Thanks to Lutheran Kantor and Dan at Necessary Roughness for mining the data in that Pew Survey we blogged about, which gives some embarrassing data about Missouri Synod Lutherans. From Atheists That Believe in a God and Lutherans That Don’t:

Gene Veith blogs on the recent Pew Religion Survey (full report PDF):
My favorite fact of the study:

One out of five ATHEISTS believe in God or a universal spirit. And nearly half of all AGNOSTICS (defined as someone who does not know whether or not God exists) report believing in God or a universal spirit.

That’s worth a chuckle, but the Lutheran Kantor finds disturbing numbers:

The survey classified the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) to be an Evangelical denomination. Based on the survey results of the 588 LCMS respondents, the LCMS is very open minded and tolerant. So open minded and tolerant that 78% of the LCMS respondents believe that “many religions can lead to eternal life.” We beat the national average! That’s not something to be proud of.

Other statistics about the 588 surveyed:
Only 84% are absolutely certain there is a god; 12% are fairly certain.
9% seldom go to church; 2% never do.
Only 42% said the Bible should be taken literally.
28% believe there is one correct way to interpret scripture.

For all our efforts to divide the human populace between “churched” and “unchurched” for programmatic and spending purposes, this data shows that we cannot take the beliefs of the “churched” for granted.

You non-Lutheran readers may be sick of the Lutheran triumphalism sometimes evident on this blog, though I’ve also been criticized for airing the LCMS dirty laundry in my writings. I do think Lutheran theology gets it right–comprehending the best of every other Christian tradition–and is the quintessential EVANGELICAL theology, in which the Gospel of salvation through Christ on the Cross is central to every other article. If Lutherans would become Lutherans, maybe others would.

Our discussion of movie reviewing has generated both light and heat, with lately Mark Moring, the movie review editor of Christianity Today Online joining the fray, challenging Ted Slater of Focus on the Family, the two principals of the controversy. (Gentlemen, go ahead and thrash it out if you wish, but this blog has high standards of discourse that you must adhere to.) You can follow the argument in the post “The Vocation of the Movie Critic,” below.

But I would like to propose an exercise: Consider this review of the “Sex and the City” film in The New Yorker.

It is a strongly negative review of that film. It too invokes moral reasons, though it says nothing about sex and nudity.

How is it different from BOTH the positive and the negative reviews from Christian critics? Do the latter exhibit similarities, for all their being at each other’s throats, that set them apart from this secularist reviewer? Are there things that Christian critics can learn from this secularist reviewer about critiquing movies and how to write a negative review?

At Jamestown, I bought a reproduction of John Gadsby Chapman’s “Baptism of Pocahontas.” Imagine my surprise when my family toured the Capitol building to see the original painting, all 12 feet by 18 feet of it, prominently featured in the Rotunda, right next to John Trumbull’s famous rendition of the signing of the Declaration of Independence!

America’s founding and the monuments to that event are NOT just matters of enlightenment neo-classicism or mere civil religion, despite my recent observation about our “shrines” and the graven images within them. In Washington, D.C., are many tributes that are explicitly Christian.

I hope it isn’t censored and put into storage once complaints materialize about the uniquely Christian and thus impermissibly sectarian nature of baptism or that the painting’s theme has to do with the imperialistic proseletyzing of native Americans.

An exhibit in Canada explores the history of the eugenic movement and does not shrink away from who its major advocates were; namely, left wing intellectuals. Read this review, entitled Socialists made eugenics fashionable. The author, Michael Coren, summarizes the utopian plans of the still-respectable H. G. Wells:

“People throughout the world whose minds were adapted to the big-scale conditions of the new time. A naturally and informally organised educated class, an unprecedented sort of people.” A strict social order would be formed. At the bottom of it were the base. These were “people who had given evidence of a strong anti-social disposition”, including “the black, the brown, the swarthy, the yellow.” Christians would also “have to go” as well as the handicapped. Wells devoted entire pamphlets to the need of “preventing the birth, preventing the procreation or preventing the existence” of the mentally and physically handicapped. “This thing, this euthanasia of the weak and the sensual is possible. I have little or no doubt that in the future it will be planned and achieved.”

The people of Africa and Asia, he said, simply could never find a place in a modern world controlled by science. Better to do away with the lot. “I take it they will have to go” he said of them. Marriage as it is known would have to end but couples could form mutually agreed unions. They would list their “desires, diseases, needs” on little cards and a central authority would decide who was fitted for whom.

Population would be rigidly controlled, with forced abortion for those who were not of the right class and race. Religion would be banned, children would be raised in communes and all would be well. The old and the ill would, naturally, have to be done away with and doctors would be given the authority to decide who had a right to live, who had a duty to die.

The exhibit also exposes the eugenic agenda of George Bernard Shaw, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and a plethora of socialists and Marxists. It’s interesting to learn that these luminaries would also sterilize Christians.

Note that these arguments, derive, in essence, from an application of Darwin’s theory of evolution. I’m waiting for an exhibit that documents THAT.

UPDATE: Along these lines, read Jonah Goldberg’s piece on Margaret Sanger from his excellent book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.