Are white evangelcials less moral

[TheReckoning]

Well, let’s think about this.

Left wing = good. Right wing = bad. White evangelicals are mostly right wing. Therefore, white evangelicals = bad. Any attempts are further discourse just another attempt at justifying homophobic, misogynistic ideology.

[they don't love you like i love you]

Again that 34% number seems to be as far what's quoted just a guess this guy pulled out of his ass. Also the definition used around the Great Commission is kind of laughable. By that standard Jimmy Carter was also one of these Dominionists as would be Pete Buttigieg and plenty of other Democrats as well as a solid majority of black voters. Hell by this standard my church is a theocratic Dominionist one.

But even if we assume it's correct, 34% is nowhere near the number needed for a successful coup especially when support amongst military rank and file is no doubt far less.

Whatever the number is, you're the person who always filibusters about how three people with anime avatars on Twitter are going to cause a century of Republican rule because they replace vowels in certain words with x's.

Please cite a single post where I said anything would result in a century of Republican rule.

Thank you for proving my point. You're the most pedantic person alive regarding other people's wording when they say "nobody says this" and literally (figuratively) everyone but you knows the mean "nobody except a miniscule, insignificant, amount of powerless nobodies says this", but when actual credible people like those at the MRFF start talking about meaningful (not a majority) amount of people who are not insignificant in their real world threat, it's "yeah, well, nobody is ACTUALLY a threat, lmao."

Imagine if you saw this exchange (example I used elsewhere):
Person A: Sexual misconduct does not exist amongst Democratic politicians.
Person B: Uh, it obviously does. Like fairly recently we just had Andrew Cuomo resign over that.
Person A: That's just one guy, out of the thousands of elected Democrats in the country.
Person B: What about Al Franken then? Or *recent minor politician example*.
Person A: Again, you're just cherrypicking examples. These people make up very few of the total percentage of Democratic politicians. You can keep bringing up a couple examples but that doesn't disprove that it's incredibly rare. They don't really exist.

Or my analogy about if I said I've never been to Houston, because I've only been there for an airport layover that lasted about an hour...that doesn't mean I've never been to Houston.

I never said we were THIS CLOSE to a literal Handmaid's Tail. Please cite a single instance where I said that. (See? I can do that too! Annoying, isn't it?)

The Handmaid's Tale talk comes from Democratic Underground and DailyKos (I know, who the hell cares about them today, but you're the one who said we should go back to Bush Administration thinking.)

I said it was real, credible threat and that the amount of people, while a minority, is significant.

You still have yet to provide a source for your numbers that stands scrutiny. It doesn't matter if they're a good organization. Good organizations release bad polls all the time. We don't even know if this is a poll or how this information was obtained and estimated, there's no citation of the methodology, how being a dominionist is defined (The "Great Commission" thing cited is an absurd standard, it's one of the central tenets of Christianity so that would include virtually all Christians), etc.

[Klobmentum Mutilated Herself]

Imagine if you saw this exchange (example I used elsewhere):
Person A: Sexual misconduct does not exist amongst Democratic politicians.
Person B: Uh, it obviously does. Like fairly recently we just had Andrew Cuomo resign over that.
Person A: That's just one guy, out of the thousands of elected Democrats in the country.
Person B: What about Al Franken then? Or *recent minor politician example*.
Person A: Again, you're just cherrypicking examples. These people make up very few of the total percentage of Democratic politicians. You can keep bringing up a couple examples but that doesn't disprove that it's incredibly rare. They don't really exist.

Or my analogy about if I said I've never been to Houston, because I've only been there for an airport layover that lasted about an hour...that doesn't mean I've never been to Houston.

Again. My point is that you have a double standard. You write this exact post (not literally, since apparently you need that pointed out every time) all the time in order to justify treating insignificant outliers as if they're significant enough that the President must specifically denounce them. But when someone else notes the relevance of a phenomenon amongst certain people — in this case, one that is far more significant than anything/anyone you drag your feet about — you throw a fit.

