In Lehmann's Terms

No God, eh?

Our northern neighbor is losing its religion.

From “Who’s Religious?” by Warren Clark and Grant Schellenberg, a Statistics Canada article from its summer 2006 issue, using data from Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey:

• 19% of Canadians 15 and older reported belonging to no religion in 2004, up from 12% in 1985.
• More than 50% of Canadians aged 15 to 29 reported they don’t go to religious services.

From the Canadian Social Trends-Statistics Canada graph “The importance of religion to one’s life, Canada, 2002":

• 20% of men and 15% of women reported having no religion.
• 25% of Canadians aged 15 to 29 have no religion, the highest percentage of any age group.

Whose Stereo Are You Typing?

Bryan Caplan reports surprise upon learning, based on analysis of data from the General Social Survey, that fundamentalists are no less likely to get divorced than the population at large. This, he says, contradicts the general "stereotype" that fundamentalists take their vows more seriously than other people do.

I have to admit to being somewhat puzzled by the assertion. I've never stereotyped fundamentalists as being unlikely to divorce, and wasn't aware that that was a stereotype. When I hear the word "fundamentalist," I think "Biblical literalist, evangelical Protestant."  And perhaps this just betrays the residual prejudices of my Catholic school background, but my first inclination is to assume that Protestants of all stripes are MORE likely to get divorced. They are, after all, allowed to get divorced, which Catholics -- who represent one-quarter of this country, by far the largest bloc of any single religious sect -- are not.

America's Worst Nightmare

Apparently, it's not terrorism or bird flu or those melting polar ice caps. It's a godless heathen like myself showing up at the door to announce "I'm going to marry your daughter."

So says a new study from the University of Minnesota:

"Church attenders, conservative Protestants, and those reporting high religious saliency are less likely to approve of intermarriage with an atheist and more likely to say that atheists do not share their vision of American society..." In respect to the former, the survey presented respondents with the following statement: "I would disapprove if my child wanted to marry a member of this group."

Once again, Atheists were at the apex of this negative-image cohort at 47.6%, followed by Muslims (33.5%); African Americans (27.2%); Asian Americans (18.5%); Hispanics (18.5%); Jews (11.8%); conservative Christians (6.9%) and Whites at 2.3%.

The (Smaller Than It Ought Be) Easy

U.S. Census Bureau growth rates for select metropolitan areas, 2000-2004:

• Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas          10.3%
• Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.      7.1%
• Houston, Texas                            9.7%
• Atlanta, Ga.                                 10.7%
• Tampa-St. Pete, Fla.                   8.0%
• Charlotte, N.C.                              9.0%
• Orlando, Fla.                                13.2%
• San Antonio, Texas                     8.3%
• Nashville, Tenn.                            6.5%
• Raleigh-Durham, N.C.               11.6%
• Austin, Texas                               13.0%
• Jacksonville, Fla.                         9.1%
• New Orleans, La.                          0.2%

If you look just at the city, rather than the Metro area, New Orleans is actually on a decades-long streak of negative population growth. All this while the South as a whole has benefitted from the most massive demographic shift in U.S. history, with millions abandoning the Snow-and-Rust Belt of the industrial Northeast and Midwest for the corporate parks and gated condominium developments of the SunBelt, which also notably includes Vegas and Arizona.

What makes this especially strange, at first blush, is that New Orleans would seem to possess many of the qualities Yankees complain about missing in the New South. It is an historic city, with interesting architecture, and a diverse, international and cosmopolitan feel. Among Southern cities, only Miami can rival New Orleans for nightlife, or for the city's concentrations of Catholics and Jews. The city is also a culinary mecca, a literary haven, and arguably the central locus for all of American music. Yes, it's crime-ridden and a murder capital, but again...so is Miami.

So what's been keeping folks away from the Big Easy? Perhaps it was a little of that corruption the place is so famous for (on full display in Katrina's aftermath), which has served to raise the cost of doing business in all sorts of completely unnecessary ways.

But is Louisiana really as corrupt as all that? Haven't things gotten any better since the days of Huey Long?

I point you to Exhibit A: If J. Robert Wooley doesn't end his current stint as the state's Insurance Commissioner by going to prison (which remains to be seen), he'll be breaking a tradition carried on by his three immediate predecessors, Sherman Bernard, Doug Green and Jim Brown.