Melania Trump is the October Surprise, throws Hail Mary for abortion 33 days before the election

 Either she really, really, really does not want to go back to DC, hoping conservatives will abandon Trump over this and cause him to lose.

Or her husband thinks this will help him with pro-abortion women, who are 64% of all women, many of whom believe, incorrectly, that Trump would sign a national abortion ban.

Donald Trump officially supports the status quo ante to which the overturning of Roe v Wade has returned the nation, in which the individual states decide whether and to what extent abortion should be allowed.

His position is incompatible with Melania's uncompromising views, suggesting her timing of her announcement is designed to sabotage his campaign.

 

Going to the Lord's Supper in any American church involves the high likelihood of dining with demons, including in the LCMS

 Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils. 

-- I Corinthians 10:21

 

Some results from the decadal Religion Census of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies for 2010-2020

 As reported here in The Economist:

the ranks of all religious Americans rose by 10.6m (7%) ...

overall population grew by 7.5% ...

the number of Episcopalians and Methodists dropped by 19% each ...

the Lutherans plunged by 25% ...

Presbyterians lost nearly 1m (40%) ...

The Southern Baptist Convention shrank 11% ...

non-denominational Christian churches recruited 9m new members ...

Catholics claim they gained nearly 3m members (a 5% increase) despite closing over 1,100 churches. 

      

Color me skeptical.

Start with the big number.

Average population grew 7.1% or 22 million over the period, according to POPTHM, which is the data of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, not 7.5% as stated in the story.

The data of the U.S. Census, as shown by POP, shows average population grew by even less over the period: 6.97% or 21.6 million, not 7.5% as stated in the story.

Obviously these are estimates, not counts, but the reported overall population growth claim in the story is up to a half-point larger than these big baseline numbers reported by the official organs of the U.S. government.

One half point of 310 million is 1.55 million people. One false move and you've just wiped out the entire denomination of the American Baptist Churches USA. When you study religion in America, you are discussing a bewildering number of splinter groups, many of which are simply microscopic in size.

It's extremely difficult to get data about groups like that right. Fully 40% are left out of even good surveys.

We are then confidently given to believe that hardly half the population growth went on to affiliate with a religion over the period: 10.6 million out of something north of 22 million, but by the end of the story you then have to believe also that 9 million new non-denoms plus 3 million new Catholics still equals 10.6 million.

Hello, is there an economist in the house?

Separately, there is the recent claim, supported by Pew, that Mormonism is the fastest reproducing American religious group, the implications of which go wholly unaddressed by the story.

On the other hand, reported Mormon membership in the U.S. grew by fewer than 700k 2011-2023, according to the latest Mormon data.

As pointed out previously, Christians themselves variously and significantly exaggerate how much money they give to their churches. Relying on their statements of membership in surveys even such as this one is . . . problematic.

They resemble in these respects nothing so much as the wider culture of exaggeration.

I'm doing great. Everything is fine. Awesome, in fact.

57% can't afford a $1,000 emergency. 85% say the country is headed in the wrong direction. The world is going to end in 2031 if we don't address climate change.

US Catholics are so out of touch with their faith 65% of them have not one clue the Pope put restrictions on the Latin Mass in July

Maybe because they go to Mass HARDLY AT ALL, Latin or otherwise, lol?

A survey from a year ago put weekly pre-pandemic Mass attendance as low as 13%. Gallup in 2018 put the figure much higher, at 39%, vs. 45% weekly church attendance for Protestants.

PEW has the story, "Two-thirds of U.S. Catholics unaware of pope’s new restrictions on traditional Latin Mass", here:

Catholics who attend Mass weekly are both more likely to be aware of the new restrictions and more inclined to oppose them than Catholics who attend less frequently, the survey finds.

Duh.

AP: 0% of black Protestants favor married gay Democrat Pete Buttigieg for president in Pew survey

Gee, I wonder why.

Hm, could it be because he's . . . white?

Story.

PEW says 55% of Americans pray daily, confirms Gallup's finding that 56% of Americans "feel religious"

Gallup's findings: Mapped: The world's most (and least) religious countries

With high levels of prayer, U.S. is an outlier among wealthy nations:

[T]he U.S. is unique in that it has both a high level of wealth ($56,000 per-capita gross domestic product in 2015) and a high level of daily prayer among its population

US Christians under thirty endorsing suicide bombings 0%, Muslims 15%

Pew, here.

People who want more Muslims here are nuts, or evil haters of their fellow Americans, or anti-American, or maybe a combination of these. Note how many young Muslims refused to answer the al-Qaeda question compared with the other questions.

Sociologists at University of Minnesota completely miss enormous growth of antipathy against whites and blacks, focus on Muslims and atheists instead

From the study here:

"[A]nti-atheist sentiment is persistent and durable, still higher in 2014 than for all other groups except Muslim Americans. ... While Muslims have surpassed atheists as the least-accepted group, Muslims and atheists still receive the most negative evaluations compared to all other groups in 2014, as they did in 2003."

You have to do the math from table 2, which is a job sociologists apparently won't do, but here's the growth in the share saying the group shown does not agree with the respondent's vision of American society in the last decade:

Whites: +364%

Blacks: +267%

Jews:    +138%

Asians:  +134%

Hispanics: +125%

Recent immigrants: +105%

Conservative Christians: +97%

Muslims: +73%

Homosexuals: +30%

Atheists: +5.8%

Where's the huge increase in antipathy toward whites and blacks coming from in the last decade?

Asians recently represented the fastest growing minority in the US at 3.4% year over year, followed by Mixed race at 3.1%, Hispanics at 2.2%, Blacks at 1.3% and Whites at 0.5%. "The distinction of being the fastest-growing racial/ethnic group in the United States has alternated between Asians and Hispanics in recent decades", Pew Research said in 2014.

Bible church pastor realizes that Donald Trump is not an evangelical

Here:

When asked if asking for forgiveness was central to his faith, Mr. Trump replied, “I try not make mistakes where I have to ask forgiveness”. When pressed about repentance in an interview with Anderson Cooper of CNN, he replied, “I think repenting is terrific. Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness if I am not making mistakes? I work hard, I’m an honorable person.”

He really does speak for many Americans. His theological Shibboleth rings true in many ears.

With the media ... lurching forward with everything this guy says, just waiting for him to bury himself, it is fascinating media. I read some who thought his Iowa comments would spell the end of him. “How could any evangelical vote for him after he said such things?”

I laughed. [He] is actually resonating with many spiritual Americans who are untethered [from] biblical Christianity. Far from marking the end of Trump’s relevance, his comments make relevant in a whole new way. “Trump’s a guy who works hard, knows he’s not perfect, and tries his best? And, he is religious. See, he just said so. This is a guy like me!”

-----------------------------------------------------------------

That's right.

Donald Trump is a mainline Protestant of the Presbyterian variety. For him as for many others of his ilk the specific Biblical language about repentance and being made "new" might as well be Swahili. But this country used to be full of such people, and they helped make America great. Since 2007 their numbers are down about 5 million, to 36 million adults, mostly white.

Pew has the data here.

The thing is, their numbers are actually larger since they've unaffiliated or reaffiliated outside the mainline.

And that's one reason why Trump is polling in first place for the GOP nomination as we speak. This is still a Protestant country, at least for a little while longer.