text:
'Is there gas in the car?
Yes, there's gas in the car'
Really author, Steely Dan, after showing us your punk/post-punk credentials this is where you take us. Yes, dear reader, yes. As George Michael told us we have to Listen Without Prejudice (thank you George). Although it has the world's worst cover art, the music is sublime. Anyone who enjoys musicianship at its best will not be disappointed by Becker and Fagan's work ethic of threatening to whip session guitarists if they didn't get it right. This adherence to 19th century style labour brought out the best in these musicians. The thing about Steely Dan, you can get a sneak listen in in public and people who don't know who they are, don't get offended. However, in my experience, metal heads and punks have a profound dislike of them.
Two tracks to listen to – Don't Take Me Alive with a fantastic guitar solo by Larry Carlton and the title track which shuffles and grooves along with 6 minutes of wonderfulness (wonderfulness is used here with the kind permission of Stephen Fry 2002).


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Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF
Statement by Mr Guy Ryder, ILO Director-General, to the International Monetary and Financial Committee
- There are clear warning signs that economic growth and labour market outcomes are out of sync: as global economic growth reaches almost 4 per cent, the highest since 2011, growth in employment continues to slow. In addition, global real wage growth is falling behind economic growth with a growth rate of only 1.6 per cent in 2017, the lowest since 2008.
- The global unemployment rate is projected to fall marginally during 2018, but remains high – more than 5 per cent – and this is expected to remain stable until 2020 unless governments take additional measures to support employment and enterprise creation.
- More than three in five workers in the world – 61.2 per cent or two billion people – make their living in the informal economy. In 2017, extreme working poverty remained widespread, with more than 300 million workers in emerging and developing countries having a per capita household income or consumption of less than $1.90 per day.
- Widening income inequality and an increasing sense that the rules of the game are unfair threaten multilateralism. Concrete policy changes to boost incomes of the low paid, improve their labour and social protection and promote collective bargaining are among the antidotes to the rise in populism that we are witnessing.
- We need more and better social protection. Fifty five per cent of the global population – 4 billion people – are not covered by any social protection benefit. Social protection systems, including public social insurance, need to be strengthened so that all workers benefit from adequate levels of protection across all forms of employment.
- Trade agreements have the potential to raise growth, employment, inclusion and security. This would be enhanced in many cases through improved implementation mechanisms for their social and labour provisions.
- The future of work must be more equal. Women still account for less than two fifths of the global workforce – the lowest share is in emerging countries, at 37 per cent. Women also occupy the lower echelons of the occupational ladder and earn, on average, about 20 per cent less than men globally.
- Demographic trends shape the future of work. With more than 64 million unemployed youth worldwide and 145 million young workers living in poverty, youth employment remains a global challenge and a top policy concern. At the same time, the average age of people participating in the labour market will slowly rise, especially in Asia and the Pacific where it will rise from 40.3 in 2017 to 42.3 in 2030.
- Staying within the Paris Agreement's 2°C limit can create 18 million more jobs in net terms, a tremendous opportunity in a context of slow employment growth. Embracing the circular economy has the potential to create an additional 6 million jobs worldwide.
- The future of work must not leave anyone behind. However, current trends show that although the economy is growing, we are making scant progress on creating decent employment, increasing social protection coverage, closing gender gaps, transitioning to the formal economy and decreasing working poverty. Seizing the opportunities opened by the 4th industrial revolution, the care economy and the transition to a low carbon planet can boost decent employment creation if the right policies are in place to ensure fair transitions for all.
Warning signs show employment and wage growth are falling behind economic growth
- Global economic growth in 2018 is expected to be relatively even across regions of the world, reaching a total of almost 4 per cent, the highest since 2011. However, there are warning signs that growth is becoming disconnected from labour market outcomes. Global employment growth continues to slow. After expanding by an average 1.2 per cent per year during 2013-18, it is projected to grow by less than 1 per cent in 2019 and to slow further in 2020; the global employment to population ratio is expected to fall for the 12th consecutive year (down to 58.3 per cent in 2019). The disconnect is especially apparent in developed countries where employment growth is projected to shrink from 0.7 in 2018 to 0.3 per cent in 2019; 2019 estimates for emerging and developing countries suggest employment growth of 0.8 and 3.2 per cent, respectively.
- The global unemployment rate is projected to fall marginally during 2018, but remains high – more than 5 per cent in developed, developing and emerging country regions - and this is expected to remain stable until 2020 assuming no change in the current policy institutions. Because economic growth is not feeding through to employment growth, the number of people in unemployment is nevertheless projected to rise, continuing past years' trend. 188 million people were unemployed in 2018 and this rises to 189 million in 2019. Alarmingly, developing and emerging countries are estimated to account for three fifths and two fifths, respectively, of the anticipated rise in unemployment for 2019.
- With a growth rate of only 1.6 per cent in 2017, global real wage growth reached its lowest since 2008 and remains far below pre-crisis global estimates. This slowdown occurred in spite of more rapid economic growth in 2017. In advanced countries, the increase in inflation rates from less than 1 percent in 2015 and 2016 to 1.7 per cent in 2017, combined with relatively stable nominal wage growth, eroded real wage growth. In emerging market and developing economies, inflation rates increased in 2017 for the first time since 2011 and may have contributed to erode the real value of relatively stable nominal wage growth.
Pervasive informality requires a range of solutions, including stronger regulations
- More than three in five workers in the world – 61.2 per cent or two billion people – make their living in the informal economy (2016 estimates). This is perhaps the largest obstacle to global efforts to achieve a future of decent work for everyone and underpins the international determination to support transitions into formal employment. The problem is endemic in Africa where 86 per cent of employment is informal, as well as in Asia and the Pacific (71 per cent) and the Arab States (69 per cent).
- The informal economy is heterogeneous - composed of employees, own-account workers and contributing family workers across a variety of sectors - which makes efforts to formalise employment a complex task. Furthermore, significant levels of informal working relationships are observed in the formal sector where the enterprise is properly registered but many jobs are not; the rise of digital economy firms presents the latest challenge in this respect.
- Fostering transitions to the formal economy must remain a priority. Current patterns of growth do not create sufficient formal jobs to absorb all those who want to work (either new entrants or those trapped in the informal economy). Structural transformations that reduce the number of informal non-wage workers and increase formal wage work, and lead to the up-scaling and increased productivity of economic units are crucial for the transition.
- Other drivers of informality, such as an inadequate regulatory framework, weak enforcement, a lack of transparency and accountability of public institutions, and narrow social security coverage must also be addressed. Policy interventions to promote effective labour market regulations that widen coverage of labour regulations, support transitions, and improve compliance with statutory and collectively bargained-rules are particularly important.
The proportion of people living in extreme poverty remains at unacceptable levels
- Although the number of people living in extreme poverty around the world continues to decline, recent estimates suggest progress on this front has slowed in recent years. Moreover the proportion of people living in extreme poverty in low income countries remains at unacceptable levels with over 40 % of the population of sub-Saharan Africa still below the international poverty line. Recent trends raise concerns about our ability to achieve the goal of ending poverty by 2030.
- Similarly, the global labour market has witnessed only weak progress in reducing working poverty. In 2017, extreme working poverty remained widespread, with more than 300 million workers in emerging and developing countries having a per capita household income or consumption of less than $1.90 (PPP) per day.
- Implementing the SDGs is increasingly an uphill struggle, given the need for additional social spending in low-income countries at a time when many of them are facing difficulties meeting their existing international debt obligations. Nevertheless, supporting the SDGs in low-income countries must remain a very high global priority, and effective safeguards for social spending are a precondition to achieve those goals.
We need more and better social protection
- ILO data shows that 55 per cent of the global population is not covered by any social protection benefit (SDG indicator 1.3.1). Four billion people worldwide are left unprotected, ranging from 87 per cent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa to 6 per cent in Europe and Central Asia. In many cases, even if people receive some benefits, these are not adequate to fully meet their needs.
- The ILO and the World Bank share the principle of universalism to progressively cover more people, especially in the informal economy, and have made a joint high-level commitment to achieve it through the World Bank Group and ILO Universal Social Protection Initiative. Accelerating progress towards universal social protection is a key element of national strategies to promote human development, political stability and inclusive growth. The global commitment for universal social protection, as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals and 2030 Agenda, has never been stronger. And yet, there are important challenges that need to be addressed to secure the progress already achieved.
- Short-term fiscal adjustments are affecting social protection spending, often undermining long-term development efforts. High-income countries have reduced a range of social protection benefits, contributing to increasing poverty and a declining labour income share. Fiscal consolidation is also occurring in a majority of developing countries; many governments are considering cuts or caps to the wage bill and reforming health and social protection systems without sufficient attention to their social impacts, such as targeting expenditures to the poor instead of expanding social protection coverage to include the middle class.
- Social protection is not only for the poor, but for all. Everyone needs to be protected throughout the life cycle (e.g. in case of maternity, sickness, unemployment or in old age). Countries normally achieve universal coverage by a combination of public social insurance (paid from payroll contributions) and social assistance (paid from the national budget). Public social insurance needs to be strengthened, not weakened and downsized. Pension reforms led by a fiscal objective often erode pensioners' benefits and retirement conditions while the primary objective is to provide income security for older persons; it is essential to maintain an optimal balance between pension adequacy and financial sustainability. Other reforms such as pension privatization, supporting mandatory savings, have not delivered the expected results: benefits decreased, coverage stagnated, gender inequalities compounded, systemic risks were transferred to individuals and fiscal positions worsened significantly given the high cost of transition. As a result, the majority of countries that have embarked on pension privatization are reversing these reforms and are returning to public social insurance systems.
