I'm back...

from several very hectic weeks.

Check:

• Doug's Health Care Follow-up: Who Do You Believe?, for an insightful look at socialized "healthcare".

• Bonnie's continued feminization series, including Feminization and the church, part VI: the statistics, where she provides statistics, except where she doesn't.

• Ilona picking up, and joining in, on a conversation I was having at Stones Cry Out with an atheist regarding morality and God.

• Jennifer Roback Morse' succinct analysis of marriage and procreation.

Comments

[Bonnie]

Rusty,

(Belated) thanks for the link.

I’m wondering, though, what you meant by your descriptor statement. The point of my post was that statistics, and their use, have their limitations. Some are more reliable than others. I pointed out an example of something that would help explain a certain statistic (which itself was perhaps not entirely reliable) for which statistical evidence wasn’t given, that being the proportion of elderly women in a given congregation, which is a factor given inadequate treatment in Murrow’s book. He would merely lump this in with what he calls evidence for the church’s feminization. Yet, does the presence of a large proportion of elderly women in a congregation qualify as feminization of that congregation? Does mere presence of females in greater proportion to males qualify as feminization? Or is there more to the issue of feminization, the health of churches, and the faith of people in America? These questions are the context in which my post on statistics was written.

If the above definition of “feminization” was where the discussion stopped, I’d be okay, to a point, with calling a disproportion of females to males in a church congregation “feminization.” But it doesn’t stop there, by a long shot. Murrow (and many others) takes his statistical ball and runs with it to the next county.

So, if “except where she doesn’t” refers to the fact that I didn’t quote statistics on the proportion of elderly women in church congregations, then I’d have to say that you’ve missed my point.

[ilona]

I am glad that you are one of the elite few who link to me. that conversation went pretty slowly- I have to check back on it myself....