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Baptist Message

"Helping Louisiana Baptists Impact the World For Christ"

PEW: Active religious people more likely to be ‘very happy’

By Message Staff In a survey of 26 countries, Pew Research Center found that people who regularly attend worship services are more likely to be happy as well as civically engaged than those who are not religiously active. This group also was less likely to smoke or drink, however, Pew did not link this tendency to greater health outcomes. Regarding happiness, religiously active people in 19 countries were more likely to be “very happy” than their fellow countrymen. Pew said “the gaps are striking” in a number of these countries, including an 11 percentage point difference in the United States (36 percent of the actively religious described themselves as “very happy,” compared with 25 percent of the inactively religious and 25 percent of the unaffiliated). Pew said their findings were “consistent with prior studies,” adding that actively religious people in the United States are more likely to “vote in national elections” and are “more engaged in community life in the sense that they belong to at least one nonreligious organization.” As for physical health, Pew nuanced that its findings “are more complicated.” Religiously active people are less likely to use alcohol or tobacco, but “they aren’t significantly … [Read more...]

Louisiana College quits CCCU over LGBT policy

By Will Hall, Message Editor PINEVILLE (LBM) – Louisiana College President Rick Brewer has notified the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities that the Louisiana Baptist school has withdrawn its membership from the organization. The issue involves a policy passed by the CCCU board of directors which endorses so-called “Fairness for All” legislation which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of federally-protected classes while also articulating protections for churches and religious organizations. The CCCU describes itself as “a higher education association of more than 180 Christian institutions around the world” and states its mission is “to help our institutions transform lives by faithfully relating scholarship and service to biblical truth. According to CBN News, Shirley Mullen, vice chair of the CCCU board and president of Houghton College, explained the CCCU position on LGBT protections as one of practicality for Christian higher education. “[W]e are increasingly persuaded that the most viable political strategy is for comprehensive religious freedom protections to be combined with explicit support for basic human rights for members of the LGBT community,” she wrote in a … [Read more...]