- The ILO is also concerned at recent proposals to cut employers' social insurance contributions or introduce low ceilings for insurable earnings, as this would severely undermine public social security systems, further increasing inequality. The shared responsibility for the payment of social insurance contributions between employers and workers is a prerequisite for ensuring the financial sustainability and equity of social protection systems. Relying on individual savings does not deliver meaningful protection, as it benefits only those with the highest incomes and lowest risks. Private saving schemes should remain a voluntary option to supplement stable, equitable and adequate mandatory social insurance benefits.
- Countries are fast-tracking the extension of social protection and adapting to new forms of work, including in the digital economy, and facilitating the transition from the informal to the formal economy. Together with effective labour and employment regulations, well-designed social protection systems that combine adapted social insurance and tax-financed social assistance benefits ensure adequate social protection across all forms of employment. Many countries at all levels of development are adapting their social protection systems in line with international labour standards and principles, to face current and future challenges and support inclusive growth in a sustainable and equitable way.
International trade and multilateralism are under attack
- Concerns about international trade have dominated global economic and political news for the last year. Recent protectionist measures and the continued threat of more draconian policies is a major cause of global economic uncertainty. This is inhibiting investment, economic growth and the stronger labour markets in many emerging and developing economies.
- Ensuring that the benefits of international trade, and globalisation more generally, are distributed more fairly is key to restoring faith in open economies. Stronger labour market institutions, including minimum wages, collective bargaining and freedom of association are the right answers to political populists who are successfully exploiting the prolonged and significant rise in income inequality to undermine open economies and open borders. Throughout its history, the ILO has strongly supported both free and fair trade. The body of International Labour Standards that have resulted from negotiations over many decades between employers, worker representatives and governments from all corners of the world continue to provide a basis to ensure that one of the key sources of unfair international trade – exploiting labour – is minimised.
- This has led in recent years to a heightened interest in referring to international labour standards in bilateral and regional trade agreements. However, many of these clauses remain relatively weak and imperfectly implemented. Strengthening these provisions through stronger implementation mechanisms as well as greater involvement of the social partners in their negotiation and functioning, makes sound economic, social and political sense at this time when public faith in globalisation is extremely low and key governments are questioning the value of international trade rules and processes.
Patterns of gender inequalities and ageing are shaping the future of work
- Gender equality in employment growth is expected to reverse in 2018. While male and female employment growth grew at the same pace over the last five years, women's employment is projected to grow by 0.9 per cent in 2018 compared to 1.2 for men. This will exacerbate the already wide gender employment gap: women still account for less than two fifths of the global workforce, with the lowest share in emerging countries, at 37 per cent.
- Not only is women's representation in labour markets lower than their relative weight in the national population, but they also occupy the lower echelons of the occupational ladder and earn, on average, less than men. Using data for more than 70 countries – which represent about 85 per cent of the world's wage employees, ILO research shows that on average women continue to be paid about 20 per cent less than men across the world, with large variations across countries.
- Gender inequalities intersect with age inequalities. As the share of older people (55+) in the labour force increases globally, older women (55+) remain considerably less likely to participate than men: estimated participation rates for 2018 are approximately 30 and 53 per cent, respectively, a gap of more than 23 points. Gender employment gaps for older workers are largest in Southern Asia (43 points) and Northern Africa (36 points). Nevertheless, at a global level, older women's participation rate has increased four times faster than men's since 2000.
- Overall, because of a slowdown in world population growth, the average age of people participating in the labour market will slowly rise, especially in Asia and the Pacific (from 40.3 in 2017 to 42.3 in 2030). The lowest participation rates among older workers are in Europe and Central Asia and Northern Africa (both at 28 per cent in 2018). Because of the greater need to work to sustain basic living standards, the highest rate of older workers' participation is in Sub-Saharan Africa at nearly two thirds, 63 per cent.
A high road to care work and care jobs offers opportunities for the future of work
- The care economy is at the centre of these demographic patterns and employment inequalities. Gender inequalities in employment participation are in part the result of household inequalities which are inextricably linked with the unequal division of paid and unpaid labour involving care work. In 2015, 2.1 billion people were in need of care. By 2030, this number is predicted to increase by 200 million, including 100 million older persons. An additional 269 million care jobs need to be created by 2030 to meet future care demands.
- The ILO has called for a "high road" for care work to ensure that the growth of care services contributes to more decent work for women and men. This involves new policies, including formal skill certification and better remuneration for care work, as well as improved family support policies to address the unequal gender division of unpaid care work in the household. If investment in care service provision does not increase by at least 6 percentage points of GDP by 2030 from the current 8.7 per cent (as of 2015), deficits in coverage will increase and the working conditions of care workers will deteriorate.
New technologies present potential for youth employment
- With more than 64 million unemployed youth worldwide and 145 million young workers living in poverty, youth employment remains a global challenge and a top policy concern. More than 1 in 5 young persons are not in employment, education or training (NEET). Three out of four of these are women. More young women and men are in education, but are still facing a difficult labour market transition.
- New automation and digital technologies pose challenges but also bring opportunities for younger workers. Demand will increase for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, as well as transversal skills, and decrease for some medium-level skills. Young workers who grew up as "digital natives" should be well-placed to adapt to new jobs and continuous change. The way in which young workers engage in the labour market is also changing, with a clear move towards less secure forms of work. While young women and men are ready to ride the wave of new technologies, they value stability and security in their working lives 1. Realizing potential opportunities for youth in a technology-rich labour market requires clear strategies and policies to ensure a better future for youth.
- The most important policy is to reinvest in and reprioritize education efforts for more people. There is an urgent need to expand public funding to education and technical and vocational education and training, including to cover the adult workforce and to incentivize employers to co-fund skilling, up-skilling and re-skilling. Digital technologies "should be used with a view to supporting learning and improving quality, and should not create further inequities in education" 2.
We must aim to green with jobs for a sustainable future
- The future of work could be green. Achieving the Paris Agreement's 2°C goal can create 18 million more jobs, a tremendous gain in a context of slow employment growth. Embracing the circular economy which encourages goods to be recycled, reused, remanufactured and repaired and moves away from an extract-produce-use-discard economy has the potential to create an additional 6 million jobs.
- The right policies must be in place to enable this transition and leave no one behind. The overall positive net gain in employment will include significant shifts within and between sectors. While 24 million jobs will be created 6 million will be lost, meriting complementary policies to protect workers and ensure a just transition. As with any other transition, governments and social partners need to anticipate the changes timely. The ILO guidelines for a just transition towards environmentally sustainable economies and societies for all provide practical orientation to Governments and social partners.
- Social dialogue is an important tool in the transition. Tripartite discussions on skills for the green jobs for example can facilitate a smooth transition for workers and enterprises. Employers' associations play a pivotal role in improving the matching of skills demand and supply. The participation of workers' organizations can help ensure that equity considerations are taken into account, including facilitating the access of all to training.
Action is urgently required to decrease inequalities
- It is widely recognized that the multilateral system, which has helped provide relative political stability and increased economic prosperity for the last seventy years, is under threat from various directions. The United-Nations Secretary General noted in a recent interview concerning multilateralism that the world is "in pieces" and we are witnessing a "re-emergence of irrationality". At the same time, we must acknowledge that inequality is growing within advanced economies, and many individuals and communities have not benefited from economic growth.
- Yet, insufficient action has been taken to bring about a significant shift in the distribution of incomes. Concrete policy changes to boost incomes of the low paid, improve their labour and social protection and strengthen collective bargaining to enable workers to negotiate for higher wages are among the antidotes to the rise in populism that we are witnessing.
1 ILO. 2017. Global Employment Trends for Youth. International Labour Office – Geneva. See pp 71-72 (results from the ILO's Youth and Future of Work Survey).
2 Declaration by the 13th session of the Joint ILO-UNESCO Committee of Experts on the Application of the Recommendations concerning Teaching Personnel. Education is not a commodity: Teachers, the right to education and the future of work. Adopted in Geneva on October 5, 2018.

subset: commoncrawl


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Why do working class voters persist in voting against their class interests?
Taking as a starting point the idea that social classes exist "objectively" - that is, as Marx asserted, that a number of individuals occupy a similar position vis à vis others in the capitalist system and that these groups have fundamentally opposing interests in the distribution of the fruits of labour - a fundamental problem for Marxists has been to explain why individuals do not necessarily act on the basis of this common class position. Marx suggested himself that the "superstructure" of society - the ideological, religious, political, and cultural forms of consciousness through which men and women experience life under capitalism can potentially mask true economic interests. For Marx, however, class consciousness matters little in the long run: the capitalist system being inherently contradictory and crisis-prone, the only possible outcome is that individuals will discover their own position within the system and adopt political positions consistent with their social class. As the history of capitalism has, so far, not played out according to Marx's predictions, other Marxist authors have proposed alternative explanations.
Some, like Antonio Gramsci have placed more emphasis on the role of ideology in preventing the working class from acting in accordance with its interests. The Italian thinker and politician proposed that the ideological foundations of capitalist society lied in the specific actions of the ruling class (capitalists and their allies), who develop and impose a system of ideas to justify their rule. Part of the class struggle thus has to do with the battle to develop a genuinely working-class culture and politics, as economic forces alone cannot guarantee that the proletariat will take political actions consistent with its own interest. Lenin, in What is to be done? held a slightly different view: workers can defend their own interests by forming unions or other class-based organizations, but these initiatives only have the limited aim of improving immediate conditions or defending the position of certain segments in the working class and do not naturally lead to political revolution. For Lenin, the revolution could only be brought about by a dedicated group of intellectuals and politicians, a "vanguard" of the working class to coax its members into action.
