The Pope's Twitter Account

Yes, Pope Benedict XVI has opened a personal Twitter account and will address faith in his first tweet, which is scheduled for Wednesday, December 12.  The CNN Belief Blog has a short write-up here.

Two key paragraphs here:

"The Pope's presence on Twitter is a concrete expression of his conviction that the Church must be present in the digital arena,” the church said in a written statement to reporters. The pope’s account on Twitter, the statement said, “can be seen as the 'tip of the iceberg' that is the Church's presence in the world of new media.”

A Vatican official told CNN the pope will be composing the tweets for the new account himself. For the first tweet from the account, the pope will also press the button to send the tweet himself, but after that others will send the tweets on his behalf.

But what effect will this really have on Catholics and Catholicism?  The only downside I see from this is the potential for the the Pope to spend time composing tweets that would be better spent doing something else.  But I suspect that will not be a problem;  tweets are short, and he doesn't need to send them that frequently to keep a presence.

So the real question is:  what is the upside?  Younger Catholics on Twitter will surely find this a neat thing.  It give them an additional and convenient way to feel connected with their Church's leader, which would imply a slight increase in their religious capital.  And it also allows the Pope a direct route for reaching out to younger Catholics with brief messages of faith, devotion, and inspiration.  This is not likely to generate hordes of converts into Catholicism, but the modest benefits in building ties within the Catholic community seem real.

With almost no downside, and a little upside, it appears like a smart move to me.

UPDATE 13-Dec-2012:  GetReligion reviews some of the articles about the Pope's first tweet here.

Two and a Half Men and a Half Convert to SDA

Here are two links to the story about Angus Jones's conversion to Seventh-day Adventism that I mentioned in class today:  here and here.

This attention given to Jones's remarks about the TV show "Two and a Half Men" reflects how controversial aspects of religious individuals and groups gets more press than non-controversial aspects.  Of course, the Hollywood angle has a role, too.

The first link is more informative for our class's purposes than the second.  You can see how Jones reacts to the pejorative use of "cult" (are they really a cult by our class's definition? ask yourself), and the author explains how Jones's remarks reflect some of the religious teachings about maintaining a pure life.

Yoga and Religion in School

Some parents in Encinitas, CA, are upset that Yoga has been introduced in the public schools.  They claim that having all children practice Yoga in school is akin to indoctrination into Hinduism.  See this article.

The argument demonstrates the difficulty some people have in defining religion.  To some people Yoga is not religion, but to others it is.  The wikipedia entry on Yoga links it with Hindu philosophy.  Unfortunately, the author of the article does not address the parents' claim about the link between Yoga and Hindu philosophy, which is a gaping hole in the article.

There is also money side to the story:  the school accepted a $533,000 grant to do the Yoga in the school, and the school does not want to give up that money.  It is clearly in the school's interest to say that Yoga is NOT religion so that they can keep the grant money.  Just as it is clearly in a Yoga business's interest to say that Yoga IS religion to avoid paying sales taxes (see this case from a couple years ago).

The Return of Confiscated Church Property

The Czech Parliament recently approved a plan to return valuable property that was confiscated by the Communist government back to the original Roman Catholic Church owners.  The total value of the returned amount equals about $7 billion, which would be given back over 30 years.  The Czech president can now approve or veto the deal to make it official, but there are enough votes to overturn a veto.  See the short story here.

This story is interesting and relevant for us in a few ways.  First, it illustrates again how the fate of churches so often depends on their relationships with the government.  Second, it demonstrates how large the stakes may be for some church-state interactions.

But the sentence that really caught my eye was this one:

Under the plan, the churches would become independent from the state and gradually stop getting government financing.

It is not clear whether the author means that the Catholic Church would stop receiving any money from the government, or if only the facilities on the returned properties would stop receiving government funds.  My guess is the later, but I welcome clarification.  As I understand it (and I welcome correction from a reader), the Czech government subsidizes officially recognized religions, of which the Roman Catholic Church is one.  So ending the subsidy to the Church would be a significant change.

It remains to be seen how this affects the long-run success of the Roman Catholic Church in the Czech Republic.  They were once the dominant religious body but are now around 10% of the country's population.  Czechs are also known for being some of the least religious in all of Europe.

Reviewing God is Back

The midterm is coming up, and your studying should include reviewing the God is Back book.  To help you review, you should check out these past posts on the class blog about the book.  See here and here.  Focus on the big questions asked in the book.

What is a "place of worship?"

A member of the Church of Scientology in England is challenging a law that she cannot be married in a Scientology chapel.  See the article here; for more on the legal side, see here. According to a law from 1855, a chapel has to be registered as a place of religious worship for religious marriages performed therein to be accepted by the state.  However, her Scientology chapel is not certified as a place of worship but instead is recognized as a place where instructions are concerned with man but are not religious worship.

This story reveals just another one of those ways in which religion is regulated.  People can participate in Scientology activities, but the state has decided which of those activities to recognize as legally significant.  The state must decide what is and what is not religion.  As discussed in class, this is a trick question for scholars to resolve, and it is here leading to contention in the courts.

Fewer Protestants and More Nones

The two biggest headlines in the last week have come from the Pew Forum's latest survey.  Below are links to CNN reports on each.

The first headline is that self-identified Protestants no longer comprise a majority of the U.S. population.  The Protestant population has dropped from 53% of the U.S. population in 2007 to 48% now.  Much of the decline is among the white mainline Protestants which as a group have been declining in numbers steadily for decades.

The second is that one in five Americans now claim to have no religious affiliation.  This group, called the "religious nones," is an eclectic group.  Two-thirds of the nones say they believe in God, one-third refer to themselves as "spiritual but not religious," one in five admit praying every day, and 64% of them identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.  Religion & Ethics Newsweekly will actually be doing a three-part miniseries on the rise of the religious nones (October 12, 19, and 26).

There can be disagreement about how to interpret these trends.  One is that it is the continued march of secularization.  Another is that the first findings is further evidence of religious competition, while the latter is evidence that a new niche may exist for religious groups to court.  In any event, the former trend has been continuing for decades, while the latter trend has been more recent.

Mutual Fund Investing and Local Religiosity

Two paragraphs from this University of Georgia news report (HT to TA Robert):

New research from the University of Georgia and Southern Methodist University and published in Management Science [pdf here, but you are not required to read it] shows that the dominant local religion—whether Protestant or Catholic—significantly affects mutual fund behaviors.

Specifically, the findings show that mutual funds headquartered in heavily Catholic areas tend to take more risks and funds in heavily Protestant areas take less risks, said lead author Tao Shu, assistant professor of banking and finance in UGA’s Terry College of Business. The paper was co-authored with Eric Yeung of the Terry College and Johan Sulaeman of Southern Methodist University.

It is not clear why this relationship holds, though the authors mention that surveys show Catholics tolerate more speculative risk than others.  Perhaps you have a better explanation.

And which funds perform better?

Yet, despite the risk-preference differences, the end results are about the same. The risk-taking associated with local religious beliefs does not lead to superior fund returns. The lesson for investors, then, is to ask riskier fund managers to play it safe.