The MRFF is a credible organization with expertise on very important issues — issues you are downplaying. I trust them, and 77,000 military personnel have trusted them and received vital assistance regarding the issue that you, the person who thinks President Biden must personally denounce every failed Congressional primary candidate with an inaccurate tweet about Israel or whatever that thread about, are downplaying. If you don't trust the MRFF, write them an email; they'll probably respond to you. Just read the article I linked to originally FFS. This organization has 700 pajd staff members, 84% of whom are Christian, and they're not twiddling their thumbs all day. They receive thousands of phone calls that make the one Ilhan Omar shared with the public look take. The leader of the organizations has had his house shot at. Fox News has run smear campaigns against them. The people doing those awful things, the people the 77,000 military personnel have requested protection from, those are a significant amount of people doing far more harm than the one person on Twitter who thinks genital preference is bigotry, the people replacing vowels with x's, random nobodies who lost a primary for a House seat. The MRFF protects the anonymity of their sources and clients and can't go deep into the amount of detail you'd like. This is a real issue, not a circa 2005 Theocracy Watch blog (which, by the way, you really need new insults).

I used the word Dominionist when I should have said Christian Nationalist. Originally I used both words, actually, but I'm sorry for whatever ambiguity I caused by defaulting to the former term. But you've had known what I meant if you actually read the article.

[DC Al Fine]

You keep citing the 34% Christian Nationalist/Dominionist figure, but the source you're using is an advocacy group with an agenda. That's not immediately disqualifying, but it's entirely reasonable for skeptics to want to know how they did their research, and defined their terms, especially for something as nebulous as Christian Nationalism, which according to the first few paragraph's of its Wikipedia article, covers everything from borderline theocracy to blue laws to nativity displays.

So how did they arrive at this figure, well according to the link you cited:

Mikey Weinstein
Our best estimate here at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. We’re the only organization that focuses with laser-like precision on the military. Is that we’ve got somewhere and we talked about it last time. Between 28% and 34%, maybe 35% of the military that would qualify as Christian nationalists in that their belief is that they can propagate the Great Commission again. Mark 16:15, Matthew 28:19. Jesus saying, get everybody and that’s your prime directive, not love the Lord, your God and the Golden Rule. Get everybody in. [crosstalk 00:31:34]

Paul Jay
How do you get to that number, though? 25%-30%.

Mikey Weinstein
Just through our experience, we’ve been doing this for the better part of 20 years, and we see it everywhere. So you start just like if you ask a dentist, what is it like when you do a root canal? If you get someone right out of dental school, there’ll be a small sample. But we’ve been doing the law of big numbers. I know the names of the glitterati of people that you’ve interviewed. You’re an excellent interviewer. I’m not buttering you up. You probably weren’t this good when you started years ago, but it’s the experience of doing it over and over again.

I had to have some emergency surgery a week ago, and I asked the surgeon who was about to do the procedure. How many times have you done this? He said I started when I was 25 years old. I’m 57 now. So I’ve been doing this for 22 years. I’ve done it a few thousand times. So when people look at us, when I tell you that we’ve got over 77,000 hamburgers served here, if we were McDonald’s clients that were helping and that we’ve helped all the way through, you start seeing where the trends are.

We believe that about the military chaplaincy are evangelicals. That again means that they follow the Great Commission, not the Great Commandment. About a third of those, roughly a third of the chaplains, would be considered Christian nationalists. And whether there’s a direct relationship or not. I’m just telling you, we are subject matter experts. I’ve been hired by the Pentagon before to give my expertise. And when they were trying to put together a spiritual fitness test, which, of course, would be a violation of clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution, which states quite clearly, we will never have a religious test for any position in the federal government.

I kept telling them that. And I said you can go put lipstick on a pig and call it something else. But the bottom line is now. The reason Milley was terrified is, you see that he reports to someone called the commander in chief. And that is Donald Trump. I believe that Donald Trump is mentally ill. I believe that he is the same. Exactly the same he is now as he was when he was two or three, not just petulant, mentally ill. He’s a complete coward. He’s a very stupid man, but he’s been enabled his entire life.

The problem is the Daisy chain. I think we might have talked about. It goes like this. You stopped teaching civics in high school, and my sophomore civics teacher was a retired lawyer named Mr. Gerrard. It was a rite of passage. Poor education breeds ignorance, which gives rise to fear, which catalyzes hate, which gives birth to bigotry and prejudice, which leads to blood in the streets. We are already seeing blood in the streets.

