Breaking addendum: It looks like Citicorp isn’t the only organization in the process of laying off its workers. The Colorado Independent writes that after spending a half a million dollars in support of California’s anti-gay marriage Proposition 8, Focus on the Family is preparing for a second round of layoffs, having laid off 46 workers just two months ago:
This is the third year that Focus has laid off employees due to budget cuts. In its heyday, the ministry, which relocated to Colorado Springs from Arcadia, Calif., in 1991, employed more than 1,500 people. Many of those employees worked in mailroom and line assembly jobs, processing so much incoming and outgoing correspondences that the US Postal Service gave Focus its own ZIP code.
In September 2005, nearly 80 employees were reassigned or laid off in an effort to trim millions of dollars from its 2006 budget. In addition, 83 open positions were not filled in the layoff, which included eliminating some of the ministry’s programs. At the time, Focus employed 1,342 full-time employees.
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Barna Groups Survey on how People of Faith Voted
A week after the election, The Barna Group, a religious-oriented research and polling organization, provided an extensive look at how people of faith voted in the presidential election. In a campaign that seemed to be run by the Energizer Bunny it kept going and going and going—and in which Sen. Barack Obama beat Sen. John McCain by 53 to 46 percent—two-thirds of all registered voters (67%) said they followed the 2008 election campaign very closely and another one-quarter (27%) followed it somewhat closely. People who do not consider themselves to be Christians followed the campaign slightly more closely than did those who claim to be Christian (71% versus 67%).
Evangelicals, which make up 7% of the national population, have the highest rates of voting turnout among all voter groups and are, in fact, strikingly different from the rest of the population—even from other born-again Christians who are not evangelical, according to Barna. Amongst this group, 88% voted for McCain and 11% for Obama; McCain’s vote was about equal to the numbers that voted for President Bush in 2004. Barna reported that while evangelicals were generally unenthusiastic about either candidate, they came through in a big way for the McCain/Palin ticket.
Barna points out that “unlike other polls, [it] classif[ies] a person as an evangelical based upon their answers to nine questions about their theological beliefs. [While] [m]ost national surveys simply ask people if they consider themselves to be evangelical, born-again or a committed conservative Christian.” However, The Barna survey also examined the voting behavior of people who identified themselves as evangelicals and found that self-identified evangelicals represented 41% of the adult population, although just 16% of them qualified as evangelicals under the Barna Group’s theological-based classification questions. Within this grouping, 61% voted for McCain and 38% went with Obama.
In non-born-again categories, a higher proportion of voters identify themselves as either Democrats (44%) or independents (24%), and one-quarter of the non-born- again group (27%) as Republicans. Non-Christians overwhelmingly voted Obama/Biden—62% to 36%—numbers that surpassed the group’s 20-point margin for John Kerry in 2004 and the 15-point margin for Al Gore in 2000.
Other findings:
• Protestant voters, evenly divided between being registered as Democrats and Republicans, sided with Sen. McCain by a 53% to 46% margin, which was just half the margin accorded to George W. Bush in 2004 (57% to 42%), but within range of the 4-point preference given to Mr. Bush in 2000 (51% to 47%).• Catholic voters—48% of whom are aligned with the Democratic Party, 28% with the Republicans, and one-fifth who remained independent (20%)—backed Sen. Obama by a 56% to 43% outcome. According to Barna, that was far different than the even split in 2004 (49% for Pres. Bush vs. 49% for Sen. Kerry) and substantially more support for the Democratic candidate than for Al Gore in 2000 (49%, versus 43% to Mr. Bush).
• Atheists and agnostics (who represent about one out of every ten adults)— about 40% were registered Democrats, 40% independents, and just 20% Republicans— voted overwhelmingly for Obama (76% to 23%).
• Other faiths, including Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims (who represent about 5% of America’s adult population), voted for Obama by 62% to 36%, about the same numbers as for Kerry in 2004.
(For a breakdown of which issues motivated evangelicals, as well as the survey’s methodology, see How People of Faith Voted in the 2008 Presidential Race.)
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Faith in Public Life, Sojourners, and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good Release Post-Election Poll
On Friday, November 14, a new post-election poll—“Religion in the 2008 Election,”—provided an in-depth look at the shift in priorities and moral agenda for Catholics, evangelicals, and religious voters overall in the 2008 election. Conducted by Public Religion Research, the poll was co-sponsored by the groups Faith in Public Life, Sojourners, and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
According to a Faith in Public Life news release, the topics explored in the new survey include:
• Candidate friendliness to religion
• The impact of Sarah Palin’s nomination on evangelical voters • Support for a broader values agenda • Attitudes toward a common ground approach on abortion • Voting issue priorities • Beliefs about causes of the economic crisis
Go here for complete results.
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Rev. Moon’s Plans for the United Nations
“Mr. Moon, an eccentric billionaire, convicted tax cheat, conservative publisher and power broker, grandly donned scarlet robes and a golden crown at the Dirksen Office Building. ‘I am God’s ambassador, sent to earth with his full authority,’ he announced.” New York Times editorial, June 27, 2004
To some, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon may be a relic of a bygone era; to others, he’s a brother from another planet. But despite the fact that news about Moon’s various religious/media/business endeavors rarely appears on the radar screens of the nation’s media (both mainstream and alternative), Moon continues to move ahead on a number of fronts. His Washington Times continues to be the daily house-organ/must-read for conservatives; he has spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting right-wing organizations and causes; he controls the US sushi industry; he does business with North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il: and as Moon watchdog John Gorenfeld has reported, Moon officially considers himself Emperor of the Universe, claiming the imagined endorsements of dead US presidents.
One of Moon’s least reported-on projects entails the establishment of an Interfaith Council to promote and oversee “all global, regional, and local interfaith dialogues among the great religions, civilizations, cultures, governments… to help resolve politico-religious, sectarian and ethnic conflicts and tensions in various parts of the world,” Richard Bartholomew recently reported at Talk2Action.
One prominent person carrying water for Moon and his Universal Peace Federation —which appears to pretty much oversee most of Moon’s significant projects these days—is Congressman Jose de Venecia Jr., former Speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives.
Tags: barna, bill berkowitz, economic crisis, focus on the family, jews, mccain, mormons, obama, rev. moon, voting blocks
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