Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I have a name. Lots of people don't know the Salvation Army is a church. You do and give anyway because they do well on spending their money for aid. Good for you! However there are many Christian charities that rank well in this way.
At least some of those are Christian. (Bishop Sullivan Center, Catholic Charities, USA, Christ House, Christian Community Service Center, etc) The Christian charities I give to tend to only be those well-listed ones too.
Thanks for the link Thomas...Very handy I must say. Did you notice that of the 1793 Charities listed just 80 are religious? I guess us secular people are charitable too.
The recidivism rates for two exemplary Brazilian prisons are compared and commented upon. Sections within this article are: introduction; Humaita (a faith-based facility); Braganca (a vocational training/prison industry based facility, methodology; findings; and conclusions. Recidivism rates (over three years) are 16% for Humaita and 36% for Braganca.
The more a person attended Prison Fellowship and other religious programs, the less likely he was to have an infraction. For example, 21% of inmates with none or a low level of religious involvement had an infraction compared to 11% of inmates with a medium or high level of involvement.
*******
What about religion and recidivism? To date, the Center for Social Research has been involved with at least three studies on religion and recidivism. The first study found that a group of federal inmates who had taken part in a Prison Fellowship program had a significantly lower rate of recidivism (40%) than the rate of recidivism (51%) for a matched control group of federal inmates up to fourteen years after release. The religiously involved women in this study did particularly well
The third study found that a group of inmates in Sing Sing prison who had taken part in an intensive religious education program run by the New York Theological Seminary (NYTS) to prepare them for prison ministry had a 9% rate of recidivism compared to a 37% rate for a comparison group after twenty eight months of release.
DOC Transitional Services Division Spirituality, Religion and What Works (http://www.oregon.gov/DOC/TRANS/religious_services/rs_article2.shtml - broken link)
ROFL
Interesting all your links deal with prisons. "Finding God" while in prison is pretty much a cliche these days. And statistically, most inmates are already Christians to begin with.
Most poor people in the US are Christians or at least nominally so. In a country where Christians are more of a small and upper-class minority, like Japan, I'd imagine Christians aren't very common in prison. For that matter I think denominations whose members tend to be wealthier than average, Episcopalians or Eastern Orthodox, are probably comparatively rare in prison. Finnish Lutherans too, if we can mix ethnicity and religion. Wealthier people have less reason to commit crimes and have better lawyers to keep them from serving jail time.
Interesting all your links deal with prisons. "Finding God" while in prison is pretty much a cliche these days. And statistically, most inmates are already Christians to begin with.
A classic case of when the skeptic is presented with evidence that counters his/her worldveiw he/she dismisses it.
We are also a nation of NO religions and types of beliefs. It is all encompassing. We are not -only- allowed to believe what we want. We are -also- allowed to have no particular beliefs at all.
We are a nation of all beliefs, AND no beliefs. We are a nation of freedom to decide what to worship, AND we are a nation of freedom to decide not to worship anything.
The whole "in god we trust" on dollar bills and "one nation under god" in the Pledge aside, look at how we worship in this country:
What do you see most the week of Christmas? People out picking up their new Church outfit for Midnite Mass? Or people out picking their fake pagan tree at the local Christmas Tree Shop chain store, or cutting down yet another tree just so you can toss tinsel the day before Santa brings a new Wii to Junior?
Do you see children learning about GIVING on Christmas, or do you see children writing out what they want to GET for Christmas?
This is what our Nation's Christians do. They consume. They consume for Easter, with cream-filled chocolate pagan egg-laying bunnies that exist to represent the Spring Equinox and fertility and Mother Earth. They do it in the name of Jesus.
They get the day off on Good Friday so that they can shop the sales. And on Fat Tuesday they get drunk and flash their breasts for Jesus.
Yes, ours is a Christian nation. If that's how you define Christian.
I feel our opinions are parallel.
My family (wife and kids) is Agnostic but we do participate in the Christmas tradition. Each Christmas day we take a moment to think of the man called Jesus. We mention man who was inspiring and probably had a really nice message for his fellow man. We talk more about the Kabbalah version of receiving and then we mention Buddha (my wife’s favorite), after a little while we bring up Santa Clause. All of these things make up our world and all of these things are a positive influence in my home on that day. It is here where I say that the United States of America is a nation of all beliefs, and yes, all non beliefs.
IMO, to nullify one belief/religion is to exalt another and I’m not really into that.
Not that it has anything to do with the question in this topic but I give most of our charitable gifts to the Salavation Army and UNICEF. That way none of it gets spent for oak or mahagony pews, expensive carpeting, preacher expenses, stained glass windows, musical instruments, expensive sound systms, missionary trips(boondoggles) or brainwashing children with that 2000 year old Jewish fairy tale.
I would suggest that the Salvation Army does its share of brainwashing people.
I support our local food bank that is done by United Way.
I would also suggest joining kiva.org The Atheist team on Kiva is waaaaayyy out in front of all other teams. We have loaned almost $2.4 million in just 2 years! The 2nd place team is the Christians at about $1.5 million. There's also the FSM team, which recently squashed the Mormon team. It's a friendly rivalry (at least on our part) as we all believe that a loan to a poor entrepreneur is never a bad thing.
And if you want to help teachers in poverty stricken school areas there is donorschoose.org where teachers ask for funding for specific projects so you can sort by where you live or by specific subject areas or by most urgent projects, etc.
Your "evidence" reinforced rather than countered my position, sparky.
But do carry on
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mercury Cougar
Funny, I could swear you're looking in the mirror when you say that.
Meh.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
