First night of Hanukkah is tonight. May your oil last the week.
Christianity is the largest religious community in the world, with 2.2 billion adherents, and the United States counts the most Christians of any country, with 247 million believers, the Pew Forum reports.
Yet in the birthplace of Jesus, the Middle East, Christians are a demographic blip and shrinking. Such are the vagaries of history.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is still getting props for saying that “Britain is a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so.” For good measure he said that returning to Christian values would solve all the nation’s problems, from the riots last summer to the financial collapse to the threat of Islamic extremism.
Islam clocks in as the world’s second largest religion, with about 1.6 billion followers, just under one-quarter of the globe’s population.
You can’t be too careful, though – which is why a Delta Air Lines pilot insisted that two Muslim men be booted from his flight last May even though they had cleared every possible security hurdle. Now they’re suing.
You wonder if Kateri Tekakwitha would have been allowed on board. That’s her at the left. The 17th-century Native American woman is going one better, anyway, as she and Blessed Mother Marianne Cope, who worked with lepers in Hawaii, are poised to become the newest American saints, thanks to a decree from Pope Benedict XVI.
Sarah Palin for president? There are always second acts, and then some, in this cycle’s Republican nominating contest.
What was Arthur Conan Doyle’s problem with Mormons? You don’t need Sherlock Holmes to figure that one out, as Lane Williams explains in the Deseret News.
Mitt Romney delivered David Letterman’s Top Ten last night. He played it straight, which is actually pretty funny.
Spoiler: “It’s a hairpiece.”
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely explains the social utility of gift giving. Kinda takes the fun out of it, no?
Well, there are always those singing Christmas trees that megachurches love! No one can explain that.
— David Gibson
