Protestants are just about to slip down into minority status, according to this report. “Whereas nearly two thirds of Americans identified themselves as Protestant as recently as the 1980s, only 51 percent identify as Protestant today, the study found.” (For a more in-depth discussion of the survey results, read this.)

The major reason is not a surge in the number of Catholics. That church body is losing members faster than any other, except that large numbers of legal and illegal immigrants, most of whom are Catholics, are keeping the numbers up to pretty much what they have been. The biggest factor is the rise of the fastest-growing religious category: the “unaffiliated,” which now numbers 16%. Evidently, people who once went to churches are abandoning them.

I myself am glad Protestants will soon be another minority group. That will allow Protestants to seize the moral high ground, claim victimhood, get respect, silence critics with shame, and allow for the claiming of a whole bunch of new rights.

But seriously, folks. . .The poll also shows a great deal of people changing from one church or one religion to another.

This graph summarizes the data, including showing the losses from childhood to adulthood in each group. What conclusions can you draw from this information?

Roger Kimball notes that Muslims are waging a traditional jihad, but are finding much greater success with a soft jihad:

That’s the new mantra, you know: “for fear of offending Muslims.” We don’t give away piggy banks (to say nothing of other “pig related items”) “for fear of offending Muslims.” We don’t draw cartoons of Mohammad “for fear of offending Muslims.” We mustn’t publish articles pointing out the demographic disparity between the Muslims of Canada and Europe and other parts of the population “for fear of offending Muslims.” We mustn’t even publish books saying critical things about “Saudis and terrorists” “for fear of offending Muslims.”

It’s all part of the campaign of soft jihad. Traditional jihad is waged with scimitars and their contemporary equivalents, e.g., stolen Boeing 767s, which make handy instruments of mass homicide. Soft jihad is a quieter affair: it uses and abuses the language and the principles of democratic liberalism not to secure the institutions and attitudes that make freedom possible but, on the contrary, to undermine that freedom and pave the way for self-righteous, theocratic intolerance. Soft jihad is patient. It can add and multiply as well as Mark Steyn can (and here). It, too, sees the demographic writing on the wall and is content to wait a few years to occupy the West’s real estate—it’s so much easier, when you come right down to it, than blowing the stuff up and then finding yourself with a massive clean-up and rebuilding bill. Just sit tight and watch the infidels tie themselves into knots making excuses for you while, elsewhere in their lives, they embrace barrenness as an “environmentally friendly” alternative to Genesis 1:28.

Hillary Clinton’s people are circulating a picture of Barack Obama, on a trip to Kenya, wearing African dress, including a turban. (Even though he is wearing a polo and khakis underneath.) The insinuation is that he is a Muslim. That, or she is trying to summon up some kind of weird racist reaction. But Matt Drudge usefully assembles some other pictures of politicians wearing native clothing, including Mrs. Clinton dressed like a Muslim! See this story and the photos below.

Mrs. Clinton has not only dropped all restraint in slamming Mr. Obama, she has adopted John Edward’s class warfare rhetoric in an effort to rally the proletariat to her side. It worked SO WELL for Mr. Edwards.

Doesn’t she see that the more she does this kind of vicious, angry stuff the less voters like her?