I’m not trying to be a naysayer. I’m just trying to say that if we’re going to save this country and this means that progressives, if you want to coordinate progressives, Conservatives, you get them in a room together and they work like hand in glove, like the Christian nationalism, a nationalist handling Trump and his folks, you get a bunch of Progressives in a room together and they’ll try to Peck each other’s eyes out with a pencil.

I mean, I love Michelle Obama, but when she says, when they go low, we go high. No, Michelle, no. When they go low, we have to go low to fight them there. Otherwise, we’re going to lose. I couldn’t believe that. I lived long enough the other day. Maybe you saw it where Karl Rove was calling out Trump and his people. Karl Rove is barely almost Homosapien.

No poll, no study, just the intuition of an activist mixed into a rambling non-answer about his methods. As BRTD says it sounds like he pulled his numbers from his arse.

[Samof94]

By the way, if religious people are more moral...

Why is the prison population heavily religious? How come we don't see any agnostic or atheist prisoners in jail, yet every death row convict is some holy Jesus fella?

Or how abortion clinics terrorism is by militant evangelicals.

[they don't love you like i love you]

You keep citing the 34% Christian Nationalist/Dominionist figure, but the source you're using is an advocacy group with an agenda. That's not immediately disqualifying, but it's entirely reasonable for skeptics to want to know how they did their research, and defined their terms, especially for something as nebulous as Christian Nationalism, which according to the first few paragraph's of its Wikipedia article, covers everything from borderline theocracy to blue laws to nativity displays.

So how did they arrive at this figure, well according to the link you cited:

Mikey Weinstein
Our best estimate here at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. We’re the only organization that focuses with laser-like precision on the military. Is that we’ve got somewhere and we talked about it last time. Between 28% and 34%, maybe 35% of the military that would qualify as Christian nationalists in that their belief is that they can propagate the Great Commission again. Mark 16:15, Matthew 28:19. Jesus saying, get everybody and that’s your prime directive, not love the Lord, your God and the Golden Rule. Get everybody in. [crosstalk 00:31:34]

Paul Jay
How do you get to that number, though? 25%-30%.

Mikey Weinstein
Just through our experience, we’ve been doing this for the better part of 20 years, and we see it everywhere. So you start just like if you ask a dentist, what is it like when you do a root canal? If you get someone right out of dental school, there’ll be a small sample. But we’ve been doing the law of big numbers. I know the names of the glitterati of people that you’ve interviewed. You’re an excellent interviewer. I’m not buttering you up. You probably weren’t this good when you started years ago, but it’s the experience of doing it over and over again.

I had to have some emergency surgery a week ago, and I asked the surgeon who was about to do the procedure. How many times have you done this? He said I started when I was 25 years old. I’m 57 now. So I’ve been doing this for 22 years. I’ve done it a few thousand times. So when people look at us, when I tell you that we’ve got over 77,000 hamburgers served here, if we were McDonald’s clients that were helping and that we’ve helped all the way through, you start seeing where the trends are.

We believe that about the military chaplaincy are evangelicals. That again means that they follow the Great Commission, not the Great Commandment. About a third of those, roughly a third of the chaplains, would be considered Christian nationalists. And whether there’s a direct relationship or not. I’m just telling you, we are subject matter experts. I’ve been hired by the Pentagon before to give my expertise. And when they were trying to put together a spiritual fitness test, which, of course, would be a violation of clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution, which states quite clearly, we will never have a religious test for any position in the federal government.

I kept telling them that. And I said you can go put lipstick on a pig and call it something else. But the bottom line is now. The reason Milley was terrified is, you see that he reports to someone called the commander in chief. And that is Donald Trump. I believe that Donald Trump is mentally ill. I believe that he is the same. Exactly the same he is now as he was when he was two or three, not just petulant, mentally ill. He’s a complete coward. He’s a very stupid man, but he’s been enabled his entire life.

The problem is the Daisy chain. I think we might have talked about. It goes like this. You stopped teaching civics in high school, and my sophomore civics teacher was a retired lawyer named Mr. Gerrard. It was a rite of passage. Poor education breeds ignorance, which gives rise to fear, which catalyzes hate, which gives birth to bigotry and prejudice, which leads to blood in the streets. We are already seeing blood in the streets.

