Stephan:  In this survey we see the change that is occurring in the U.S. in terms of religion. Although this survey did not poll for this, I think the change is occurring because Christianity has been  captured in the U.S. particularly amongst White people and shaped into something that has almost no tangency with Jesus' teachings. What the Theocratic Rightists have not anticipated accurately however, is that the social gestalt in the main is rejecting their world view. Gender and race issues are seen quite differently by the young who support gender equality, and are tolerant of mixed race relationships, and LGBT life choices; who find Biblical inerrancy and Creationism bizarre. As a result they are falling away from the prejudice and dysfunction that is the hallmark of so much of American "christian" thinking. And this poll also fails to consider what I think is the most interesting trend, the growth of those who define themselves as "spiritual but not religious." So on balance I see this as good news.

Stephan:  I send to you all, my readers throughout the world, my very best wishes for a Merry Christmas  and a Happy Hanukkah. -- Stephan

Stephan:  Whether you think the Old Testament story of Sodom and Gomorrah is just a legend, a highly mythologized account based on the real destruction of two cities by fire, or the literal word of God, few would argue with the proposition the Bible is the central document of Western culture, and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is widely known. Why is that? Why did this story get preserved when hundreds of others are lost to time? In Genesis 18, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah begins. The story is usually cited in the context of Abraham’s wife Sarah being told she would bear a son, as God’s selection of Abraham and his descendants as a chosen people, or as a condemnation of homosexuality. I want to suggest an additional perspective, which I think is the point intended, and the reason it was passed on by storytellers and teachers, and why I bring it up now. In tone it describes events that would be instantly recognized by the villagers and farmers to whom it was told, much as 9/11 evokes iconic imagery and passion in us today. I think this story was incorporated into the Bible because it is a teaching on the power of choice and the beingness that arises when those choices consistently are for the compassionate and life-affirming option. And this is true whether the story is seen as oral history based on real events, or as religious article of faith about a mythical event, or as a case study in social science. In all cases, it explicitly describes the power arising from making life-affirming choices, and even gives us a kind of ratio by which to calculate it. One that would have been clearly understood by a farmer in the Middle East in the Early Bronze Age, when he heard it from an itinerant teacher. The story begins: “One day, Abraham was sitting at the entrance to his tent during the hottest part of the day.  He looked up and noticed three men standing nearby.” He clearly sees them as important individuals, and runs over making a deep obeisance. Who are they? One is clearly God. The other two? Perhaps body and spirit? This would represent the two worlds, as a farmer would have seen it. Abraham washes their feet and gives them a meal. After they eat: Then the men got up from their meal and looked out toward Sodom. As they left, Abraham went with them to send them on their way.  “Should I hide my plan from Abraham?” the Lord asked. “For Abraham will certainly become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him.  “I have singled him out so that he will direct his sons and their families to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. Then I will do for Abraham all that I have promised." So the Lord told Abraham, “I have heard a great outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah, because their sin is so flagrant." “I am going down to see if their actions are as wicked as I have heard. If not, I want to know.  “The other men turned and headed toward Sodom, but the Lord remained with Abraham.  “Abraham approached him and said, “Will you sweep away both the righteous and the wicked?  “Suppose you find fifty righteous people living there in the city — will you still sweep it away and not spare it for their sakes?  “Surely you wouldn’t do such a thing, destroying the righteous along with the wicked. Why, you would be treating the righteous and the wicked exactly the same! Surely you wouldn’t do that! Should not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?” This is it; this is the foundational statement concerning the power of beingness. A fraction of a group is sufficient to change the destiny of the whole group by nothing more than who they are, and the choices they make. Note, particularly, that Abraham imposes no delineators. These righteous people do not all have to believe the same thing. They don’t have to be of the same faith, family, or tribe. Their defining characteristic is their beingness, that they are “righteous,” or “good” as it is described in other translations. And the Lord replied, “If I find fifty righteous people in Sodom, I will spare the entire city for their sake.” So now we are focused on the ratio. To drive this point home in the time honored way of oral history, the point is reiterated and more finely tuned each time.  Then Abraham spoke again. “Since I have begun, let me speak further to my Lord, even though I am but dust and ashes." “Suppose there are only 45 righteous people rather than 50? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And the Lord said, “I will not destroy it if I find 45 righteous people there.” Then Abraham pressed his request further. “Suppose there are only 40?” And the Lord replied, “I will not destroy it for the sake of the 40.” They keep at it until:  Finally, Abraham said, “Lord, please don’t be angry with me if I speak one more time. Suppose only ten are found there?” And the Lord replied, “Then I will not destroy it for the sake of the ten.” So there we have it. The beingness of ten is sufficient to offset the lack of character of perhaps 2, 000. The point being not the absolute count, but that very few can influence many. The story continues to drive home this point. Before the angels, as they are now called, can destroy the city, Lot has to leave. Here we have a second data point. The beingness of just one person is sufficient to impede damage to the many. Then we get a third point in Genesis 19, the next chapter. Lot asks to go to a nearby little village.  “See, there is a small village nearby. Please let me go there instead; don’t you see how small it is? Then my life will be saved.” “All right,” the angel said, “I will grant your request. I will not destroy the little village. But hurry! Escape to it, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.” (This explains why that village was known as Zoar, which means “little place.” This part of the story tells us that the beingness of just one person can alter the destiny of a small village — perhaps 200. And modern social science research validates this ancient story. So how many individuals are required to start change, using the strategy of beingness? One. Look at one of the most prestigious prizes in the world, the Nobel Peace Prize. Begun in 1901, it is the one award made from Oslo. The award is determined by a committee of five people, and it is not given every year — no prize was awarded in the years 1914-1916, 1918, 1923, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1939-1943, 1948, 1955-1956, 1966-1967 and 1972. It is given to both individuals and organizations, and its sometimes shared. In the 112 years since it was created, the award has been awarded — up to and including 2014 — to 128 Laureates 103 individuals have received the Prize. Of those 100 individuals, 16 have been women, and 87 men. The committee has awarded the honor to 25 organizations, including the European Union, the Society of Friends in the U.K. and U.S., The International Red Cross (3 times), and the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the scientists, who collectively won along with Vice President Gore. Of the individuals, it seems to go to three kinds of people: • Government officials — President Obama, Vice President Gore and Henry Kissinger. Essentially, individuals doing what the committee perceives as life-affirming acomplishments in their capacity as public officials. • Hereditary or acknowledged leaders — Nelson Mandela is the best recent example, being a man of status not only for what he had done, but as a hereditary leader of his community. Ordinary people who are committed to change. It is this group, the regular folk who make up the third category, that most clearly illustrates the eight laws. It is notable how many recipients are women — the largest number of women in any of the Nobel categories, and how many come from societies in which women are traditionall thought to powerless. Consider just four recent women winners: The 1976 Peace Prize was awarded jointly to two Irish homemakers, Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams. Each was in her early thirties when, on a Saturday afternoon in August 1976, along with a male friend, Ciaran McKeown, they founded the Community of Peace People. Both were solidly working class and lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mairead’s father was a window-cleaning contractor, and her mother was a housewife. Mairead had been working since she was 16 in various clerical jobs, was proud of her shorthand and had risen to become the Confidential Secretary to the Managing Director of a local company. Betty William’s life was much the same. Her father was a butcher. Like her friend, Mairead, she was married, and had two children, a son, Paul and a daughter, Deborah. They had no prior experience as activists, and by their own admission were hardly sophisticated in politics. But they had had enough of the religious violence in Ireland, and believed that even though they were utterly lacking in the sort of resumé one associates with political success, they could make a difference. As Betty Williams explained in her Nobel acceptance speech on December 11, 1977, “The Movement of the Peace People...began (by) planning a series of rallies which would last four months, and through which we would mobilize hundreds of thousands of people and challenge them to take the road of the Declaration. “The words are simple but the path is not easy...It is a path on which we must not only reject the use of all the techniques of violence, but along which we must seek out the work of peace...and do it. It is the way of dedication, hard work and courage. “Hundreds of thousands of people turned out during those four months, and we would not be standing here if they had not. So I feel humble that I should be receiving this award, but I am very proud to be here in the name of all the Peace People to accept it.” The 1992 Peace Prize was won by Rigoberta Menchú, daughter of a impoverished Quiche Mayan peasant family, in which everyone, including the children, picked coffee on the big, often absentee owner plantations. Reared as a Catholic, she became involved in social reform activities through the Church and, while still a teenager, she became prominent in the women’s rights movement. By the time she was chosen for the Nobel, she was a leading advocate of Indian rights and ethno-cultural reconciliation, not only in Guatemala but in the Western Hemisphere generally. The 2004 Peace Prize was won by Wangari Muta Maathi, who was born in colonial Kenya. She was the first woman of all the millions who have lived in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. After doing so, she went on to become head of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy. In 1976, she decided to address the deforestation of her homeland in the simplest and most direct manner. Eschewing government programs and large international aid organizations, Maathi pursuaded women to start planting trees. This simple idea developed into a broad-based, grassroots organization that, by the time she won the Nobel, had planted more than 20 million trees throughout Kenya, on farms, school lands, and church compounds. The 2014 Prize was shared by a Muslim Pakistani teen-age girl born in 1997, Malala Yousafzai, unusual since the average age of recipients from 1901 to 2014 is 61.6 She shared it with a middle-aged Indian Hindu and follower of Gandhian nonviolence, Kailash Satyarthi. Both were selected, as the Norweigan Nobel Committee said, “(for) their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education. Children must go to school and not be financially exploited. In the poor countries of the world, 60 percent of the present population is under 25 years of age. It is a prerequisite for peaceful global development that the rights of children and young people be respected. In conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation." As these prizes to ordinary people reveal, beingness is not an intellectual argument; it cannot be faked. It’s not a matter of just learning the right words and going through the motions. It is not pious or moralistic. It cannot be scammed. It requires compassionate, life-affirming authenticity. And it can be achieved by anyone regardless of gender, race, income level, or religion. It is a prize that is independent of the normal ways we characterize people. Instead it requires compassionate, life-affirming beingness.

