17 striking findings from 2017

1. Partisan divides dwarf demographic differences on key political values.
2. Donald Trump’s presidency has had a major impact on how the world sees the United States.
3. About four-in-ten Americans say they live in a gun-owning household, while three-in-ten say they personally own a gun.
4. Democrats and Republicans disagree now more than ever on the news media’s “watchdog” role.
5. Muslims are projected to be the world’s fastest-growing major religious group in the decades ahead.
6. In the U.S., Hispanic identity fades across generations as distance from immigrant roots grows.
7. Americans see fundamental differences between men and women, but men and women have different views on the cause of these differences.
8. Many Americans expect certain professions to be dominated by automation in their lifetime – but few see their own jobs at risk.
9. The share of Republicans who hold negative views of the effect of colleges and universities on the country has grown significantly since 2015.
10. Immigrants are projected to play the primary role in the growth of the American working-age population in the coming decades.
11. News stories about President Trump’s first 60 days in office offered far more negative assessments than they did of prior administrations.
12. In the past 10 years, the share of U.S. adults living without a spouse or partner has increased.
13. About half of 2.2 million people who sought asylum in Europe during the 2015 and 2016 refugee surge were still in limbo at the end of 2016 and did not know if they would be allowed to stay.
14. About eight-in-ten Americans say they understand the risks and challenges of police work, but 86% of police say the public does not understand.
15. About six-in-ten Americans ages 18 to 29 say the primary way they watch television now is with streaming services on the internet.
16. Views on whether whites benefit from societal advantages that blacks do not have are split sharply along racial and partisan lines.
17. Science knowledge is closely related to expectations for harm from climate change among Democrats, but not among Republicans.

Former Facebook exec says social media is ripping apart society

Palihapitiya’s criticisms were aimed not only at Facebook, but the wider online ecosystem. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to online interactions driven by “hearts, likes, thumbs-up.” “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem — this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem.”

Some Implications of Being Pro ALL Life

• Abortion isn’t the only political issue that matters.
• Criminals are human beings too.
• Citizenship doesn’t make someone less valuable.

What a Stupid Bumper Sticker Can Tell Us About American Christianity

In our time of political religion, passionate intensity is reserved for the “important matters,” which are inevitably political. Who cares if one misses the point of the Bible, as long as the message props up the slogan? Often even the “theological” debates Christians engage in, mostly now via social media, aren’t actually about God or the gospel, but about the identity politics of seeing “our side” as better than some other group. In those debates, what is being defended is not Christ and his church but “Christians”—sociologically and politically defined.

Evangelical rebel Jen Hatmaker deserved more from Politico than a puff piece

Women like Hatmaker have long benefited from the female evangelical star system for many years; a system that made little room for the divorced, the widowed, the childless and the never-married. Instead, she was hitched to a pastor and they had five kids. That is evangelical heaven.
I’m not saying Hatmaker doesn’t deserve her place in the sun. Her recent column on family members who sabotage holiday celebrations was dead-on terms of what adoptive and foster parents experience all the time.
But here’s a woman who got her own reality show back in 2014. Let’s not talk about white male privilege while ignoring Hatmaker’s very obvious privilege.

Happy Trump-idays! The real reason for so much winning and saying ‘Merry Christmas’ this season

But personally, I identified with the response of Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, to Trump’s tweet: “So, was this a thing that I missed? Were some of you really ashamed of saying Merry Christmas before the election? Or afraid to? Teach me — are you proud and more bold now? What?” (See Stetzer’s Twitter timeline for some excellent feedback that he received.)

Six Secrets Of People Who Keep Their New Year’s Resolutions

• Their resolutions revolve around small changes
• They write down the resolution every day
• They have a strong “why”
• Their resolutions benefit others
• They seek accountability
• They make failure difficult