Print E-mail
Written by Paul Dean   
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
God wants you rich, and as if to prove it His golden forefinger is pointing down through the stage ceiling at the Excel exhibition centre in east London. This is the International Gathering of Champions, one of the largest worship meetings of Pentecostalists ever held in Britain, and the three-metre (10ft) digit hanging above the preachers is a sign that they and the 80,000 who will come to hear them are, in the words of Deuteronomy, "empowered to prosper". It may seem like a Monty Python comedy prop, but how to get rich and then how to get richer is the message of this eight-day meeting of mostly west African and Caribbean Christians, which reaches a climax this weekend. In other words, the Bible is the business plan and Jesus is the financial adviser-in-chief. The loudest amen went to a preacher who told a parable of an IT consultant who went forth and multiplied his salary by 10. Thousands cheered as the preacher explained how a young man with few qualifications started on £14,000 a year and wound up working for a Swiss bank on £140,000.
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Why I’m Leaving Guyland Print E-mail
Written by Paul Dean   
Thursday, 18 September 2008
Today's guys are perhaps the first downwardly mobile—and endlessly adolescent—generation of men in U.S. history. They're also among the most distraught—men between the ages of 16 and 26 have the highest suicide rate for any group except men above 70—and socially isolated, despite their image as a band of backslapping buddies. According to the General Social Survey, a highly regarded decades long University of Chicago project to map changes in American culture, twenty something guys are bowling alone when compared with the rest of society. They are less likely to read a newspaper, attend church, vote for president or believe that people are basically trustworthy, helpful and fair. Meanwhile, saddled with an average of $20,000 in student debt and reared with a sense of entitlement that stops them from taking any old job, the percentage of 26-year-olds living with their parents has nearly doubled since 1970, from 11 to 20 percent, according to economist Bob Schoeni's research with the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan.Write Comment (0 Comments)
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