The Business Wire cites a study by HCD Research and the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies of The Jewish Theological Seminary with what might be considered sensational results:

A national survey of 1,100 physicians, conducted by HCD Research and the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies of The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City over the past weekend, found that 74% of doctors believe that miracles have occurred in the past and 73% believe that can occur today.

The poll also indicated that American physicians are surprisingly religious, with 72% indicating they believe that religion provides a reliable and necessary guide to life.

Fascinating, but it might be undermined by the next paragraph:

Those surveyed represent physicians from Christian (Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox Christian and other), Jewish (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and secular) Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist religious traditions.

Isn't there one "tradition" missing here? Atheism, for instance. If they surveyed doctors that fit within the religious traditions described above then it stands to reason that a majority would believe in the metaphysical. If, on the other hand, they were included and the article doesn't consider atheism a "religious tradition" in the sense that the others are, they still should find a way to put that in there, I'd think.

Even if true, however, it may not be altogether surprising. As the saying goes "there are no atheists in the trenches." That's a broad overgeneralization, of course, but it stands to reason that those that are either personally in danger (such as soldiers) or are surrounded by people in danger (as is the case with doctors) that many would need faith in some higher being in order to, among other things, stay sane.

Tonight was the C&P Christmas dinner. Naturally, I got to sit with Lozey and Bryn, her boyfriend. Lozey, whom I consider to be very predictably "unpredictable," actually surprised me. A while back she was dating an LDS guy (hard not to do around here if you're single, I'd guess) when she was approached by two missionaries. She actually invited them in to learn more about their faith so that she could understand her then-man. When they left she invited them to come over for punch and movies any time they didn't have anything else to do.

That kind of tolerance is the one kind of tolerance that I would not expect her to be capable of.

But then she started talking about how all her friends think she should be a stand-up comedian and and things returned to normal.

Belief in hell boosts economic growth, Fed says

The St Louis Fed drew on work by outside economists who studied 35 countries, including the United States, European nations, Japan, India and Turkey and found that religion shed some useful light.

"In countries where where large percentages of the population believe in hell, there seems to be less corruption and a higher standard of living," the St. Louis Fed said in its July quarterly review.

For instance, 71 percent of the U.S. population believe in hell and the country boasts the world's highest per capita income, according to the 2003 United Nations Human Development Report and 1990-1993 World Values Survey.

Ireland, not far behind the United States in terms of income, likewise has a healthy fear of a nether world with 53 percent of the population acknowledging hell's existence.

The basic argument is that a belief in Hell is inversely corrolated with corruption, so the more people believe in Hell, the less corrupt a nation is overall. Since corruption drags an economy, the less corruption the more efficiently an economy operates. These ideas are not particularly new and were in fact advanced by, among others, Adam Smith himself.

An interesting thing to note is that economic success is not corrolated with religiosity itself, but whether that religion believes in Hell. What's even more interesting is that this happens despite an inverse corrolation between education level among individuals and religiosity and that church attendance and economic growth within a society are also inversely related. So it's not a matter of church attendance any societal benefits that come with that (increased community interaction, for instance), but squarely on Hell.

You can read the actual report here.

Norbizness has collected a host of poll results on America and religion. The results are quite interesting. I don't particularly believe the participants.

Christian songwriter Jim Morgan has a song called Just Like IBM, about a pastor running his church more like a business.

I'm the senior pastor of a church of 14,033,
I got eight associate pastors and a fast-talkin' D.C.E.
I got a physical plant that covers 4 square blocks
I got high-yield investments in blue-chip stocks
The money's rolling in and we're getting it all tax-free.

My daddy was a dedicated, hard-workin' company man.
He said, "Son you oughta' go into business with your dear old dad."
He thought when I'd become a preacher I had flipped my lid
But now I'm drawing twice the salary that he did
And I'm living up to all those high executive dreams he had.

Meanwhile, Pete points out a Chron article on the Southern Baptist church drawing criticism for its investments in a cruise operation that sponsors gay cruises:

The Baptist board owns about 26,200 shares of Carnival in its Equity Index Fund and 337,600 shares in its Value Index Fund as of Dec. 31, together valued at $14.5 million, according to the Associated Baptist Press, an independent Baptist news service. The board also has holdings in satellite and cable TV companies that provide on-demand or premium-priced pornographic programming.

According to the board's statement, its guidelines prohibit investments in any company publicly recognized "as being in the liquor, tobacco, gambling, pornography or abortion industries." Between 300 and 400 companies are on the board's restricted list, the statement said.

