Religious Belief Declining

A wide-rangin study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in the 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. Nationally, Catholics remain the largest religious group, with 57 million people saying they belong to the church.

The tradition gained 11 million followers since 1990, but its share of the population fell by about a percentage point to 25 percent.

Christians who aren't Catholic also are a declining segment of the country.

In 2008, Christians compromised 76 percent of U.S. adults, compared to about 77 percent in 2001 and about 86 percent in 1990. Researchers said the dwindling ranks of mainline Protestants, including Methodists, Lutherans, and Episcopalains, largely explaints the shift. Over the last seven years, mainline Protestants dropped from just over 17 percent to 12.9 percent of the population.

Here are the other findings:

• 
  
  The current survey found traditional organized religion playing less of a role in many lives. Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious wedding ceremony and 27 percent of respondents said they did not want a religious funeral.
• About 12 percent of Americans believe in a higher power but not the personal God at the core of monotheistic faiths. And, since 1990, a slightly greater share of respondents - 1.2. percent - said they were part of new religious movements, including Scientology, Wicca, and Santeria.
• The study also found signs of a growing influence of churches that either don't belong to a denomination or play down their membership in a religious group. Researchers also found a small increase in those who prefer being called evangelical or born-again, rather than claim membership in a denomination.
• Evangelical or born-again Americans make up 34 percent of all American adults and 45 percent of all Christians and Catholics, the study found. Researchers found that 18 percent of Catholics consider themselves born-again or evangelical, and nearly 39 percent of mainline Protestants perfer those labels.
• Many mainline Protestants group are driven by conflict over how they should interpret what the Bible says about gay relationships, salvation and other issues.
• The percentage of Pentecostal remained mostly steady since 1990 at 3.5 percent, a surprising finding considering the dramatic spread of the tradition worldwide.
• Mormon numbers also held steady over the period at 1.4 percent of the population, while the number of Jews who described themselves as religiously observant continued to drop, from 1.8 percent in 1990 to 1.2 percent, or 2.7 million people, last year.
• The study found the percentage of Americans who identified themselves as Muslim grew to 0.6 percent of the population, while growth in Eastern religions such as Buddhism slightly slowed. (AP)

Imelda Marcos Among Newsweek's Greediest People of All Time

Former first lady Imelda Marcos has landed in a list of "greediest people of all time" by Newsweek magazine.

Marcos is said to be among the 11 greediest individuals worldwide.

According to Newsweek, Marcos "saw it as her duty to provide ‘some kind of light, a star’ for the impoverished Filipino people over whom her husband presided."

"So she took $5 million shopping sprees to New York and Rome, reportedly owned the world’s largest collections of gems and 3,000 pairs of shoes," noted the magazine.

Marcos was also known for holding extravagant parties for foreign visitors during the reign of her husband, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The term "Imeldific" eventually stemmed from her lavish lifestyle as the word means “ostentatiously extravagant.”

Aside from Marcos, another woman made it to Newsweek’s "greediest of all time" list.

China’s Empress Dowager Cixi was also named "one of the greediest" after being the de facto leader of China for almost 50 years.

Newsweek noted that the Chinese empress had 3,000 jewelry boxes. She even used the navy’s money to "build herself a marble banquet boat, aboard which she ate 150-dish dinners with golden chopsticks."

Meanwhile, rounding up the Greediest List were:

Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus

Genghis Khan

Pope Sixtus IV

Industrialist William H. Vanderbilt

American Politician William M. "Boss" Tweed

Sindler Charles Ponzi

Wall Street Arbitrageur Ivan Boesky

Former Tyco International CEO Dennis Kozlowski

Bernard Madoff

Source: ABS-CBN News

2008 Philippine Bar Exam Results

The 2008 Philippine Bar Exam Results yielded one of the lowest passing rate with 20.58%. A total of 1,310 have passed out of the 6,364 law graduates. The examination was done last September 2008.

Here are the Top 10 bar passers for 2008:

1. Judy Lardizabal San Sebastian College - 85.70%

2. Mylene Amerol Macumbal Mindanao State University - 85.65

3. Oliver Baclay Jr. Ateneo de Manila University – 85.60

4. Majesty Eve Jala, Ateneo de Manila University – 85.55

5. Maria Elizabeth Liceralde, UP Diliman – 85.40

6. Michael Macapagal, UP Diliman – 84.15

7. Denise Dy, Ateneo de Manila University - 84
April Love Regis, Ateneo de Manila University – 84

8. Christine Joy Tan, Ateneo de Manila University– 83.80

9. Jihan Jacob, San Beda College – 83.75

10. Vanessa Raymundo, San Beda College– 83.70

Click here to view list of the successful examinees for 2008 Bar Examinations

"Philippines is a Nation of Servants." - Chip Tsao

"We deserve an apology!" I guess that's how exactly all Makabayang Pinoy like me would want this Hong Kong national Chip Tsao to do after he altered and hurt a heart of million Pinoys here and abroad.

If in case you are still not aware of what I am talking here...let me provide you some parts of Chip's politically incorret article titled "The War at Home" which was published at Hong Kong Online on March 27 where he called Philippines as "nation of servants".

"The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen on board. We can live with that—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That's no big problem—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke.

"But hold on—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: there are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as $3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don't flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.

"As a patriotic Chinese man, the news has made my blood boil. I summoned Louisa, my domestic assistant who holds a degree in international politics from the University of Manila, hung a map on the wall, and gave her a harsh lecture. I sternly warned her that if she wants her wages increased next year, she had better tell every one of her compatriots in Statue Square on Sunday that the entirety of the Spratly Islands belongs to China.

"Grimly, I told her that if war breaks out between the Philippines and China, I would have to end her employment and send her straight home, because I would not risk the crime of treason for sponsoring an enemy of the state by paying her to wash my toilet and clean my windows 16 hours a day. With that money, she would pay taxes to her government, and they would fund a navy to invade our motherland and deeply hurt my feelings.

"Oh yes. The government of the Philippines would certainly be wrong if they think we Chinese are prepared to swallow their insult and sit back and lose a Falkland Islands War in the Far East. They may have Barack Obama and the hawkish American military behind them, but we have a hostage in each of our homes in the Mid-Levels or higher. Some of my friends told me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their maids have been made to shout 'China, Madam/Sir' loudly whenever they hear the word 'Spratly.' They say the indoctrination is working as wonderfully as when we used to shout, 'Long live Chairman Mao!' at the sight of a portrait of our Great Leader during the Cultural Revolution. I'm not sure if that's going a bit too far, at least for the time being."

Chip Tsao is a former BBC reporter and best-selling author and columnist of Apple Daily, Next Magazine at CUP Magazine.