I’m not trying to be a naysayer. I’m just trying to say that if we’re going to save this country and this means that progressives, if you want to coordinate progressives, Conservatives, you get them in a room together and they work like hand in glove, like the Christian nationalism, a nationalist handling Trump and his folks, you get a bunch of Progressives in a room together and they’ll try to Peck each other’s eyes out with a pencil.

I mean, I love Michelle Obama, but when she says, when they go low, we go high. No, Michelle, no. When they go low, we have to go low to fight them there. Otherwise, we’re going to lose. I couldn’t believe that. I lived long enough the other day. Maybe you saw it where Karl Rove was calling out Trump and his people. Karl Rove is barely almost Homosapien.

No poll, no study, just the intuition of an activist mixed into a rambling non-answer about his methods. As BRTD says it sounds like he pulled his numbers from his arse.

Also he has no clear cut definition of a "Christian Nationalist", he says something about "follow the Great Commission, not the Great Commandment", which is an utterly LAUGHABLE false dichotomy and also would include liberal Christians as well. If a church has any type of outreach programs, and accepts and baptizes new members, then it's a Christian Nationalist one per this definition.

[Big Abraham]

Morality is commensurate with the prevailing normative ethical beliefs of the time within that particular domain. White evangelicals are probably more moral within the sphere of the rock-ribbed Bible Belt; within the sphere of Secular Humanism, not so much.

Our culture at-large is a blend of traditional religious and rationalistic Enlightenment thought, so I don't take it as a particularly interesting question. It's like asking if Zoroastrians are more or less moral than the Manichaeans were.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Traditionalists or Fundamentalist like the Dixiecrats are less sensitive towards tolerance they believe in the status quo and Jesus taught just more than being a good person he taught about poverty as many as the Prophets did, Nicherin Daishonin Buddha, Moses was enslaved, thats the Secularist part of the bible, taking from the rich and giving to the poor

But, make no mistake about it the Fundamentalist are the Richest people like slave owners and Billionaires, like Televangelist and Trump, not the ordinary people, but the Pope and Billy Graham were exceptions to this rule everyone listen to they're Fundamental philosophy

Jefferson said to Blks and females before the 15th and 20 th  Amendment whom were property and Jews whom were enslaved by Egyptians and Hitler if God didn't want you to be free or not in the 10 Amendments then you're not free or rights reserved to states, but Jefferson did talk about Greed of Banks and Corporations like D's do now, Dixiecrat mean Liberal on Economy raising taxes but Fundamentalists on treating females and Minorities as Property not people

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

I can't seem to recall where I read this, but there was an essay by Haidt or some other social psychologist a while back that I thought made a pretty compelling case for moral self-licensing being an especial problem in the Evangelical community. This isn't the same thing as Evangelicals "being less moral", of course, but it's something to consider.

[John Dule]

28 - 34% of Atlas users are gay. How do I know that? Simple intuition.

[Samof94]

I can't seem to recall where I read this, but there was an essay by Haidt or some other social psychologist a while back that I thought made a pretty compelling case for moral self-licensing being an especial problem in the Evangelical community. This isn't the same thing as Evangelicals "being less moral", of course, but it's something to consider.

Like the whole Tammy Faye Baker thing.

[Benjamin Frank]

"Nothing in history has done more to turn people away from Christianity than organized religion. The religious elite has got this idea that somehow their sins aren’t as bad as everyone else’s" - Jerry Falwell Jr to Vanity Fair

[James Monroe]

"Nothing in history has done more to turn people away from Christianity than organized religion. The religious elite has got this idea that somehow their sins aren’t as bad as everyone else’s" - Jerry Falwell Jr to Vanity Fair

His father is the root cause of the downfall of America. When such con-men perpetuated politicians with empty promises the public work up and saw the light, at least the bright ones. This was the end of of Christianity grudge hold on American society, when people saw it was nothing more than a man-made organization with a history of homophobia, misogyny, and racism against the minorities of the country.  Why else would a person be against same sex marriage, the right to choice, and accepting vaccines if there wasn't some guy dressed in suits telling on Sunday morning the secular elite was out to get you and your baby.