"However, we could go through every stock in the Fortune 500 and probably find some reason why we shouldn't invest in any of them," the statement said. "If the Southern Baptist Convention should choose to boycott Carnival as it did Disney, we would take appropriate action as we did with Disney."

More about Disney in a sec. Lately my church (Episcopalian) has been taking all of the beatings, and as such I'm a bit gun-shy on going after other denominations. However, it's my fervent belief that churches ought to avoid investments altogether except in cases where the money advances religious goals. I don't consider "financially bettering the church" or even "subsidizing the church retirement fund" to apply. Obviously church employees ought to be given some sort of retirement compensation, but that's what donations and congregational offerings are for. As Jim Morgan sings, churches very often do act too much like businesses.

I'm not positive what the Episcopal Church's practices are in that regard, but I would hold it to the same standard. Even if it doesn't invest in public stocks, I've seen individual churches go IBM first-hand. My church in Clear Lake had a pastor a decade or so back who came in with big ideas. He remade the church into a more "professional" organization, relieving many volunteers of their duties and replacing them with professionals. Newer and better things were always being built and the church, from what I understand, is still trying to dig itself out of the debt that he left it in when he went in to private practice. This isn't a denominational problem.

On the subject of DIsney, I remember a fiasco several years ago in Texas when it was revealed that the state (education fund, I think) was investing in the media giant. This caused problems, of course, because Disney has a number of pro-gay policies that don't gibe with much of the Texas electorate. Republicans wanted the stock investment pulled immediately. I recall liberals (including myself at the time) and moderates rolling their eyes at the notion that the government ought to invest based on the morals (or lack thereof) in a company's owner. "It's not the government's business," we proclaimed.

To underline my point, I came up with a company with policies and practices that liberals detest: Cigarette companies. When confronted with the idea that the state should invest in the lucrative tobacco companies, a number of liberals I know/knew either backed down from their original position or said "that's different." For my part, I was uncomfortable investing in a company whose products kill bodies, but if you believe that another product kills souls (which was truly where the difference in perspective lied, liberals including myself just preferred to sound unideological) the logic followed was very much the same: both sides were arguing that there ought to be a moral component in the decisions the government makes on where to invest.

I'm at odds with myself as to what the government should do, but when it comes to churches I feel no such conflict.

Once there was a man named Jesus. He was born from the Virgin Mary in a Bethlehem stable. He was the son of God. The only perfect man to ever walk the Earth. He preached the Word of God to anyone who would listen. His ideas were unpopular and so He was put to death under Pontius Pilate. He died for crimes against the state of Rome, but He really died for the sins of manking. Three days later, His tomb was empty.

Jesus died before we got to hear His thoughts on school vouchers, SUVs, and an activist judiciary. But we did get to hear His thoughts on taxes. Jesus didn't advocate tax evasion, much less an overthrowing of the Roman state: "Render unto Caeser what is Caeser's, render unto God what is God's."

The Roman state was, by most historical accounts, not a benign one. It was rife with blood and corrupt to the bone. Yet Jesus was largely uninterested in tackling the Roman state. Rome was made of people, and Jesus kept His focus there. He befriended a rag-tag group of sinners along the way and made them believers. How He was able to do that is open to speculation, but much of His success was probably due to credibility: He was sinless.

Jesus didn't look around Him and see that the world was unsalvageable. Nor did He say that people could only be changed by changing the world. Rather, He felt that change truly begins one person at a time. He talked the talk, walked the walk, and His message forever changed mankind.

Whether or not the world that I presently live in is unsalvageable is not something that I pretend to know. I do know that it is far beyond my power to change it. What I do have control over, however, is myself. To a lesser extent, I also have influence over those that I know.

I cannot look at the world around me and say that change isn't possible. I can advocate government policies that I favor and oppose those that I don't, but my vote is one of millions. In the lives of those around me, however, my voice is more significant. In addition to that, my actions speak louder than words.

If I accept the world for what it is and behave accordingly, I am supporting the status quo at every level. If I call a sinner a sinner and leave it at that, I haven't done very much to help lead them down the right path. If I call myself a sinner and leave it at that, I haven't done anything to change myself.

I want the world to be a better place. I want the lives of those I love to be better. If I assess that I can't change Rome, I can at least try to change Romans one at a time, starting with myself. Otherwise, I'm accepting that this is a sinner's world and relegating my soul to being no better. I am accepting my sin and embracing everything that is wrong with me.

Jesus didn't fix everything that was wrong with the world. If He can't, I certainly can't either. He lead a sinless life and unfortunately I am as incapable of that as anyone else that isn't the Son of God. But He did what He could to change hearts and lives, and that's one lead I can follow.