In more practical terms, the UK serves as an interesting example of changes in the way the working class has voted during the 20th century. The rise of the Labour Party before 1945 appears to follow the path predicted by Lenin and Marx, albeit in a non-revolutionary manner. While the Labour Party only received a fraction of the votes (1.3%) in the 1900 general election, this figure rose to 37.1% in 1929, ushering in the first British Labour Prime Minister. In 1945, support for Labour reached its peak, with 47.7% of the electorate voting for Clement Atlee's first post-war government. Since then, Labour has remained the largest or second-largest political group in the House of Commons, but the party has itself moved away from its working class roots. For example, between 1969 and 1987, support for Labour amongst manual workers declined from 69% to 45%. What explains this change? An early diagnosis was the "embourgeoisement thesis", which suggested that as the working class becomes wealthier, its members increasingly identify as middle class. There is at, best mixed evidence for this view. Another possibility is that Labour is no longer the party of the working class nor is it on the Left. In contrast, other authors have argued that Labour has remained on the left but the views of the working class on morality no longer properly align with modern social-democratic politics - the latter explanation being consistent with most of the anti-immigrant, pro-Brexit positions. Indeed, there is evidence that the proportion of individuals who identify as working class has remained stable since the 1980s in the UK. Finally, sociologists might also suggest that the working class itself has vastly changed in scope and nature, with most jobs now being concentrated in the service sector, where class consciousness is less likely to emerge due to "individualized career paths" and where it is more difficult to form trade unions.
I want to conclude by approaching critically the question of class interest. As the Marxist sociologist Eric Olin Wright has argued, class conflict not only takes place over efforts to change the entire game (ie. capitalism vs communism), but can also be about changing the rules of the game, or making moves within the game. Individual workers might thus believe they are better off under a capitalist system or a conservative government if they perceive social mobility to be high, and members of a trade union may benefit from their bargaining position in the labour market and wish to protect their arrangements at the detriment of the working class at large. Identifying class interests is thus not a clear-cut procedure; unless one is able to demonstrate clearly how the working class is better off under a specific political system or set of policies. Finally, it may simply be that individuals, or even members of the working class, do not always define themselves primarily in terms of class. For Anthony Giddens, there are competing sources of identity formation or "structuration" in Western societies, which lead individuals to often vote on the basis of their gender, their race, their nation or their family ties, sometimes entirely against their own class interests. The decline of social ties formed on the shop floor and rise in friendships based on common interests through social media are examples of changes in the process of "structuration".


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(Note: hover over the green, underlined words for their definitions.)
I was listening to NPR the other day interviewing Trump supporters asking them why they support Trump. Several of the interviewees mentioned a time in the past like in the late fifties when we had "Ozzie and Harriet" and "Leave It to Beaver" …
Life was ordered, homogeneous, and harmonious because everyone was wanting the same thing for the same reasons based on the same belief system and the same worldview. So many Conservatives want a "return to a nation of judeo-christian values."
I can understand that. When everyone believes the same thing the same way and they want all the same things, there's no friction.
Well, there was, and is, friction. But any dissent is considered evil or rooted in psychological dysfunction or Satan, and treason or unpatriotic, and thus easily ostracized.
"Judeo-christian values" was the ingredient, or agent, of homogenization. It was the common frame of reference to judge who was in and who was out. Who was a saint and who was a deviant. It was only a mechanism.
Still, I get it — I get how agreement can result in unity. What I don't get is the reference to judeo-christian values. Just because so many shared them, does not mean that was the source of Harmony.
Harmony at the expense of individual beliefs and Liberty is not stability. It is forced calm. It is a mechanical delusion, wherein as long as the machine is operating smoothly, we believe everything is fine.
I think we do need to find another unifying agent, something to aspire to beyond being "the devil you know." I don't think that judeo-christian values is something we should return to, if in fact they had ever been in reality a source of love, goodness, and righteousness. They don't get us more than the illusion of unity.
We were certainly not a nation of love and tolerance. Belief in Christ was used more as a weapon rather than a light. Fear, control, bearing false witness, and ostracism were the tools of choice. "Values" were based in judgment, fear of punishment or reprisal, rejection, separation, and privation. Homogenized "christian" society demanded mindless or uncritical obedience.
And everything was white. On the NPR program, they interviewed 60-something Black folk who only ever saw the nuclear white family. They actually marveled and hollered, "Look, there's a negro on TV" when a "colored person" was featured. Mixed couples were ostracized and harassed. Women had their place, and it wasn't in the boardroom.
Even depictions of Christ were/are white and very European-looking.
People who are calling for the return of Christian "values" über alles are pining for homogenization … forcing everyone to think the way they think and believe what they believe using the lowest bar available that they can immediately identify with. They're tired of "political correctness," an evil that forces mindless consideration for the feelings of people different from you. So much effort, and so much exposure of one's bigotry.
I don't think that unity of thinking and worldview is a bad thing. But forcing me to believe in your warped version of Christ is never going to happen. Your Christianity is nothing that I want to aspire to.
There has to be a better way than your "Way," which allowed for Christian-justified segregation, slavery, lynching, lobotomies, and so forth. All human evils polished with "it's God's will."
…I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.
And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme — whose highest claim is to reasonable prudence — the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication.
~C.S. Lewis
As for religious rule, I'll take my chances with Christ's return to establish his kingdom before I accept the perversion of Grace offered by Christians in their supreme arrogance in thinking they can institutionalize righteousness and, most perversely of all, in their own corrupt image.
Filed under: Politicality, Religiosity | Tagged: religion | Leave a comment »


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Moving On
"Pupils have excellent standards of personal development by the time they leave the School. They are confident, self-aware and emotionally mature for their age."
– ISI Report 2016
With a 100% pass rate for senior school entry in Year 8, about 70% of our boys move on to 13+ London day schools; the remainder transferring to boarding schools. King's House School is justifiably proud of its success in recent years in getting its boys in to some of the most academic schools in the country.
The emphasis is always on finding the right school for the right child and advice is given throughout a child's time at King's House School.
About a third of our Year 8 boys are prepared for academic scholarship entry examinations or for music, sport, art or drama awards.
Every other year we host a senior school fair for parents where up to twenty five senior schools are represented and parents of younger boys can gather information and meet ex King's House students.


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Irreligion in the United States
|Total population
|Population in the United States:
Not religious (not spiritual): 18%[1]
Not religious (spiritual): 27%[1]
Unaffiliated: 26%[2]
Pew Research Center, 2017-2019
|Regions with significant populations
|Nationwide, though more common in New England, and the Western United States.
(including atheism, agnosticism, deism, skepticism, freethought/freethinker, secular humanism, ignosticism, apatheism, Nonbeliever, nontheism, rationalism)
Surveys show that Americans without a religious affiliation (which include 'nothing particular', agnostic, and atheist), sometimes referred to as "Nones" range around 23.8%,[3] 26%,[2] 24.8%,[4] 33%,[5] 21%,[6][7] and 31.4%[8] of the population, with 'nothing in particulars' making up the majority of this demographic. Since the early 1990s, independent polls have shown the rapid growth of those without a religious affiliation.[9][10][11]
Identifying as religious and/or spiritual vary widely across surveys depending on the wording they use. Among longitudinal academic surveys such as the General Social Survey which allows for degrees of religious identification: 21.5% are not religious, 25.1% were slightly religious, 37.5% were moderately religious, and 15.5% were very religious in 2018.[12] According to a 2017 Pew report which asked about religious and spiritual identification: 54% of Americans consider themselves religious, 75% consider themselves spiritual. In combination, 27% are spiritual but not religious and another 18% are neither spiritual nor religious. Those who do not consider themselves as 'religious' may often consider themselves "affiliated" with a major religion and/or "spiritual".[1] According to Pew in 2017, 72% of the "Nones" believe in God, a higher power, or spiritual force.[13]
Self-identification among the Nones is also diverse. For instance, according to Pew study in 2009, only 5% of the total US population did not have a belief in a god. Out of all those without a belief in a god, only 24% self-identified as "atheist", while 15% self-identified as "agnostic", 35% self-identified as "nothing in particular", and 24% identified with a religious tradition.[14] According to the Pew Research Center in 2014, self-identified atheists were 3.1% and agnostics were 4%,[11] and by 2019, self identified atheists were 4% and agnostics were 5%.[2] According to the 2014 General Social Survey, 3% identified as atheists and 5% identified as agnostics.[15]
Various explanations have been proposed for the changing demographics such as reduction of negative stigmas on labels allowing more Americans to identify with other options than just religion,[16] general and broader cultural changes in American life impacting all things including religious identity and behavior,[17] political backlash against religion in politics,[18] delays in marriage and having children among younger generations delaying participation rates in religious activities, and general increases in distrust among younger generations on all institutions including religion, marriage, politics and the media.[19] According to the Pew Research Center, only 49% of young adults consider themselves Christian, and they are replacing the older generations.[2][20] The Nones tend to be more politically liberal and their growth has resulted in some increases in membership of secular organizations. However, the overwhelming majority of those without religion are not joining secular groups or even aligning with secularism.[21]