Christian nationalism right now is a threat to the democracy and well being of every American. Qanon has spouted dangerous views that will continue to be the popular majority in the Republican Party. Those who say it is just 2008 New Atheist talking points are just deluding themselves with the secular community creating a straw man or they are religious and don't want tone held accountable for all the atrocious of the faith they hold dearly in the past. When it's all said and done, eventual more people are going to realize religion is the greatest trouble facing the progress of mankind, and will continue until the Bible and Koran go the way of Zeus.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Yes, given their hypocrisy most are. Christianity itself is not inherently immoral (on the contrary) but actual Christian values are someone like John Bel Edwards (anti-abortion but also pro-health care, social services, and opposed to the death penalty).

[Samof94]

"Nothing in history has done more to turn people away from Christianity than organized religion. The religious elite has got this idea that somehow their sins aren’t as bad as everyone else’s" - Jerry Falwell Jr to Vanity Fair

His father is the root cause of the downfall of America. When such con-men perpetuated politicians with empty promises the public work up and saw the light, at least the bright ones. This was the end of of Christianity grudge hold on American society, when people saw it was nothing more than a man-made organization with a history of homophobia, misogyny, and racism against the minorities of the country.  Why else would a person be against same sex marriage, the right to choice, and accepting vaccines if there wasn't some guy dressed in suits telling on Sunday morning the secular elite was out to get you and your baby.

Christian nationalism right now is a threat to the democracy and well being of every American. Qanon has spouted dangerous views that will continue to be the popular majority in the Republican Party. Those who say it is just 2008 New Atheist talking points are just deluding themselves with the secular community creating a straw man or they are religious and don't want tone held accountable for all the atrocious of the faith they hold dearly in the past. When it's all said and done, eventual more people are going to realize religion is the greatest trouble facing the progress of mankind, and will continue until the Bible and Koran go the way of Zeus.

Jihadism became popular partially as a reaction to a fear of communism, given they often cclosed mosques.

[LabourJersey]

"Nothing in history has done more to turn people away from Christianity than organized religion. The religious elite has got this idea that somehow their sins aren’t as bad as everyone else’s" - Jerry Falwell Jr to Vanity Fair

The irony of Jerry Falwell Jr. of all people railing against the hypocrisy of the religious elite in the US is truly something else.

[they don't love you like i love you]

I was musing recently that if you did want to cite an actual somewhat realistic example of what a Christian fundamentalist regime would look like from a work of fiction, the regime in the film version of V For Vendetta is a FAR better example than The Handmaid's Tale, even if it's both quite different from the graphic novel and completely missed the point of what the graphic novel was about, and a fairly laughable premise that fundamentalist Christians would ever be capable of seizing power in Britain of all places.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Also he has no clear cut definition of a "Christian Nationalist", he says something about "follow the Great Commission, not the Great Commandment", which is an utterly LAUGHABLE false dichotomy and also would include liberal Christians as well. If a church has any type of outreach programs, and accepts and baptizes new members, then it's a Christian Nationalist one per this definition.

I noticed this as well. I'm not sure why I didn't remark on it back before the thread was bumped. It's utterly absurd. I have it on good (albeit anecdotal) authority that there is a serious problem with the segment of NCOs and junior commissioned officers who are conservative Evangelicals being very conservative Evangelicals indeed (particularly in the Air Force and the Marine Corps, even though those branches aren't especially similar sociopolitically otherwise), but if this is representative of their messaging then I'm not convinced of their ability to get the danger here across to the general public--a common problem among people who are trying to get the country to take January 6 and the subcultures that incubated it seriously.

[jojoju1998]

White SOUTHERN Evangelicals.... sure.

It should be noted that in the first 100 years or so of the History of the US, the least religious region was actually the South. But it was also quite a immoral region.

[jojoju1998]

Also; not all Evangelicals should be put in the same basket.

A Church of the Nazarene person is less biblically literalist than say a Baptist person. We also have to consider that White Evangelicalism is actually shrinking, and Trump voters are LESS likely to attend church.

The growing number of " Evangelical " Christians are actually immigrants. Koreans. Hispanics. just go onto the Fuller Seminary website, and look at their faculty. Fuller is one of the largest evangelical seminaries in the US.

Jerry Falwell isn't in trend anymore. He never was in the broader evangelical movement.

And they're also less likely to vote Republican, or at all.

