Christianity

In their new book, "American Grace," Robert D. Putman and David E. Campbell make two assertions about the decline of religious affiliation in the United States, which they summarize in their Oct. 17 Times Op-Ed article, "Walking away from the church. " They correctly observe that Americans, especially the youngest generations, are rapidly losing a lot of their faith. The nonreligious are far and away the fastest-growing group, with nonbelievers having tripled as a portion of the general population since the 1960s and nonreligious twentysomethings doubling in just two decades.

DUESSELDORF, Germany — Voters in Germany's most populous state dealt a decisive blow to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union on Sunday, preliminary results show, a potentially ominous preview of things to come for the chancellor in next year's federal elections. Merkel's party mustered about 26% of the vote in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, a drop from 35% in 2010 and 45% in 2005, the year she took office, the results show. The opposition Social Democrats and Greens, at about 39% and more than 11%, respectively, secured the majority of seats they needed to form a governing coalition.

From his pulpit in Santa Ana, Chuck Smith's voice thunders with certainty. He denounces homosexuality as a "perverted lifestyle," finds divine wrath in earthquakes and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and promises imminent Armageddon in a deep, sure voice. If his message is grim, the founder of the Jesus People and the Calvary Chapel movement bears the ruddy good cheer of a 79-year-old believer who insists he has never known a day's doubt or despair.

LYNCHBURG, Va. - Seeking to connect with the community of evangelicals that has been cold to his candidacy for many months, Mitt Romney delivered a commencement speech at Liberty University on Saturday that delved deeply into his faith while arguing that Christians of all different creeds could come together in the name of service. Speaking to a crowd of more than 30,000 at the school founded by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell, the presumed Republican nominee took the stage after an admonition from Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. - who was quoting his father - that the American people will be “electing a commander in chief, not a pastor or a religious leader” in November.

Christian pop music played quietly in the background as instructor Bryan Brock led a recent yoga class at the nondenominational Church at Rocky Peak in Chatsworth. Incorporating prayer and readings from the Bible, Brock urged his class of about 20 students to find strength in their connection to their creator through yoga's deep, controlled breathing. "The goal of Christian yoga is to open ourselves up to God," he said. "It allows us to blur the line between the physical and the spiritual."

Only sleepwalkers and fanatics slide through life without reconsidering their values and philosophical outlook. Still, I never expected to be challenged quite so fundamentally by a writer of vampire stories and bisexual erotica. Enter Anne Rice, the 68-year-old author of bestselling novels about the sexy undead and, pseudonymously, of various sadomasochistic-inflected tales. Since returning to her girlhood Catholicism more than a decade ago, she's also written a string of devotional volumes and "a spiritual confession" that might best be characterized as rhapsodic.

I can't let Forrest G. Wood's attack on Christianity go unremarked (Letters, Oct. 25). Christianity was the "ideological justification" for the enslavement of Africans only because the slave traders and owners happened to be Christian. To lay slavery in America at the feet of Christianity is the same sort of sloppy reasoning that condemns Islam because there are people who use it as the "ideological justification" for blowing up innocent people. Let's keep in mind that it was the same Christianity that provided the "ideological justification" for the Abolitionist movement that helped end the institution of slavery in America.

In a bow to the growing diversity of America's religious landscape, the Claremont School of Theology, a Christian institution with long ties to the Methodist Church, will add clerical training for Muslims and Jews to its curriculum this fall, to become, in a sense, the first truly multi-faith American seminary. The transition, which is being formally announced Wednesday, upends centuries of tradition in which seminaries have hewn not just to single faiths but often to single denominations within those faiths.

John Dart's article "Survey Shows Christians Held in High Esteem, Atheists Low" (Feb. 10) is not surprising, for it is a reasonable portrayal of the unfortunate narrow focus and limited world-view of many Americans. In the Catholic countries of 17th-century Europe, those who dared proclaim the Earth orbited the sun were also held in low esteem, being cast into dungeons and burned at the stake. Underscoring the importance of protecting the prevailing ignorance and prejudice, there is no question these heretics had a "negative influence" on the society of their time; for that society no longer exists, and an Earth-centered universe is no longer widely accepted.