Diversity in measures on religiosity
Religiosity is difficult to define, but different scholars have seen this concept as broadly about religious orientations and involvement. It includes experiential, ritualistic, ideological, intellectual, consequential, creedal, communal, doctrinal, moral, and cultural dimensions.[22] Historically, the words religious and spiritual have been used synonymously to describe all the various aspects of the concept of religion.[23] Furthermore, spirituality was not distinguished from religiousness until the 20th century after the rise of secularism.[24]
Sociologists of religion have observed that the people's beliefs, sense of belonging, and behavior often are not congruent with an individual's actual religious beliefs since there is much diversity in how one can be religious or not.[25] Multiple problems exist in measuring religiosity. For instance, variables such as church attendance produce different results when different methods are used such as traditional surveys vs time use surveys.[26] There are extensive variations in the measures of subdimensions of both religiosity and spirituality and single-item measure like affiliation or participation have limitations with regard to both religiosity and spirituality.[27]
In a study on how individual people actually define and understand "religiousness" and "spirituality" showed that people differ and have wide-ranging understandings of these terms from referring to rituals to altruistic behaviors or to religious experiences. Although religiousness and spirituality appeared to describe different concepts, they were not independent or mutually exclusive since self-rated religiousness and spirituality were correlated among the subjects including in variables such as frequency of prayer, church attendance, beliefs of the sacred.[24] The authors observe that the inconsistency of the definitions of both "religiousness" and "spirituality" cause multiple issues such as it being difficult to know what the researchers and the participants mean or understand by these terms and as such it becomes difficult to draw general conclusions from various studies and surveys that use such terminology.[24]
Though god-belief is often seen as an indicator of religion in the West, anthropologically, god belief is only one kind of component of religion but not a universal and not even the most common one for religions since most religions around the world do not have god concepts at all.[28] Accordingly, "atheism is quite a common position, even within religion" and that "surprisingly, atheism is not the opposite or lack, let alone the enemy, of religion but is the most common form of religion."[28] With regards to secularity, he observes that religions are quite secular in general and include many mundane activities by default such as games like bingo, pot luck dinners etc.[28]
According to a review of secularity from Peter Glasner's study on secularization processes, Jack Eller observes that secularization is very diverse and only one type of secularity out of 10 leads to pure secularism.[28]
Studies on irreligion
A comprehensive study by David Campbell and Harvard University professor Robert Putnam found that religious Americans are three to four times more likely than their nonreligious counterparts to "work on community projects, belong to voluntary associations, attend public meetings, vote in local elections, attend protest demonstrations and political rallies, and donate time and money to causes – including secular ones." However, religious Americans who regularly attend religious services but have no friends there do not have higher levels of civic participation, while nonreligious Americans who have religious friends do get more involved. "It's not faith" that accounts for civic activism, Putnam said, "It's faith communities." The authors said the same effect might be found in secular organizations that are close-knit with shared morals and values.[29][30] The study also found that religious Americans are less tolerant than secular Americans of free speech, dissent, and several other measures of tolerance.[30]
Alan Cooperman of Pew Research Center notes that nonreligious Americans commonly grew up in a religious tradition and consciously lost it "after a great deal of reflection and study".[31] As a result, atheists and agnostics are more knowledgeable about religion than those who identify with most major religions, according to a 2010 Pew survey.[32][33]
The American public at large has a positive view of nonreligious people but a negative view of atheists. One "extensive study of how Americans view various minority groups" found that "atheists are at the top of the list of groups that Americans find problematic."[34] A Religion and Public Life Survey (2002) found that 54 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of atheists,[35] but the favorability of people who are "not religious" is 52.2%, with a net difference of 23.8%.[36]
Inaccuracy of polling and identification
The reliability of any poll results, in general and specifically on religion, can be questioned due numerous factors such as:[37]
- there have been very low response rates for polls since the 1990s
- polls consistently fail to predict government election outcomes, which signifies that polls in general do not capture the actual views of the population
- biases in wording or topic affect how people respond to polls
- polls categorize people based on limited choices
- polls often generalize broadly
- polls have shallow or superficial choices, which complicate expressing their complex religious beliefs and practices
- interviewer and respondent fatigue is very common
The measurement of religiosity is hampered by the difficulties involved in defining what is meant by the term and the variables it entails. Numerous studies have explored the different components of religiosity, with most finding some distinction between religious beliefs/doctrine, religious practice, and spirituality. When religiosity is measured, it is important to specify which aspects of religiosity are referred to.[22]
The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) found a difference between how people identify and what people believe. While only 0.7% of U.S. adults identified as atheist, 2.3% said there is no such thing as a god. Only 0.9% identified as agnostic, but 10.0% said there is either no way to know if a god exists or they weren't sure. Another 12.1% said there is a higher power but no personal god. In total, only 15.0% identified as Nones or No Religion, but 24.4% did not believe in the traditional concept of a personal god. The conductors of the study concluded, "The historic reluctance of Americans to self-identify in this manner or use these terms seems to have diminished. Nevertheless ... the level of under-reporting of these theological labels is still significant ... many millions do not subscribe fully to the theology of the groups with which they identify."[9]
Similarly, the 2012 Pew study reported that 23% of Americans who affiliated with a religion were not religious. The religiously affiliated were 79% of the population, and the unaffiliated were 19.6%, including 6% "atheist" or "agnostic".[38][39]
Existing nationally representative polls such as Pew and Gallup indicate atheist prevalence is relatively low (3% -11%) in the United States, however, in one study using validated unmatched counting interviewing technique, in which people did not need to "admit" explicitly to a certain position, the number of people who did not believe in a god was indirectly estimated to be 26% overall. The authors noted that 26% of Baby boomers and millennials did not have belief in a god.[40]
According to a Pew study in 2009, only 5% of the total US population did not have a belief in a god. Out of all those without a belief in a god, only 24% self-identified as "atheist", while 15% self-identified as "agnostic", 35% self-identified as "nothing in particular", and 24% identified with a religious tradition.[14]
According to a Gallup's editor in chief, Frank Newport, numbers on surveys may not be the whole story. In his view, declines in religious affiliation or declines in belief in God on surveys may not actually reflect an actual decline in these beliefs among people since increased honesty on spiritual matters to interviewers may merely be increasing since people may feel more comfortable today expressing viewpoints that were previously deviant.[41]
A 2007 Barna group poll found that about 20 million people say they are atheist, have no religious faith, or are agnostic, with 5 million of that number claiming to be atheists. The study also found that "[t]hey tend to be more educated, more affluent and more likely to be male and unmarried than those with active faith" and that "only 6 percent of people over 60 have no faith in God, and one in four adults ages 18 to 22 describe themselves as having no faith."[42]
A 2008 Gallup survey reported that religion is not an important part of daily life for 34% of Americans.[43] In May of that year, a Gallup poll asking the question "Which of the following statements comes closest to your belief about God: you believe in God, you don't believe in God but you do believe in a universal spirit or higher power, or you don't believe in either?" showed that, nationally, 78% believed in God, 15% in "a universal spirit or higher power", 6% answering "neither", and 1% unsure. The poll also highlighted the regional differences, with residents in the Western states answering 59%, 29%, and 10% respectively, compared to the residents in the Southern states that answered 86%, 10%, and 3%.[44] Several of the western states have been informally nicknamed Unchurched Belt, contrasting with the Bible Belt in the southern states.
A 2012 study by the Pew Research Center reported that, of the U.S. adult population, 19.6% had no religious affiliation and an additional 16% identified as "neither spiritual nor religious".[45][39] Furthermore, atheists made up 2.4% and agnostics made up 3.3% of the US population. It also notes that a third of adults under the age of 30 are religiously unaffiliated. However, out of the religiously unaffiliated demographic: the majority describe themselves either as a religious (18%) or as spiritual but not religious (37%) while a significant minority (42%) considers themselves neither spiritual nor religious. Additionally, out of the unaffiliated: 68% believe in God, 12% are atheists, 17% are agnostics and overall 21% of the religiously unaffiliated pray every day.[10]
The Pew Religious Landscape survey reported that as of 2014, 22.8% of the U.S. population is religiously unaffiliated, atheists made up 3.1% and agnostics made up 4% of the U.S. population.[11] The 2014 General Social Survey reported that 21% of Americans had no religion with 3% being atheist and 5% being agnostic.[15]
Religion is highly variable between people, and it touches not only their intellectual position, but also their internal and external identity. Any assessment will be impacted by a large number of factors. One common way of assessing people's religiousness, spirituality, and affiliations is asking them to directly self-identify in interviews and polls.
