New Zealand’s new
prime minister agnostic
Jacinda Ardern, the head of New Zealand’s
Labour Party, is set to become the
country’s next
prime minister.
She is a former
Mormon who
became an agnostic
in her
20s.
Ardern, 37,
will be the
youngest leader
in New Zealand
in more
than 150 years.
A staunch feminist, Ardern refused to
answer whether she has considered having
children, saying no male politician
would be forced to answer that question.
She said that she left Mormonism
because of its anti-gay prejudice. “Even
before the Civil Union Bill came up,
I lived in a flat with three gay friends
and I was still going to church every so
often, and I just remember thinking
‘This is really inconsistent — I’m either
doing a disservice to the church or my
friends,’” she said.
It's not only possible, it's inevitable.
Good without God? More
are saying it’s possible
Most U.S. adults now say it is not
necessary to believe in God to be moral
and have good values, according to the
Pew Research Center.
The latest survey shows that 56 percent
of Americans believe you can be
good without God, up 7 percentage
points since the last survey in 2011.
Pew also reports that almost every religious
group is more likely to say you
don’t need God to be good than they
did in 2011.
According to the Pew report, “This
increase reflects the continued growth
in the share of the population that
has no religious affiliation, but it also
is the result of changing attitudes
among those who do identify with a
religion, including white evangelical
Protestants.”
The growth in the share of Americans
who say belief in God is unnecessary
for morality aligns with the growth
in the share of the population that is
religiously unaffiliated. In the 2011
Pew survey, religious “nones” constituted
18 percent of the sample. In 2017,
the share of “nones” rose to 25 percent.
He's got them snookered. No Moore, please!
Roy Moore gets $180K
per year from charity
Former Alabama Supreme Court
Justice Roy Moore, a Republican candidate
for U.S. Senate, once said publicly
that he did not take a “regular salary”
from the small charity he founded to
promote Christian values because he
did not want to
be a financial
burden.
But privately,
Moore had
arranged to
receive a salary
of $180,000 a
year for part-time
work at
the Foundation
for Moral
Law, internal
charity documents
show. He collected more than $1
million as president from 2007 to 2012,
compensation that far surpassed what
the group disclosed in its public tax filings
most of those years.
When the charity couldn’t afford the
full amount, Moore in 2012 was given a
promissory note for back pay eventually
worth $540,000 or an equal stake of the
charity’s most valuable asset, a historic
building in Montgomery, Ala., mortgage
records show. He holds that note
even now, a charity official said.
from FFRF
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