Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Introduction Social scientists cite any number of indicators to illustrate that Americans’ level of civic engagement is on the decline. Membership in organizations whose health may be seen as an indicator of strong community involvement—such as the Parent-Teachers Association (PTA)—has declined steadily over the past several decades.[3.numoffset=”3″ Robert D. Putnam, op. cit. p. 57. About […]
A general portrait of wired teens “I multi-task every single second I am online. At this very moment, I am watching TV, checking my email every two minutes, reading a newsgroup about who shot JFK, burning some music to a CD and writing this message.” — 17-year-old boy Introduction The Internet is the telephone, television, […]
Friendship and the Internet Many American youth say that Internet communication, especially instant messaging, has become an essential feature of their social lives. For them, face-to-face interaction and some telephone conversations have been partially replaced with email and instant message communication. Relationships that once might have withered are now nourished by the ease and speed […]
National Press Club Washington, D.C. A discussion with: Jean Bethke Elshtain, Professor, University of Chicago and Co-chair, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life Professor Elshtain is a political philosopher whose task has been to show the connections between our political and our ethical convictions. Her works include Augustine and the Limits of Politics and […]
Washington, D.C. E.J. DIONNE, JR., MODERATOR: Welcome everyone. We have an incredibly impressive audience. I don’t know if you’ve seen the list. Not only put together a good panel, but many of you folks in the audience know more about this field than I do and lots of other people in our country. And I’m […]
The conventional wisdom that President Bush is benefiting from bad news about Bill Clinton is on increasingly shaky ground as the controversies over Mr. Clinton’s pardons grow rather than abate. If anything, as Mr. Bush finds himself vying with his predecessor for public attention, he is losing precious time to establish public support for his […]
What spiritual leaders do online Much of the journalism on religion and the Internet to date points out that the Internet gives the site visitor a sense of anonymity – that seekers, particularly those not deeply connected to particular churches or synagogues, may be more willing to go to the Internet than to actually set […]
The small amount of public, scholarly, and press attention paid to religion and the Internet has mostly centered on people’s spiritual experiences online and on the emergence of religious portals such as Beliefnet.org, which provide comprehensive menus of information about different faiths, articles and commentary about spirituality, prayer rooms, church-finding search engines, and a host […]