Faith Digest

Posted: 7/20/07

Faith Digest

Muslims, evangelicals not so apart. Muslim Americans and white evangelicals have more in common than other religious groups when it comes to religious fervor, scriptural literalism and social morality, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. They consistently scored closer than other groups, including black and mainline Protestants and Catholics. For example, on the question of religious vs. national identity, 47 percent of Muslims saw themselves as Muslims first and Americans second, while 62 percent of evangelicals said they were Christians first and Americans second. Similar scores were 55 percent for black Protestants, 31 percent for Catholics and 22 percent for mainline Protestants.

Accident stills Marlette’s pen. Doug Marlette, 57, whose editorial cartoons often lampooned fundamentalist religion but whose folksy comic strip celebrated a rural Southern Baptist pastor, died in an automobile accident July 10. He was 57. The Pulitzer Prize winner , who recently joined the staff of the Tulsa World, died near Holly Springs, Miss., after a truck in which he was a passenger careened off a rain-slicked highway. “The Creator endowed him with such creativity that he was literally one of a kind—and a real Baptist,” said James Dunn, former executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “He could see the ironies and the contradictions (in political or religious life) so clearly and then reduce them to just a few strokes in a cartoon.” Dunn and another famous Baptist preacher, Will Campbell, reportedly were the inspiration for one of the lead characters in “Kudzu,” a small-town Baptist preacher named Will B. Dunn.

Christian sales ring register bells. Sales of Christian products increased to $4.6 billion last year, according to reports by the major trade association for Christian retailing. The $4.63 billion in 2006 sales, through a range of religious and secular distribution channels, is up from $4.3 billion in 2004, $4.2 billion in 2002 and $4 billion in 2000, reports CBA, a trade association formerly known as the Christian Booksellers Association. A new CBA study shows Christian retailers sold 52 percent of Christian products, while general-market retailers—including stores such as Wal-Mart and Borders—sold 33 percent. The remaining 15 percent of sales included direct-to-consumer and nonprofit ministry sales.

Mennonite ducks ‘mark of the Beast.’ A Mennonite farmer from Pennsylvania does not have to comply with a state animal identification program after arguing that numbering his ducks would bring about his eternal damnation. Pennsylvania officials now say the identification program, designed to protect against disease outbreaks among fowl, is not mandatory. James Landis had argued the program’s requirements would force him to violate his religious beliefs. Amish dairy farmers in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania objected to programs that would have forced them to number their cows, insisting the biblical book of Revelation warns of a numbering system from the Antichrist. Landis is a member of the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church, a small, conservative spin-off from the more mainstream Mennonite Church and theological cousins of the Amish.