Self reports
According to General Social Survey data, which allowed for degrees of religiosity to be expressed, 21.5% of Americans consider themselves not religious, 25.1% were slightly religious, 37.5% were moderately religious, and 15.5% were very religious in 2018. Irreligiousness is highest among young healthy unmarried educated white males.[12] Overall, approximately 80% of Americans described themselves as both religious and spiritual to varying degrees.[46]
According to the 2015–2019 wave of the World Values Survey, 58.0% of Americans considered themselves as a religious person, 33.3% were not a religious person, and 7.9% were atheist. In the 2010–2014 wave of the World Values Survey, 67.9% of Americans considered themselves as a religious person, 27.7% were not a religious person, and 4.5% were a convinced atheist. In the 2005–2009 wave: 72.1% of Americans considered themselves as a religious person, 24.4% were not a religious person, and 3.5% were a convinced atheist.[47]
According to Pew's study on religious and spiritual identity, the number of Americans who consider themselves religious (irrespective of whether they are affiliated or spiritual, or believe in one or more Gods or a higher power) had dropped from 65% in 2012 to 54% in 2017. 27% were spiritual but not religious and another 18% were neither.[1]
According to the Win-Gallup International polls, those who self-identified as religious person were at 73% in 2005, 60% in 2012 and 56% in 2015 and in 2017.[48][49][50][51] In the 2012 poll, 30% were not a religious person and an additional 5% identified as an atheist.[52] In the 2017 poll, 32% were not a religious person and an additional 7% identified as atheist.[53] However, researchers have advised caution with WIN/Gallup International figures since other surveys like the World Values Survey, which have used the same wording for decades and have bigger sample sizes, show differences in results at the global level for similar time periods.[54]
It is worth noting that about half of "not religious" people do actually identify/affiliate themselves with established religious groups and most believe in God.[1][55]
|Win/Gallup Int
Polling organizations
Polling organizations sometimes generate their own abstract versions of what "religious" and "nonreligious" is using variable and inconsistent criteria. According to a 2017 report by Gallup, church attendance and the importance of religion American's lives were interpreted as measure of religiosity. Based on this, Gallup classified Americans as 37% highly religious, 30% moderately religious, and 33% not religious.[6] According to Pew Research Center's typology of religiosity, which included frequency of practicing their faith, the value they place on their religion, and the other sources of meaning and fulfillment in their lives, 39% were highly religious, 32% were somewhat religious, and 29% were nonreligious.[56]
Historically, the words religious and spiritual have been used synonymously to describe all the various aspects of the concept of religion.[57] However, in contemporary usage, many people use the term spirituality to refer to the interior life of the individual and religion to mean the exterior life of groups such as communities and/or organizations. For some, spirituality can become distinct in that it marks a separation from group affiliation and focuses more people's private beliefs and for others it is interchangeable with religious things.[57] Both spirituality and religion have similarities and have 4 basic components: belief in a reality greater than the individual, desire to connect with the greater reality, promotion of rituals for that connection, and an expectation of particular behaviors (moral or not), that reflect that connection.[57]
According to Pew's study on religious and spiritual identity, the number of people who consider themselves as spiritual (without consideration of whether they are affiliated or religious) was 78% in 2012 and 75% in 2017.[1]
According to Mark Chaves' review of General Social Survey data, of people who were not religious, 88% considered themselves as at least moderately spiritual.[46]
In 1776, only 17% of the US population was religiously involved in America and by 2000, the number of people who were religiously involved had actually increased gradually to 62%.[58]
According to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) report, in 1990 only 8.2% of the US population identified as "no religion", atheists were not detectable, and agnostics made up 0.7% of the US population. By 2001, 14.1% of the US population identified as "no religion", atheists made up 0.4% and agnostics made up 0.5% of the US population. By 2008, 15% of the US population identified as "no religion", atheists made up 0.7% and agnostics made up 0.9% of the US population.[9]
According to the 2014 General Social Survey the percentages of the US population that identified as no religion were 21% in 2014, 20% in 2012, just 14% in 2000, and only 8 percent in 1990. Furthermore, the number of atheists and agnostics in the US has remained relatively flat in the past 23 years since in 1991 only 2% identified as atheist and 4% identified as agnostic while in 2014 only 3% identified as atheist and 5% identified as agnostic.[15]
According to the 2008 Pew Religious Landscape report, as 2007, 16.1% of the US population identified as "no religion", atheists made up 1.6% and agnostics made up 2.4% of the US population.[59]
According to a 2012 Pew Report on the "Nones", 19.6% of the population identified as "no religion", atheists made up 2.4% and agnostics made up 3.3% of the US population.[10]
The Pew Religious Landscape survey reported that as of 2014, 22.8% of the American population is religiously unaffiliated, atheists made up 3.1% and agnostics made up 4% of the US population.[11]
A 2010 Pew Research Center study comparing Millennials to other generations showed that of those between 18–29 years old, only 3% self-identified as "atheists" and only 4% as "agnostics". Overall, 25% of Millennials were "Nones" and 74% were religiously affiliated.[60] Though Millennials are less religious than previous generations at the same age frame, they are also much less engaged in many social institutions in general than previous generations.[39]
A 2018 Barna group study shows 35% of Generation Z to be nones.[61]
Several groups promoting secularist beliefs or opposing religious faith altogether – including the Freedom From Religion Foundation, American Atheists, Camp Quest, and the Rational Response Squad – have witnessed large increases in membership numbers in recent years, and the number of secularist student organizations at American colleges and universities increased during the 2000s (decade).[42][62] However, the growth of atheist groups is very limited and will possibly shrink due to atheists normally being non-joiners and some atheist organizations being too "religious" like.[21] Phil Zuckerman notes that the overwhelming majority of the nonreligious in the US are not identifying with secular movements or secularism or secular beliefs and instead live basic mundane lives without much thought of the secular.[21] As such, the overwhelming majority on the nonreligious do not join secular groups. Only a very small minority of the nonreligious, around 1% to 2%, actually join these kinds of groups.[21]
According to the third American Family Survey from 2019, 33% of the US population identify as 'nones' ('atheists', 'agnostics', 'nothing in particular'), up from 30% in 2015.[63][64][65][66][67]
According to the American Values Atlas from PPRI, 24% of the US Population is unaffiliated with a religion in 2017.[68]
According to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study in 2016 31% were "nones" in 2016[69] and 29.5% were "nones" in 2018.[70]
Various explanations for trends
Some of the underlying factors in the increases in people identifying as "Nones" seem to not be that significant numbers of people are dropping religion, but rather that, in recent times, it has become more socially acceptable for younger and older generations to identify as a "None" than in previous decades, when identifying as having no religion carried negative stigmas. With young people usually having lower religious observance than older people and them feeling more comfortable identifying as a "None", generational replacement factors could play a role in the increment.[16]
Other possible driving factors may be just broader general cultural changes in the American way of life. The growth of the internet and social media has altered the sense of community and spirituality and the growth of self-focused citizenry, as opposed to community-focused citizenry, has broadly led to less civic involvement and less loyalty to many public institutions.[17]
Other possible driving forces could be political backlash. Young adults, in particular, have turned away from organized religion because they perceive it as deeply entangled with conservative politics and some seek to distance themselves from polarized systems.[18]
Others have suggested that delays in marriage, settling down, and having children among younger people reduces or delays the number and commitment of people participating in traditional religions or religious activities.[71]
Younger generations as a whole have lost trust and belief in numerous institutions along with religion. For instance, Millennials, which make up about 1/3 the "Nones" demographic, tend to have less belief and trust in institutions such as the labor market, the economy, government and politics, marriage, the media, along with churches; than previous generations.[19]
Various beliefs
Various beliefs and practices of the Nones in 2012.
|% Nones (2012)[72][73]
|Believe in God
|Consider themselves religious
|Consider themselves spiritual but not religious
|Consider themselves as neither spiritual nor religious
|Pray every day
|Pray once a month
Irreligion by state
|% "Nones" (2007)[11]
|% "Nones" (2014)[11]
|United States
|New Hampshire
|New York
|District of Columbia
|New Mexico
|Rhode Island
|North Carolina
|North Dakota
|South Carolina
|New Jersey
|West Virginia
|South Dakota
Irreligion by territory
Territories of the United States with percentage of population claiming no religion in 2010.
|% Nones (2010)
|U.S. Virgin Islands
|3.8%[74] or 3.7%[75]
|Puerto Rico
|Northern Mariana Islands
|American Samoa
Irreligion by region
Regions of the United States ranked by percentage of population claiming no religion in 2014.
|% Nones (2014)[11]
Irreligion demographics
Demographics of the religiously unaffiliated in 2012 (as fraction of the named groups).
|% Unaffiliated[81]
|% Unaffiliated
|% Unaffiliated
|Younger Millennials
|Older Millennials
Voting trends and political affiliation
In the election of 2016 and 2018, 15%/17%/21% of the voters was religiously unaffiliated, of which a majority voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. 21% of registered voters were religiously unaffiliated; they are considered to be the largest "religious" voting block. The number of voters who never attend worship services increased to 27% in 2018, up from 22% from 2016.[82][83][84][85]
According to exit polls in the 2008 presidential election, 71% of non-religious whites voted for Democratic candidate Barack Obama while 74% of white Evangelical Christians voted for Republican candidate John McCain. This can be compared with the 43–55% share of white votes overall.[86] More than six-in-ten religiously unaffiliated registered voters are Democrats (39%) or lean toward the Democratic Party (24%). They are about twice as likely to describe themselves as political liberals than as conservatives, and solid majorities support legal abortion (72%) and same-sex marriage (73%). In the last five years, the unaffiliated have risen from 17% to 24% of all registered voters who are Democrats or lean Democratic.[10] According to a Pew Research exit poll 70% of those who were religiously unaffiliated voted for Barack Obama.
Changes in stigmas in politics
In January 2007, California Congressman Pete Stark became the first openly atheist member of Congress. He described himself as "a Unitarian who does not believe in a Supreme Being." In January 2013, Kyrsten Sinema became the first openly non-theist Congresswoman, representing the State of Arizona. Although she "believes the terms 'nontheist', 'atheist' or 'nonbeliever' are not befitting of her life's work or personal character," she does believe in a secular approach to government. Her unbelief "was not used to slander her as un-American or suggest that she was unfit for office."[87]
On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama became the first U.S. President to acknowledge "non-believers" in his inaugural address,[88] although other presidents such as George W. Bush[89] have previously acknowledged non-believers in different speeches.
The 2012 study by the Pew Research Center reported that unaffiliated Americans say by a margin of 39% that churches should keep out of political matters. Affiliated Americans agree by a margin of 7%.[38]
Irreligous/secular impact on politics and policies
Irreligious viewpoints are perceived by religious people as starting to have an impact. It is seen by religious people as a "culture war".[90][91] This despite demonization of atheism, low organisation, low voter turnout, and the low number of openly irreligious politicians.[92]
Irreligious elected officials
Agnostic elected officials
Former United States senators
- Bob Kerrey (Democratic), 20th Class 1 United States Senator from Nebraska[93]
Former state governors
Atheist elected officials
Former United States senators
- Thomas Gore (Democratic), 1st Class 3 and 3rd Class 2 United States Senator from Oklahoma[94]
Former United States representatives
- Pete Stark (Democratic), Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 13th district, 9th district, and 8th district[95]
- Barney Frank (Democratic), Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 4th district[96]
Former state governors
- Culbert Olson (Democratic), 29th Governor of California[97]
- Jesse Ventura (Reform/Independence), 38th Governor of Minnesota[98][99]
Current state legislators
- Ernie Chambers (Independent), Nebraska Legislator from the 11th district[100]
Former state legislators
- Culbert Olson (Democratic), Utah Senator[97]
- Culbert Olson (Democratic), California Senator[97]
- Barney Frank (Democratic), Massachusetts Representative from the 8th and 5th Suffolk district[96]
- Lori Lipman Brown (Democratic), Nevada Senator[101]
- Sean Faircloth (Democratic), Maine Representative from the 17th and 117th district[102]
- Sean Faircloth (Democratic), Maine Senator from the 9th district[102]
Former mayors
- Jesse Ventura (Independent), Mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota[98]
- Rocky Anderson (Democratic), 33rd Mayor of Salt Lake City[103]
Current city council members
- Sean Faircloth (Democratic), Bangor, Maine city council member[102]
Former city council members
- Cecil Bothwell (Democratic), Asheville, North Carolina city council member[104]
See also
- Claims to be the fastest-growing religion
- Deism
- Discrimination against atheists in the United States
- Ethical movement
- First Amendment to the United States Constitution
- Irreligion
- Irreligion in Latin America
- Religion in the United States
- Religious skepticism
- Secular humanism
- ^ a b c d e f "More Americans now say they're spiritual but not religious". Pew Research Center. September 6, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2017.
