Teens Avoiding Even Youth Groups » August 10, 2010

“Bye-bye church. We’re busy.” That’s the message teens are giving churches today. Only about one in four teens now participate in church youth groups, considered the hallmark of involvement; numbers have been flat since 1999. Other measures of religiosity — prayer, Bible reading and going to church — lag as well, according to Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif., evangelical research company. This all has churches canceling their summer teen camps and youth pastors looking worriedly toward the fall, when school-year youth groups kick in.   – USA Today

National Review Online  August 20, 2010

Radical Islam … has changed the course of nations and affected the lives of millions. It is the reason every airport in the West is an armed camp and every land is on constant alert. Ground Zero is the site of the most lethal attack of that worldwide movement, which consists entirely of Muslims, acts in the name of Islam, and is deeply embedded within the Islamic world. These are regrettable facts, but facts they are. And that is why putting up a monument to Islam in this place is not just insensitive but provocative.