Only 25% of America is good ground

 Some fell by the way side . . . some fell on the stony ground . . . some fell among thorns . . . other fell on good ground . . ..

-- Mark 4:4, 5, 7, 8

7 in 10 U.S. Adults Consider Themselves Spiritual 

Jason DeRose, NPR

7 in 10 also say it's morally acceptable to have a baby out of wedlock.

 

Ed Stetzer for Christianity Today doesn't realize Americans "overreport" their rate of church attendance by in excess of 50%

If you don't like calling this lying, think of it as the expression of an aspiration.

Here:

Church attendance data over time is important here. In 1940, 37% of Americans said, “yes,” when asked by Gallup if they had been to church within the last week. In 2015, almost the same number—36%—said they’d been to church. Hardly a collapse; reasonable people, as Chaves described them, don’t need to disagree when the facts are this clear.

The figure is actually closer to 24%, consistent with Western European levels of attendance, which for twenty-three nations averaged over a number of years comes to 19.5%.

Never believe the polling data: true believers tend to over-report

As with American Christians who lie about how often they go to church, Muslims don't tell the truth about praying five times a day.

From the story here:

[T]he research comes to us via Phillip Brenner. He's a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. He's conducted several studies that explore this contrast between what people say about themselves and their actual behavior.

One technique he uses is to track what people tell their diaries. ...

What he finds ... is that people tend to be reporting that they pray more than they actually do. And this finding is very similar to the finding that Brenner made a couple of years ago when it comes to church attendance in the United States. And people in the United States say they go to church but large numbers actually don't.

And what's interesting is in both places the people who are over-reporting their religious behavior have something in common. Here's Brenner[:]

The similarity between these two places is that it is the people who think that religion is important, it's important in their daily lives. Those are the people who are over-reporting. And those are the people who are over-reporting church attendance in the U.S. and those are the people who are over-reporting prayer in Turkey, Palestine and Pakistan.

Americans Exaggerate Church Attendance By 88%

So says this story, which reports that about 24% actually go to church every Sunday when 45% claim to do so.

As the French say, everything in America is big.

Nora Ephron's Religion: You Can Never Have Too Much Butter

Transcribed remarks here:

WERTHEIMER: You think this movie might bring back butter as some�

Ms. EPHRON: Well, it should, because you can never have too much butter. That is my belief. And I stuck it into the movie. If I have a religion, that's it.

May she rest in grease.