In addition to those who say they are spiritual but not religious (27%), 48% say they are both religious and spiritual, while 6% say they are religious but not spiritual. Another 18% answer both questions negatively, saying they are neither religious nor spiritual...Who makes up this rapidly rising, "spiritual but not religious" segment of American adults? While many of them (37%) are religiously unaffiliated (describing their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular"), most actually do identify with a religious group, including 35% who say they are Protestant, 14% who are Catholic and 11% who are members of others faiths, such as Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism.
- ^ a b c d e "In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. October 17, 2019.
- ^ "GSS Data Explorer | NORC at the University of Chicago". gssdataexplorer.norc.org. Retrieved August 10, 2018.
- ^ "Exodus: Why Americans are Leaving Religion—and Why They're Unlikely to Come Back | PRRI". PRRI. 2016.
- ^ "American Family Survey 2019" (PDF).
- ^ a b Newport, Frank. "2017 Update on Americans and Religion". Gallup News. Gallup.
- ^ "Protestants decline, more have no religion in a sharply shifting religious landscape". ABC News. May 10, 2018. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
- ^ "Explore". cces.gov.harvard.edu. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
- ^ a b c Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on April 7, 2009. Retrieved May 8, 2009.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link), March 2009, American Religious Identification Survey [ARIS 2008], Trinity College.
- ^ a b c d "'Nones' on the Rise". Pew Research Center: Religion & Public Life. October 9, 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f g "America's Changing Religious Landscape". Pew Research Center: Religion & Public Life. May 12, 2015.
- ^ a b "GSS Data Explorer | NORC at the University of Chicago". gssdataexplorer.norc.org. Retrieved May 20, 2018.
- ^ Fahmy, Dalia (April 25, 2018). "Key findings about Americans' belief in God". Fact Tank. Pew Research Center.
In recent years, the share of American adults who do not affiliate with a religious group has risen dramatically. In spite of this trend, the overwhelming majority of Americans, including a majority of the religiously unaffiliated – those who describe themselves, religiously, as atheists, agnostics or "nothing in particular" – say they believe in God or a higher power, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted in December of 2017....Finally, among those who describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated – also known as "nones" – 72% say they believe in a higher power of some kind.
- ^ a b "Not All Nonbelievers Call Themselves Atheists | Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project". Pewforum.org. April 2, 2009. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
- ^ a b c Hout, Michael; Smith, Tom (March 2015). "Fewer Americans Affiliate with Organized Religions, Belief and Practice Unchanged: Key Findings from the 2014 General Social Survey" (PDF). General Social Survey. NORC.
The percentage answering 'no religion' was 21 percent in 2014, 20 percent in 2012, just 14 percent as recently as 2000, and only 8 percent in 1990." & "In 2014, 3 percent of Americans did not believe in God and 5 percent expressed an agnostic view; the comparable percentages were 2 percent and 4 percent in 1991. More people believed in a 'higher power' in 2014 (13%) than in 1991 (7%).
- ^ a b Gregory, Smith (September 14, 2016). "The factors driving the growth of religious 'nones' in the U.S." Pew Research Center.
- ^ a b Mercadante, Linda A. (2014). Belief without Borders : Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 29–30. ISBN 9780199931002.
- ^ a b Hout, Michael; Fischer, Claude S. (April 2002). "Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations". American Sociological Review. 67 (2): 165. doi:10.2307/3088891. JSTOR 3088891.
- ^ a b Masci, David (January 8, 2016). "Q&A: Why Millennials are less religious than older Americans". Pew Research Center.
- ^ "Pew report: Older US Christians being quickly replaced by young 'nones'". National Catholic Reporter. October 17, 2019. Retrieved October 21, 2019.
- ^ a b c d Zuckerman, Phil (2014). Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions. [S.l.]: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1594205088.
- ^ a b Holdcroft, Barbara (September 2006). "What is Religiosity?". Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice. 10 (1): 89–103.
- ^ Mercandante, Linda A. (2014). Belief without borders: inside the minds of the spiritual but not religious. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199931002.
- ^ a b c Zinnbauer, Brian J.; Pargament, Kenneth I.; Cole, Brenda; Rye, Mark S.; Butter, Eric M.; Belavich, Timothy G.; Hipp, Kathleen M.; Scott, Allie B.; Kadar, Jill L. (December 1997). "Religion and Spirituality: Unfuzzying the Fuzzy". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 36 (4): 549. doi:10.2307/1387689.
- ^ Chaves, Mark (March 2010). "SSSR Presidential Address Rain Dances in the Dry Season: Overcoming the Religious Congruence Fallacy". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 49 (1): 1–14. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2009.01489.x.
- ^ Rossi, Maurizio; Scappini, Ettore (June 2014). "Church Attendance, Problems of Measurement, and Interpreting Indicators: A Study of Religious Practice in the United States, 1975-2010". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 53 (2): 249–267. doi:10.1111/jssr.12115. ISSN 0021-8294.
- ^ Neff, James Alan (September 2006). "Exploring the Dimensionality of "Religiosity" and "Spirituality" in the Fetzer Multidimensional Measure". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 45 (3): 450. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2006.00318.x.
- ^ a b c d Eller, Jack (2010). "1. What Is Atheism?". In Phil Zuckerman (ed.). Atheism and Secularity Vol.1: Issues, Concepts, Definitions. Praeger. ISBN 9780313351839.
- ^ Burke, Daniel (May 14, 2009). "Religious citizens more involved – and more scarce?". USA Today. Retrieved June 1, 2014.
The scholars say their studies found that religious people are three to four times more likely to be involved in their community. They are more apt than nonreligious Americans to work on community projects, belong to voluntary associations, attend public meetings, vote in local elections, attend protest demonstrations and political rallies, and donate time and money to causes including secular ones. At the same time, Putnam and Campbell say their data show that religious people are just "nicer": they carry packages for people, don't mind folks cutting ahead in line and give money to panhandlers.
- ^ a b Campbell, David; Putnam, Robert (November 14, 2010). "Religious people are 'better neighbors'". USA Today. Retrieved October 18, 2007.
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- ^ "How Ignorant About Religion Are Religious Americans?". Patheos.com. September 27, 2010. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ Edgell, Penny. 2003. "In Rhetoric and Practice: Defining ˜The Good Family™ in Local Congregations." pp. 164–78 In Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, edited by Michele Dillon, Cambridge University Press.
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- ^ Wuthnow, Robert (2015). "8. Taking Stock". Inventing American Religion: Polls Surveys, and the Tenuous Quest for a Nation's Faith. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190258900.
- ^ a b Cary Funk, Greg Smith. "Nones on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation" (PDF). Pew Research Center. pp. 9, 42.
- ^ a b c "Losing Our Religion: The Growth of the 'Nones'". NPR.org. NPR. January 13, 2013. Retrieved December 1, 2016.
- ^ Gervais, Will M.; Najle, Maxine B. (2018). "How many atheists are there?". Social Psychological and Personality Science. 9: 3–10. doi:10.1177/1948550617707015.
- ^ "See How Americans' Belief in God Has Changed Over 70 Years". Time. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
- ^ a b Salmon, Jacqueline. "In America, Nonbelievers Find Strength in Numbers", Washington Post (September 15, 2007).
- ^ Frank, Newport (January 28, 2009). "State of the States: Importance of Religion". Gallup. Retrieved November 6, 2012.
- ^ Newport, Frank (July 28, 2008). "Belief in God Far Lower in Western U.S." Gallup. Retrieved January 16, 2010.
- ^ Cary Funk, Greg Smith. "Nones" on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation" (PDF). Pew Research Center. p. 43.
All told, about two-thirds of U.S. adults (65%) describe themselves as religious (either in addition to be being spiritual or not). Nearly one-in-five say they are spiritual but not religious (18%), and about one-in-six say they are neither religious nor spiritual (15%).
- ^ a b Chaves, Mark (2017). American Religion: Contemporary Trends. Princeton University Press. pp. 38–39. ISBN 9780691177564.
The vast majority of people — approximately 80 percent — describe themselves as both spiritual and religious. Still, a small but growing minority of Americans describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, as figure 3.4 shows. In 1998, 9 percent of Americans described themselves as at least moderately spiritual but not more than slightly religious. That number rose to 16 percent in the 2010s.
- ^ "World Values Survey Database". World Values Survey. World Values Survey Association. Retrieved March 27, 2018.
Excluding DK/NA
- ^ "BBC News – Viewpoints: Why is faith falling in the US?". BBC Online. August 22, 2012. Retrieved August 28, 2012.
- ^ "New Survey Shows The World's Most And Least Religious Places". NPR.org. Retrieved February 10, 2018.
- ^ "Mapped: The world's most (and least) religious countries". The Telegraph. Retrieved February 10, 2018.
- ^ "Wayback Machine" (PDF). November 14, 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 14, 2017. Retrieved February 27, 2018.
