American Less Religious, But More Subject to Xian Sharia

It's going to take more than a growing minority of the non-religious to stop the race to theocracy.

Is the American public becoming less religious? Yes, at least by some key measures of what it means to be a religious person. An extensive new survey of more than 35,000 U.S. adults finds that the percentages who say they believe in God, pray daily and regularly go to church or other religious services all have declined modestly in recent years.

But the Pew Research Center study also finds a great deal of stability in the U.S. religious landscape. The recent decrease in religious beliefs and behaviors is largely attributable to the “nones” – the growing minority of Americans, particularly in the Millennial generation, who say they do not belong to any organized faith. Among the roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults who do claim a religion, there has been no discernible drop in most measures of religious commitment. Indeed, by some conventional measures, religiously affiliated Americans are, on average, even more devout than they were a few years ago.

Which is exactly why the freakazoids are accelerating the xian sharia takeover of the American legal system, and why they are getting away with it.

Political Animal:

The New York Times’ series on the use of binding arbitration to “privatize” disputes usually resolved by the courts continues today with a piece (again by Michael Corkery and Jessica Silver-Greenberg) focusing on the use of arbitration requirements which substitute religious for secular law. A sample:

For generations, religious tribunals have been used in the United States to settle family disputes and spiritual debates. But through arbitration, religion is being used to sort out secular problems like claims of financial fraud and wrongful death.

Customers who buy bamboo floors from Higuera Hardwoods in Washington State must take any dispute before a Christian arbitrator, according to the company’s website. Carolina Cabin Rentals, which rents high-end vacation properties in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, tells its customers that disputes may be resolved according to biblical principles. The same goes for contestants in a fishing tournament in Hawaii.

Religious arbitration clauses…have often proved impervious to legal challenges.

Scientology forbids its followers from associating with former members who have been declared “suppressive persons,” according to people who have left the church. But this year, a federal judge in Florida upheld a religious arbitration clause requiring Luis Garcia, a declared suppressive, to take his claim that the church had defrauded him of tens of thousands of dollars before a panel of Scientologists, instead of going to court.

The piece also discusses at some length complaints against “Christian” counseling and rehab services—some of them mandated by actual courts—that try to “de-gay” people and exploit free labor and then defend themselves with arbitration clauses that subject all disputes to “scriptural” standards.

In other words, greed and bigotry have joined hands via arbitration requirements.