[jojoju1998]

We take a look at the white supremacy issue ( Which I agree is a huge issue ), and it is dominant among white evangelicals. The issue is, Evangelicals as I said are getting more diverse. A lot of the new " Evangelicals " arrived as outsiders to the whole Jerry Falwell/Fundamentalist thing. Immigrants.

" As American studies professor Janelle Wong’s work has revealed, only 37 percent of Asian American evangelicals voted for Trump, and Asian American evangelicals are considerably more liberal than white evangelicals on many other political issues. (Wong identifies two notable exceptions: abortion and homosexuality.)

These discrepancies reflect our immigration history. Since most Asian American Christians came to this country after the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, we do not have the same ax to grind against social justice. In the Asian American communities of my spiritual upbringing, evangelicalism was not a term of great interest. We understood ourselves simply as Christian. It was primarily in white Christian communities that the term carried so much weight, and it often operated as a marker against something, namely liberals who care about justice at the expense of orthodox doctrine.

There are thus resonances between Asian American evangelicals and Black Protestants who, having been excluded from white Christian communities, observed the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy as a squabble between white liberals and white conservatives. Black Protestants match or exceed white evangelicals in theological conservatism and religious activity but they vote as Democratic as white evangelicals vote Republican. The dividing differences between white evangelicals and black Protestants are not doctrine or piety. They are social and political. "

https://www.asianamericanchristiancollaborative.com/article/what-difference-will-asian-american-christians-make

We are in very interesting times. The US is finally having the Western Crisis of Religion, that swamped Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s. At the same time; we have these new evangelicals who stand outside of the Western-European-American debates. And they're growing. How this will change the politics in this country, I don't know. The White Evangelical-Southern Baptist people aren't realizing it. So doesn't the secular left ( who are quite frankly mostly white as well ).

It's the same trend happening in the Catholic Church. The Next Pope might be from India, Africa, the Philippines, going outside of the Euro-American bubble. That's going to be game changing.

The President of the National Association of Evangelicals is Walter Kim; a second generation Asian American. https://www.walterkim.org

[jojoju1998]

"Nothing in history has done more to turn people away from Christianity than organized religion. The religious elite has got this idea that somehow their sins aren’t as bad as everyone else’s" - Jerry Falwell Jr to Vanity Fair

His father is the root cause of the downfall of America. When such con-men perpetuated politicians with empty promises the public work up and saw the light, at least the bright ones. This was the end of of Christianity grudge hold on American society, when people saw it was nothing more than a man-made organization with a history of homophobia, misogyny, and racism against the minorities of the country.  Why else would a person be against same sex marriage, the right to choice, and accepting vaccines if there wasn't some guy dressed in suits telling on Sunday morning the secular elite was out to get you and your baby.

Christian nationalism right now is a threat to the democracy and well being of every American. Qanon has spouted dangerous views that will continue to be the popular majority in the Republican Party. Those who say it is just 2008 New Atheist talking points are just deluding themselves with the secular community creating a straw man or they are religious and don't want tone held accountable for all the atrocious of the faith they hold dearly in the past. When it's all said and done, eventual more people are going to realize religion is the greatest trouble facing the progress of mankind, and will continue until the Bible and Koran go the way of Zeus.

https://www.lsu.edu/research/news/2020/1109-unchurched.php

". Now, new research shows Christian nationalist support of Trump isn’t tied to religious institutions or attending church on a regular basis. Instead, it’s tied to not attending church."

"First, how Christian nationalism can be seen as an aspect of a larger populist ethos of victimization, embattlement, and resentment. Trump received significant support from alienated Americans who appear to be disengaged from religious congregations and other social institutions. Second, how Christian nationalist rhetoric can indicate nostalgia or be used as a veil for increasingly unpopular opinions, such as racial bias or anti-LGBTQ views. Referencing previous research, the authors write that “many Americans now feel that they are victimized for expressing traditional values concerning marriage, sexuality, and gender identity.”
 
Detachment from religious communities can also intensify conservative attitudes."

"  In some ways, Trump is actually the perfect candidate for people who aren’t very religiously observant yet have Christian nationalist sentiments. He may have attracted unchurched Christian nationalist voters because he uses pro-Christian language but is himself not personally religiously observant.”"