Hi all; The Jan/Feb05 Atlantic Monthly:
theatlantic.com
is filled with fascinating articles about the "state of the union". I found the following article on the redefinition of the religious divides of the US particularly interesting:
Beyond Belief
Hanna Rossin, Atlantic Monthly,
Richard Land is gloating, and who can blame him? When I called him a few weeks after the 2004 election, he said he'd been driving around his home town of Nashville with his cell phone ringing constantly, CNN on one line, Time magazine on the other—everyone wanting to ask the prominent Southern Baptist how his people had managed to win the election for George W. Bush. Yes, he told me, "we white evangelicals were the driving engine" of the president's victory. But then he veered into the kind of interview a quarterback gives in the locker room, in which he thanks the offensive line and the tight end and the coach and, well, really the whole team for bringing it home. "You'd be shocked," Land said, "at the number of Catholics who voted for this president. You'd be shocked at the number of Orthodox Jews, even observant Jews. This was a victory for all people of traditional moral values."
...
theatlantic.com
The article is available only by purchase of the magazine or subscription. The purport of the article, to the best of my recollection, is that religious divisions in the US are beginning to follow political divisions into essentially liberal (progressive) and conservative (traditional) sides. For example, in previous elections the Jewish vote was solidly Democratic. But the Republicans are beginning to pick up votes from conservative Jews, as well as conservative Catholics.
A lot of the trends that eventually become prominent in the World begin in the US. A trend of this nature, under the right circumstances, could revolutionize politics in the Middle East in such a way as to achieve a peaceful situation. Given the rate at which trends move in this way, we could see a situation where conservative Moslems unite with conservative Jews in Israel to outlaw various outrageous behaviour now legal in Israel such as prostitution.
For example, Tel Aviv is known as a "brothel capital of the world":
sexwork.com
A search list for this phrase:
google.com
-- Carl |