What science and history show is that those committed to compassionate, life-affirming change  through their personal choices and by joining in groups in shared intention can create life-affirming change. On this day as we celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah; whether we see them as religious or just cultural holidays the question we must answer is our we, ourselves, willing to be one of those 10 good individuals as in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah?

And here is a proven course of action we can all take. It does not require official position, great wealth, or social status. It is available to everyone: I pledge that at every decision point throughout my day, from this day forward, I will ask myself before making the decision, of the options available to me which is the most compassionate and life-affirming one as I understand it in this moment? I pledge that I will choose that one.

You have the information now. You can see the pattern. What you do with this is now your choice. You are an agent of change.

Stephan:  If you have listened to the news today I am sure you have already heard about the extraordinary tweet from Donald Trump concerning nuclear arms. I have several reactions to this. First, we only have one President at a time, and I can't remember a time when an incoming President has so blatantly disregarded that. We have had some really stupid comments from Presidents during campaigns, interesting that they mostly seem to come from Republicans, Reagan's "joke" that we're about to start bombing the Soviet Union in five minutes comes immediately to mind. But I can't recall anything like this. Second, Trump's tweet set in motion one of the most obvious normalization campaigns yet. Trump's minions and the media spent the day turning themselves inside  out to defuse what I see as a sociopathic amusement  -- and I expect this process will be a regular feature of the Trump Presidency. Third, sociopaths are smart if deranged, and one of the features of this psychological condition is an unsatisfiable craving to always be the center of attention. Trump has clearly figured out how to push the buttons of the media, and the world come to that, so that he is always in the spotlight and unless the media develops a way of dealing with that, the news over the next four years is going to be dominated by outrageous tweets, that bring everything else to a screeching stop. Fourth, actions such as this obfuscate real news and real things. Have you noticed we have yet to see Trump's Tax returns?  Have you noticed that the glaring conflicts of interest no longer get much attention? Fifth, have you noticed the pusillanimous behavior of the Republican leadership, and their little brown noses? Buckle up, we're in for a very strange ride.

Stephan:  I confess to you that I never expected to read a headline such as the one The News & Observer has chosen to put on this story -- but I am not surprised. Apparently I am not the only person who sees what is going on in North Carolina as a much bigger story than it is being presented as in the national media. This is a piece in the largest North Carolina paper written by a man who is internationally recognized for his expertise is assessing the quality of democracy in governments. His evaluation: North Carolina is no longer a democracy. It will be interesting to see what North Carolinians do about this.