- ^ "Global Index of Religion and Atheism" (PDF). WIN/Gallup International. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 16, 2012. Retrieved January 13, 2015.
- ^ "Wayback Machine" (PDF). November 14, 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 14, 2017. Retrieved February 27, 2018.
- ^ Keysar, Ariela; Navarro-Rivera, Juhem (2017). "36. A World of Atheism: Global Demographics". In Bullivant, Stephen; Ruse, Michael (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Atheism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199644650.
- ^ ""Nones" on the Rise". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. October 9, 2012. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
- ^ "The Religious Typology: A new way to categorize Americans by religion". Pew Research Center. August 28, 2018.
- ^ a b c Mercandante, Linda A. (2014). Belief without Borders : Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199931002.
- ^ Finke, Roger; Stark, Rodney (2006). The Churching of America, 1776–2005: Winners and Losers in our Religious Economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. pp. 22, 23. ISBN 978-0813535531.
- ^ "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" (PDF). Pew Research Center. 2008.
- ^ "Religion Among the Millennials". Pew Research Center. Retrieved February 24, 2015.
- ^ "'The First Post-Christian Generation?': Skyrocketing Atheism Seen Among America's Teens". CBN News. February 10, 2018. Retrieved October 21, 2018.
- ^ Gorski, Eric (November 24, 2009). "Atheist student groups flower on college campuses". USA Today. The Associated Press. Retrieved June 3, 2014.
- ^ "'Nones' are now the biggest religious group in the US – with families torn on priorities". www.christiantoday.com. Retrieved December 6, 2017.
- ^ "DN American Family Survey 2017". DeseretNews.com. Retrieved December 6, 2017.
- ^ "AMERICAN FAMILY SURVEY – CSED". Retrieved November 19, 2019.
- ^ "American Family Survey" (PDF).
- ^ "American Family Survey 2019" (PDF).
- ^ "America's Changing Religious Identity". PRRI. Retrieved December 16, 2017.
- ^ "Are All Nones the Same? Exploring the Political Differences Between Atheists and Agnostics". Religion in Public. June 8, 2017.
- ^ "Growth and Decline in American Religion over the Last Decade". Religion in Public. July 9, 2019. Retrieved July 14, 2019.
- ^ Wuthnow, Robert (2007). After the Baby Boomers : How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings are Shaping the Future of American religion. Princeton University Press. pp. 51–70. ISBN 978-0691127651.
- ^ "Religion and the Unaffiliated". "Nones" on the Rise. Pew Research Center: Religion & Public Life. October 9, 2012.
- ^ "Most of the Religiously Unaffiliated Still Keep Belief in God". Pew Research Center. November 15, 2012.
- ^ "The Association of Religion Data Archives | National Profiles". Thearda.com. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ http://globalreligiousfutures.org/countries/u-s-virgin-islands#/?affiliations_religion_id=0&affiliations_year=2010 Globalreligiousfutures.org. U.S. Virgin Islands. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
- ^ http://www.globalreligiousfutures.org/countries/puerto-rico/religious_demography#/?affiliations_religion_id=0&affiliations_year=2010 Globalreligiousfutures.org. Puerto Rico. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
- ^ http://www.globalreligiousfutures.org/countries/guam/religious_demography#/?affiliations_religion_id=0&affiliations_year=2010 Globalreligiousfutures.org. Guam. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
- ^ "The Association of Religion Data Archives | National Profiles". Thearda.com. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
- ^ http://www.globalreligiousfutures.org/countries/northern-mariana-islands#/?affiliations_religion_id=0&affiliations_year=2010 Globalreligiousfutures.org. Northern Mariana Islands. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
- ^ http://www.globalreligiousfutures.org/countries/american-samoa#/?affiliations_religion_id=0&affiliations_year=2010 Globalreligiousfutures.org. American Samoa. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
- ^ "'No Religion' on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation". Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. October 9, 2012. Retrieved October 19, 2012.
- ^ "How the faithful voted: A preliminary 2016 analysis | Pew Research Center". Pew Research Center. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
- ^ Ingraham, Christopher. "The non-religious are now the country's largest religious voting bloc". Washington Post. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
- ^ "How religious groups voted in the midterm elections". Pew Research Center. Retrieved November 8, 2018.
- ^ "Voter Analysis - Fox News Midterms 2018 America's Election HQ". Fox News. November 9, 2018. Retrieved November 10, 2018.
- ^ CNN Exit polls
- ^ Oppenheimer, Mark (November 9, 2012). "Politicians Who Reject Labels Based on Religion". New York Times. Retrieved November 28, 2012.
- ^ An inaugural first: Obama acknowledges 'non-believers'
- ^ "Bush, like Obama, acknowledged non-believers". USA Today. January 22, 2009. Retrieved May 5, 2010.
- ^ "Opinion: Frank Walsh: Militant secularists have become unhinged". Boulder Daily Camera. November 1, 2019. Retrieved November 3, 2019.
- ^ "The Religious Right Is Fading Surely But Slowly :: The Pavlovic Today". The Religious Right Is Fading Surely But Slowly :: The Pavlovic Today. Retrieved November 3, 2019.
- ^ Doubt, Rational (January 17, 2019). "Why America Was Taught To Hate Atheists". Rational Doubt. Retrieved November 3, 2019.
- ^ a b Bruni, Frank (December 10, 2012). "The God Glut". New York Times. Retrieved December 10, 2012.
- ^ "Real Time with Bill Maher Episode #149 April 10, 2009". www.veoh.com.
- ^ Stark called himself "a Unitarian who does not believe in a supreme being" and has been identified as an atheist. Rep. Stark applauded for atheist outlook: Believed to be first congressman to declare nontheism, Associated Press, March 13, 2007 (Accessed June 15, 2007)
- ^ a b Wong, Curtis (August 9, 2013). "Barney Frank's 'Pot-Smoking Atheist' Revelation Discussed On 'The Rubin Report'". The Huffington Post. Retrieved August 9, 2013.
- ^ a b c The Hon. Atheist Governor: Culbert L. Olson Archived September 23, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b "Jesse Ventura Says "I'm An Atheist"".
- ^ Jesse Ventura said, "I'm an atheist" on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight", 17 September 2012.
- ^ Hammel, Paul. "Ernie Chambers targets 'so help me God' in oaths". Omaha World-Herald. Archived from the original on September 4, 2013. Retrieved September 4, 2013.
- ^ ""You can be elected as an openly gay politician in this country, but you can't be elected as an openly atheistic one", said Lori Lipman Brown, who was hired last fall to be the Washington, D.C., lobbyist for an organization devoted to atheist causes, the Secular Coalition for America. She's believed to be the first paid lobbyist for the unbelievers in the nation's capital, the front lines of the culture wars. Now, all Brown is seeking is a constituency willing to go public. "Think of where the LGBT movement was 25 years ago", said Brown, who has worked on gay and lesbian rights issues as a legislator and attorney. "That's where atheists are today." […] Brown, who is married and was raised a "humanistic Jew", talks about how she "came out" as an atheist several years ago, and how most atheists aren't "out yet" at work. She says atheist kids—like many gay children—are made to feel outcasts at school, and explains that she wants to erase the negative connotation to the word "atheist" just as homosexuals have reclaimed slurs like "queer" and "dyke."" Joe Garofoli, 'Atheists hoping to assert rights in religious era', San Francisco Chronicle, February 20, 2006 (accessed June 16, 2008).
- ^ a b c Atheists Speak Up – Sean Faircloth Part 1 of 4 (episode #33)
- ^ voterocky.org
- ^ Obituary: "He had many friends across a wide spectrum of economic, social and religious backgrounds, all of whom he respected and honored. While Carolyn [his wife] was a devoted Presbyterian, he was a 'nontheist, '"
- Richard Dawkins, "Secularism, the Founding Fathers and the religion of America", in The God Delusion, Black Swan, 2007 (ISBN 978-0-552-77429-1).
External links
- None of the above: the growth of the "non-religious", Derek Michaud (2009)


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New York State's Family Courts were ordered to be opened to the public with much fanfare in 1997, supposedly allowing anyone to witness the cases of domestic violence, foster care and child neglect that inch through by the hundreds of thousands every year. But now, 14 years later, the Family Courts remain essentially, almost defiantly, closed to the general public.
Recent visits to the courts across New York City revealed officials and security officers routinely disregarding the open-courts rule in ways both large and small, direct and implied, insistent and even hostile.
Some courtrooms were locked, and many were marked with "stop" and "do not enter" signs. Court officers stationed at courtroom doors repeatedly barred a visitor, sometimes with sarcasm or ridicule, frequently demanding to know who he was and what he was doing. Armed court officers at times appeared so rattled by a visitor's efforts to enter courtrooms that, in several instances, a group of them nervously confronted the visitor, their holsters in easy reach.
On the fifth floor of Family Court in Downtown Brooklyn, where people waited in bleak assembly areas for their cases to be called, an officer was asked whether a member of the public could attend — as is permitted in other New York courts. "Not allowed, not in Family Court," he said flatly. Outside Judge Susan Larabee's courtroom in Manhattan Family Court, an officer flashed his badge and said disdainfully, "You don't just walk in." In Staten Island Family Court, three officers challenged a visitor even as they stood beneath a sign that took official note of the 1997 rule:
"The court is open to the public."
During one week in particular, a reporter tried to enter 40 courtrooms in the city's five Family Courts as a member of the public or a civic group monitoring the courts would. Entry was permitted to only five of the courtrooms, some where no case was under way — a closing rate of nearly 90 percent. In those cases, the reporter did not identify himself. In other instances, officials insisted that, even for reporters, free access to courtrooms was not permitted.
In Brooklyn, a judge, Michael Katz, was quickly alerted to a visitor who had managed to slip briefly into a seat. "These proceedings are generally confidential," the judge said.