In Letters to View (May 18) a writer bewails your mention of non-Christian Mother's Day celebrations. Wicca is not witchcraft, devil worship or Satanism. It is a valid religion; it is older than Christianity, which has consistently violated its own ethical code in attempts to destroy other people's religious beliefs. Wicca is much more wholesome than the people who gave the world the Spanish Inquisition, the Puritan oppressions and Nazi Germany. KATHLEEN BARTHOLOMEW, Los Angeles

Marie Kolasinski, a devoutly anti-government Orange County grandmother who was sent to jail at 85 after clashing with health inspectors at her popular quilting and crafts emporium, has died. She was 90. Once dubbed "Che Kolasinski" by a local newspaper for her militant stands, she died of natural causes April 23 at her Costa Mesa home, said her daughter, Marjorie Serr. Kolasinski was the driving force behind a tiny Christian sect whose members live communally and operate Costa Mesa's Piecemakers Country Store, which occupies a warren of rooms jam-packed with homemade knick-knacks, quilts and craft supplies.

WASHINGTON — Watergate felon and prison reformer Charles W. Colson, who died Saturday at age 80 in northern Virginia, was two people. He was Richard Nixon's "hatchet man," the president's "evil genius," who by his own admission was "ruthless in getting things done" in the Watergate years, when the things that he and others in the White House were getting done would become a national disgrace and send Colson to prison. And he was a born-again Christian, the founder of the world's largest prison ministry, an "unfailingly kind but tremendously courageous" intellectual leader who became the "William F. Buckley" of the evangelical movement.

A UCLA physician has filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the UC Board of Regents, alleging that he was routinely publicly humiliated and once was depicted as a gorilla being sodomized in a slide show presentation during a resident graduation event. In a 40-page complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, Dr. Christian Head, a head and neck surgeon, accused the university of failing to prevent discrimination, harassment and retaliation. "I am very discouraged," Head said in an interview.

With foul trouble mounting and a fourth-quarter lead beginning to dwindle, Sun Valley Village Christian turned to the most unlikely of players, reserve guard Joe Shashaty, to deliver the decisive blows in the Division V state championship basketball game Saturday at Power Balance Pavilion. Shashaty made consecutive three-pointers midway through the final quarter, enabling the Crusaders (32-3) to protect a four-point lead and come away with a 62-51 victory over Alameda St. Joseph Notre Dame for their first state title.

State championships Saturday at Sacramento's Power Balance Pavilion Boys Division I Santa Ana Mater Dei (33-2) vs. Sacramento Sheldon (29-5), 8 p.m. The Monarchs are seeking a record ninth state title under Coach Gary McKnight. This is a team built to do well in an arena setting. The Monarchs' trio of Katin Reinhardt, Xavier Johnson and Stanley Johnson can use their versatility to create lots of matchup problems. Sheldon rallied from 17 points down to win its regional final.

Few players have benefited more from the state basketball playoffs than Marquis Salmon, a 6-foot-7 senior at Sun Valley Village Christian. When the Crusaders' season was extended by an at-large berth to the Division V playoffs, Salmon got a second chance to impress college recruiters. "He's been phenomenal these last four weeks," Coach Jon Shaw said. "He's impacted the team at both ends of the floor. " In a Southern California Regional semifinal upset, the Crusaders knocked off top-seeded Playa del Rey St. Bernard, 75-65, behind Salmon's 29 points.

A Church of England bishop said in an article published Friday that Christianity "must take a major share of the blame" for the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews. John Baker, Bishop of Salisbury and one of his church's leading theologians, said Christianity has "spewed out" anti-Semitism from the earliest times. He called for an act of "theological penitence" by Christians and urged them to disown "distorted features" of the New Testament.

Nora Gallagher's essay about the attacks on Christianity (Opinion, March 24) seemed to have tried hard to make it sound as if they are incessant and everywhere, that the persecution has been unrelenting since St. Paul wrote letters. This is getting to be a remarkably old saw and honestly has become just plain wearisome. This past season's fabricated "attack on Christmas" was one example in a long list. It doesn't matter if a religious connection is made to a governmental entity or not. Most people simply don't care because there is no widespread or threatening attack on Christianity.

Millions of Coptic Christians turned out across Egypt on Sunday to mourn Pope Shenouda III and reflect on the sharpening tensions Christians here face as Islamists have risen in power since last year's overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. Shenouda, who died Saturday at age 88, led the Coptic Orthodox Church for more than 40 years. He was looked upon as a spiritual, social and sometimes political leader who guarded the rights of Egypt's minority Christian population in a region prone to religious animosities.

  Pope Shenouda III, the charismatic patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church whose shrewd grasp of religion and politics guided Egypt's Christians through deepening animosities with Muslims, died Saturday. He was 88. The state news agency reported that Shenouda, who led the church for four decades, had struggled with respiratory and liver ailments. There was no announcement about a successor. A stately figure with a flowing gray beard, the pope had attempted in recent months to buttressEgypt'sestimated 9 million Copts against persecution from Islamists following the revolution that overthrew former President Hosni Mubarak.