Religion Briefs
Number of Catholics going to church drops
PRINCETON, N.J. >> Churchgoing among Roman Catholics has dropped significantly as the crisis over priests who molest children has dragged on, according to a survey by the Gallup Organization.The number of Catholics who said they had attended services in the last week fell to 41 percent, compared to 46 percent in the same period in 2001, according to the poll released Dec. 18.
The survey of just over 1,000 adults was conducted between Dec. 9 and Dec. 10, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 7 percentage points.
Gallup said it could not make a direct link between the scandal and the decline in Catholic attendance, partly because Catholic churchgoing started to drop long before the crisis erupted in January.
However, there have been no similar declines in churchgoing among Protestants over the last year, indicating the scandal is partly to blame, the research organization said.
Site where King lived to become a museum
MONTGOMERY, Ala. >> The former Baptist parsonage where a young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lived is undergoing $300,000 in renovations to become a museum.The project is scheduled for completion in 2004, a year before the 50th anniversary of the historic Montgomery bus boycott, which was galvanized by King's pulpit oratory at the church, now known as the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church.
"It was the scene of a lot of the hustle and bustle at the height of the civil rights movement," said the Rev. Michael Thurman, current pastor of the Dexter Avenue congregation.
King and his family lived in the home from 1954 to 1960.
Louisiana board rejects evolution disclaimer
BATON ROUGE, La. >> A state board has rejected a request from evangelical Christians to flag biology textbooks with a disclaimer that the theory of evolution is just that -- a theory, not a fact.A committee of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education had approved the disclaimer proposal earlier in the week, but the full board rejected the panel's recommendation by a 7-3 vote on Dec. 12.
Had the disclaimer been approved, it would have made Louisiana the second state in the nation with such a provision. The other is Alabama.
"I am not prepared to go back to the Dark Ages," said Paul Pastorek, the board's president, who voted against the disclaimer.
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