From: Gregory Brown Sent: Sunday, April 19,111.1 To: undisclosed-recipients: Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 04/19/2015 Attachments: Untitled attachment 00202.docx; Untitled attachment 00205.docx; Untitled attachment 00208.docx; Ohio Players bio.docx DEAR FRIEND The End of White Christian Am=rica is Approaching In the on-line news magazine Alternet, Brooklyn writer and journalist Amanda Mancotte recently wrote — The a=d of white Christian America is nigh: Why the country's youth are abandoning religious conservatism=— As White Christians are now a minority in 19 states and America's growi=g racial diversity only tells part of the story. New data from the American Values Atlas shows that while Caucasians continue to be the maj=rity in all but 4 states in the country, white Christians are the minority in a whopping 19 states. And, nationwide, Ameri=ans who identify as Protestant are now in the minority for the first time ever, clocking in at a mere 47 percent of Americans and falling. The most obvious reason for this change is growing racial diversity. Most Americans still identify =s Christian, but "Christian" is a group that is less white and less Protestant than it has been at any time in hist=ry. The massive growth in Hispanic Catholics, in particular, has been a major factor in this shift in the ethnic and religious identity of this country. White Catholics used to outnumber Hispanic Catholics 3 to 1 in the 2000s, b=t now it's only by a 2 to 1 margin. =span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:Georgia,serif"><=r> But another major reason religious diversity is outpa=ing the growth of racial/ethnic diversity is largely due to the explosive growth in non-belief among Americans. One in five Americans now identifies as religio=sly unaffiliated. In 13 states, the "nones" are the largest religious group. Non-religious people now equal Catholics i= number, and their proportion is likely to grow dramatic