RELIGION & ITS ALTERNATIVES

CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM MAKES YOU FAT

CATHLEEN FALSANI, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES - "America is becoming known as a
nation of gluttony and obesity, and churches are a feeding ground for
this problem," says Ken Ferraro, a Purdue sociology professor who
studied more than 2,500 adults over a span of eight years looking at the
correlation between their religious behavior and their body mass index.
. . . Ferraro's latest study found that about 27 percent of Baptists,
including Southern Baptists, North American Baptists, and Fundamentalist
Baptist, were obese.
Surely there are several contributing factors to such a phenomenon, but
when Ferraro accounted for geography (southern cooking is generally more
high-caloric), race and even whether overweight folks were attracted to
churches for moral support, the statistics still seem to indicate that
some churches dispense love handles as well as the love of the Lord. . .


While some megachurches have fitness facilities and long have offered
exercise classes as well as Bible studies, in most congregations you're
still more likely to find a bake sale than a spinning class on any given
Sunday.

Ferraro's study also found that about 20 percent of "Fundamentalist
Protestants," (Church of Christ, Pentecostal, Assemblies of God and
Church of God); about 18 percent of "Pietistic Protestants," (Methodist,
Christian Church and African Methodist Episcopal), and about 17 percent
of Catholics were obese.

By contrast, about 1 percent of the Jewish population and less than 1
percent of other non-Christians, including Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists
and others), were tipping the scales with commensurate gusto.

"In my mind, one of the distinctive things about Christianity,
particularly American Protestant Christianity, is we don't have any
[dietary] behavior codes," said Daniel Sack of Chicago, a historian and
author of the 2000 book, Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in
American Culture. "Islam does, Judaism does, Catholicism does, but
basically there's nothing scriptural and in most [Protestant] traditions
as long as you don't drink, you're fine. Particularly in that Baptist
cohort, that's the only real rule."

http://www.suntimes.com/output/falsani/cst-nws-fals25a.html/

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POLL FINDS 40% OF FUNDIE WOMEN "INVOLVED IN SEXUAL SIN IN THE PAST YEAR"

MARKET WIRE - Recently, the world's most visited Christian website,
Christianet.com, [asked] site visitors eleven questions about their
personal sexual conduct. "The poll results indicate that 50% of all
Christian men and 20% of all Christian women are addicted to
pornography," said Clay Jones, founder and President of Second Glance
Ministries whose ministry objectives include providing people with
information which will enable them to fully understand the impact of
today's societal issues. 60% of the women who answered the survey
admitted to having significant struggles with lust; 40% admitted to
being involved in sexual sin in the past year; and 20% of the
church-going female participants struggle with looking at pornography on
an ongoing basis. . . "There have been dynamic paradigm shifts in the
behavior of Christians over the last four years," explained Jones.
"Technology [the Internet] has allowed pornography to flood the market
place beyond a controllable level."

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=151336

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STUPID LAWS YOU'VE NEVER HEARD ABOUT

GOVERNING - If you were to make a list of dumb and unnecessary laws
passed by Congress that hurt cities, it would be long indeed. Surely,
though, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000
would be on it. Under this law, churches, synagogues, mosques and other
religious organizations can do what they please with land they own, and
there's almost nothing cities can do about it.

As the name suggests, there are two parts to the Religious Land Use and
Institutionalized Persons Act. The second part guarantees that people in
prison can receive kosher meals, engage in religious services and wear
turbans, as long as these are part of their religious faith. Little
argument with this.

But the first part of the law is a ridiculous solution to a fantasy
problem: The belief that, somehow, cities are hostile to religious
institutions. Under the law, if a church claims that land it owns will
be used for its religious mission, it can exempt itself from all zoning
and other land-use laws. Hence, Sikh temples have been built on land
zoned for farming, church day care centers have been moved to
residential areas, and churches have set themselves up in office
districts. . .

The Baltimore Sun talked recently with legal experts who believed this
law is ripe for a challenge. The law "still needs to be tested
completely, and it may not hold up," said one scholar at the First
Amendment Center. "I think it's a tossup. And I think most legal
scholars out there think it will be a close call." . . .

Meanwhile, legal observers shake their heads over the law itself. "We
have given the federal courts the power to sweep aside matters like
residential character and traffic, all the things that matter to private
landowners," one law professor told the Sun. "It's an extraordinary
intervention by the federal government."

http://www.governing.com/notebook.htm