But they are not, according to the law.
On Thursday, Edwina G. Richardson-Mendelson, the administrative judge of the New York City Family Courts, was told of the many blocked attempts to enter courtrooms. She said she was troubled to hear that courts around the city had not been open and said she planned a review. It was an opinion echoed by several other court officials apprised of the reporter's efforts.
"We don't have policies or rules for them to be ignored," Judge Richardson-Mendelson said. "We're a court of law, and law matters."
American legal principles have long favored open courts as a check on government, and New York law has specifically said for more than a century that "the sittings of every court within the state shall be public."
But by 1997, the Family Courts had been closed for decades, with rare exceptions. Critics said the chaos of the courts was amplified by their secrecy — a veil that had grown over the years with the support of many of the courts' judges, lawyers and social-agency representatives. Closed courtrooms, critics argued, kept hidden the courts' struggles, as well as the sometimes controversial ways they dealt with those who ended up in the resource-starved system plagued by delays.
Citing a need for accountability, the officials who issued the open-courts rule presented it as the centerpiece of an effort to reform Family Courts that were perennially in crisis. The rule was announced by Judith S. Kaye, the state's chief judge at the time, and the chief administrative judge, Jonathan Lippman, now the chief judge. It stated bluntly, "The Family Court is open to the public," and assured access to all courtrooms, lobbies and waiting areas. The only exceptions were to be after "case-by-case" decisions by judges after the presentation of "supporting evidence," like a "compelling" privacy concern.
Not everyone wanted the courts open. Some judges and lawyers argued that Family Court should routinely shield the privacy of families in crisis and young people, including those charged with what would be criminal acts if they were adults.
Today, the culture of secrecy has hardly budged. Leah A. Hill, a Fordham Law School professor who has written about and practiced in New York Family Courts, said the courts were largely as unaccountable today as they had ever been, even though they can hold a central place in the lives of poor New Yorkers.
"There hasn't really been a public discourse about what goes on in Family Court, and part of the reason is that it is a closed institution," Professor Hill said.
Several lawyers who practice in the Family Courts said they had generally been opened only for the rare cases that drew wide public interest.
"The courtroom is pretty much closed," said Susan Jacobs, the executive director of the Center for Family Representation, which has lawyers who handle cases in Manhattan and Queens. She said visitors would be shocked if they saw some of the routine proceedings in Family Court, like one in which, she said, the final decision to permanently strip a mother of her rights to her children took seven minutes.
The reporter's recent visits were only to Family Courts in the five boroughs. But over the last year, the Fund for Modern Courts, a court-reform advocacy group, has suggested in two reports that Family Courts statewide may also have routinely ignored the open-courts rule.
The Modern Courts group sent court monitors to Family Courts in Suffolk County on Long Island and Washington County in northern New York. In both cases, they found the public was not often welcome.
"The public has a right to know how courts deal with children and families," one of the group's reports said. "It is no longer discretionary when closing the courtroom to the public is done 100 percent of the time."
The reporter who made recent visits in New York City often declined to identify himself. But even when he identified himself as a reporter, there were difficulties. At the gray Family Court building on Sheridan Avenue in the Bronx, a large sign did not seem to allow for public access: "Only persons having official business will be admitted."
Inside, hundreds of people milled about in dark waiting rooms watched over by uniformed officers and lined by closed courtroom doors. Babies cried. Case names were shouted.
In her courtroom, Judge Carol Sherman immediately called the reporter to the bench and said he had to present his credentials to the court clerk on another floor. An hour later, the first deputy clerk, Nicholas Rapallo, said he had to get approval from the office of the state's chief administrative judge.
When that was granted, Mr. Rapallo first instructed that access was allowed only to Judge Sherman's courtroom. After another wait, he authorized entry to other courtrooms but said, "You have to let it be known who you are."
During the week that the reporter tried to enter courtrooms as a member of the public would, some officials and officers were antagonistic, with several saying explicitly that court policy was that the public was excluded.
In Queens, a uniformed captain, who declined to give his full name, mocked a visitor who presented a copy of the open-court rule. "The rule here is different," the man, Captain Beneri, said. "I know the rule a little better than you do."
On Staten Island, after the confrontation with the three officers, the visitor was directed to wait for the chief court clerk, William J. Quirk, to ask for permission. An hour and 20 minutes later, Mr. Quirk appeared at the clerk's window. He seemed startled when the visitor said he wanted to watch court proceedings.
"You have to answer my questions," Mr. Quirk shouted after a brief conversation, saying, "The court is not public in the sense that you just walk in."
The reporter's visits occurred early this month and late last month. On Thursday, judges and officials in some of the courts, including some of those who had barred entry, were asked for comment. Several of them acknowledged errors or misunderstandings of the open-courts policy.
Monica Drinane, the supervising judge of Bronx Family Court, said she had in response sent judges a new copy of a two-year-old memorandum reminding them that the court was to be open.
Carol Stokinger, the supervising judge of Queens Family Court, said staff members had been wrong in claiming a member of the public could not observe judicial proceedings. Fourteen years after the announcement that New York's Family Courts were open to the public, she was asked why there still seemed to be resistance to the idea. "I think it's a culture that has to be changed," she said.


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Move over Eastenders – here's where the real drama in London lies.
Well, some of it at least. Columbia Road Flower Market's history dates back to the 19th century. Taking place every Sunday in the East End, perhaps more interesting than what's on sale are the characters running the stalls.
Even now it feels next to impossible to describe the sellers there, therefore I'll let the images do the talking – as they ought to do anyway – and shut the hell up. (You can thank me later.) These photos were taken on March 6, 2016.


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My son and I got these shots while we had the diorama out for my previous Phantom post. These pre-painted, easy-assembly kits from Squadron Models look quite nice and make a no-hassle experience for a young modeler!
Close focus on the world of scale models
{sorry, this is not porn}
Modern adventures in scale model photography
Photography Blog by Leonardo Rist
Tales from the bench of a Scale Modeller
Wargaming, modelling & other stuff
A trail around Britain's historical airfields many lost to developers or mother nature herself. Come along on a voyage of discovery and nostalgia.
History in miniature
Miniatures, paints, doodles and wonderfully useless stuff.
Scale model builder in a 1:72 scale.
The Imperial Japanese Navy in 1/700
an engineer's photographic dilemmas
- I model - therefore I am -
Chris Wauchop Scale Models and Photography
Just another WordPress.com site
This WordPress.com site is Pacific War era information
Snapshots in Time


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Monthly Archives: April 2007
Under a week to go!!!!!
OMG!!!! I have under a week to go and the wedding will be all over! Can not quite believe it!
It just seemed the other day, that we had 3 months to go and now I have a few days!
I have no nerves, the excitement is starting to arrive and to be honest I am really looking forward to it now!
So my week till the wedding goes :
Tues & Wed – Peterborough for work!
Thurs – nails and waxing being done, going to see the cake and flowers, collect bridesmaids and my dress, meet the videographer, and then I am off to knitting group in the evening!
Fri – Wedding Rehearsal at 530pm! I am also hoping to set up the reception room in the morning, and we have to collect the mens wear!
So busy week ahead but really looking forward to it.
I will try and post some piccies of the wedding before I head off to Mauritius on Wednesday 18th.
Craft wise – not done anything at all! Sorry!


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|{photos via Hostess Blog}
'Dreaming of a White Christmas' was my inspiration. Here in southern France, snow is rare at Christmas, so the idea of styling a complete white party seemed very appropriate to bring the snow inside at any cost! By mixing different textures, from fabrics, to paper, glass and ceramic, wool and fleece; you can create a monochrome white look without making it look too clinical. The addition of candles and mirrored tiles on the table, helped to bounce light around and add warmth to the whole set up.


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Poster abstracts will be placed on the conference website and printed in the delegate handbook to allow delegates to identify posters of interest to them prior to the event. Posters will remain on display throughout the conference.
Please include on your poster all contact details including name(s), organisation name, job title and email address(es). You may want to add your mobile phone number so delegates can arrange to meet you at your poster at specific times. Bringing some extra business cards to leave at your poster is also a good idea.
Inform the conference organisers if you need power and/or intend to go online.
If you are unfamiliar with poster sessions, the following may be useful:
- We suggest that you be prepared to stand at or close to your poster for at least 30 minutes.
- When you are not there, leave a note saying when you plan to return. You may also want to provide a mobile phone number or business cards so another delegate can arrange to meet you at a specific time.
- There is no need to have a presentation but be prepared to answer questions and discuss your material with interested delegates.
- You may use a computer if you wish to provide a live demonstration as part of your poster. Please bring your own laptop with well-charged batteries, as power supply may not be available.
- Wireless internet connections will be available.
- An adjacent table can be provided if required.
General guidelines
- Posters must be no greater than 841mm wide and 1189mm high (A0). If this is a problem, please let us know.
- The panels provided as back drops will be velcro compatible. The organisers can provide the necessary velcro fixers.
- You will be sharing the poster panel with two other papers but they will not be assigned the same time slot as yourself.
Suggestions for effective poster presentations
- An overall left to right presentation (rows), rather than a top-to-bottom (columns), facilitates smooth traffic flow past your poster.
- All printing should be presented in at least 16 point font, preferably in bold and not all capitals.
- The poster should be self-explanatory, so that you are free to answer questions and discuss the research with interested persons.
- You should be prepared to take names and addresses for a subsequent mailing of information. Perhaps a sheet of paper on which people can provide their name, email address and work address would be useful, or you should be prepared to collect business cards.
Do put your contact information at the bottom, to allow others who are interested to contact you afterwards. Especially as your poster will be on display for the whole conference.
Posters can be submitted from the 29 August to 04 September.
If you have any queries please email email@example.com