CHANGE: Liberal churches are dying. But conservative churches are thriving.

Mainline Protestant churches are in trouble: A 2015 report by the Pew Research Center found that these congregations, once a mainstay of American religion, are now shrinking by about 1 million members annually. Fewer members not only means fewer souls saved, a frightening thought for some clergy members, but also less income for churches, further ensuring their decline.

Faced with this troubling development, clergy members have made various efforts to revive church attendance. It was almost 20 years ago that John Shelby Spong, a U.S. bishop in the Episcopalian Church, published his book “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” It was presented as an antidote to the crisis of decline in mainline churches. Spong, a theological liberal, said congregations would grow if they abandoned their literal interpretation of the Bible and transformed along with changing times.

Spong’s general thesis is popular with many mainline Protestants, including those in the United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian (U.S.A.) and Episcopal churches. Spong’s work has won favor with academics, too. Praising Spong’s work specifically, Karen L. King of Harvard Divinity School said in a review of Spong’s book that it “should be required reading for everyone concerned with facing head-on the intellectual and spiritual challenges of late-twentieth-century religious life.” Harvard Divinity professor and liberal theologian Harvey Cox said “Bishop Spong’s work is a significant accomplishment,” and indeed, Cox himself has long been at the task of shifting Christianity to meet the needs of the modern world. Thus, liberal theology has been taught for decades in mainline seminaries and preached from many mainline pulpits. Its enduring appeal to embattled clergy members is that it gives intellectual respectability to religious ideas that, on the surface, might appear far-fetched to modern audiences.

But the liberal turn in mainline churches doesn’t appear to have solved their problem of decline.

Well, churches with strong beliefs give people something to believe in. Also, I wonder if James Taranto’s “Roe Effect” or something like it is at work here: One of the main ways people join a church is by being born into it, and Gentry Liberals have fewer children. And I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the New Testament about the importance of “intellectual respectability” in terms of spreading the gospel.

Plus:

For example, because of their conservative outlook, the growing church clergy members in our study took Jesus’ command to “Go make disciples” literally. Thus, they all held the conviction it’s “very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians,” and thus likely put effort into converting non-Christians. Conversely, because of their liberal leanings, half the clergy members at the declining churches held the opposite conviction, believing it is not desirable to convert non-Christians. Some of them felt, for instance, that peddling their religion outside of their immediate faith community is culturally insensitive.

It should be obvious which of these two convictions is more likely to generate church growth.

Pretty sure there’s no commandment to be culturally sensitive, either.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Unreal: Chuck Schumer Says Intelligence Community May “Get Back At” Trump For Tweet.

MILLENNIALS HARDEST HIT: Cuba Is Actually a Terrible Place to Go. “Call it a millennial thing or the ‘Uber’ effect but I planned my trip to Cuba about 48 hours before my arrival. With a carry-on and a couple friends in tow, I boarded a flight to what seemed like the forbidden city. What I experienced as soon as I landed was the opposite of everything I imagined.”

Plus: “Between one of my friends having the smallest bladder in the universe and my other friend trying to find non-existent wifi, I thought it was time to make an executive decision and go in search of the baggage office. What transpired was beyond comical. We were told by 8 different people that the office was either on the first, second, or third floor. As we set out to find the office, I saw a booth that was titled ‘Information.’ As I walked up and asked where the American Airlines office was, I noticed a group of people in a glass elevator just banging on the door. I quickly ran up to the desk and informed them that I thought people were stuck in the elevator to which the lady just responded, ‘Yes.’ I chose to fight my own battle instead of continuing to try to get help for the people stuck in the elevator.”

CHANGE: First Resolutions of New Congress Backing Israel Get Strong Bipartisan Support.

SECURITY THEATER: The 10 craziest things TSA found in carry-on bags in 2016.

I’m not sure how confiscating “five dead endangered seahorses in a large liquor bottle” makes a flight any safer.

DIGGING THESE BONES UP IS NOT THE BEGINNING OF A SCARY MOVIE, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? Vampire’ Burials Have Been Uncovered in Poland: The skeletons have holes in the spine, most likely from someone nailing the bodies into the ground.

WELL, MY READERS ARE THE BEST PEOPLE, BELIEVE ME: 8 years later the NYT is still looking for Instapundit readers. I mean, who wouldn’t want InstaPundit readers? But if you want them, you should hire some reporters who at least know somebody who owns a truck.

TONY KATZ: The World Needs More Men: Not Boys. Not Social Justice Indoctrinated College Weenies. Men.

IT’S TELLING THAT “MAKE AWESOME, INNOVATIVE NEW PRODUCTS” ISN’T ONE OF THEM: Tim Cook’s New Year’s Resolutions.

HEH: Make the Inaugural Celebrity-Free, suggests Roger Simon.

Endorsed.

STRATEGYPAGE WARS UPDATE: I linked to this late last night, so this is a bump. Jim Dunnigan puts together this long and detailed twice a year.

Sample:

The vast majority of the military related violence and deaths in the world comes from many small wars, insurrections and other lethal conflicts that get little media attention outside where they take place. Some of the underreported wars are not so little but are not noticed by the mass media. While causalities from international terrorism are relatively few, the dead and wounded from all the other wars actually comprise over 80 percent of all the casualties. The Islamic terrorism looms larger because the terrorists threaten attacks everywhere and at any time, putting a much larger population potentially in harm’s way, and the more numerous potential victims are unhappy with that prospect. In the West, and most Moslem nations, Islamic terrorism remains more of a threat than reality. In fact, casualties from terrorist attacks were declining before ISIL and Boko Haram gave them a momentary boost. Most of the victims are in Pakistan, Nigeria, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, where Islamic terrorists have been operating for decades. In all of these places, except for Afghanistan, Islamic terrorism related deaths were down in 2015 and that trend is continuing.

OBAMA PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: U.S. troops operating inside Mosul.

I’m not at all surprised by this, but according to the article this is the first time it has been publicly acknowledged.

ISIS has had more than two years to prepare and fortify their stronghold, and the Iraqis are now faced with clearing more than 200,000 buildings in the city — a process that involves clearing each one from the roof, through every room and closet, and down into the tunnels between the structures.

Dorrian described the current fight in the eastern part of the city as “extraordinarily dangerous,” adding later that once the Iraqis cross the river and enter the west it is going to be a “very tough fight there as well.”

THE AGE OF TRUMP IS AN ERA OF MIRACLES: New Organ In Human Body Identified.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Reinventing The Liberal Arts: College In One Year For $5.

FUTURE UNCERTAIN: Faraday Future’s FF 91 is an SUV-shaped supercar with a lot of promises to keep.

Faraday Future unveiled the FF 91, its first production EV, at CES in Las Vegas Tuesday night. Unlike the fantasy racecar at last year’s show, the FF 91 (pronounced “nine-one”) actually moved and drove—drove itself, parked itself, and did 0-60 in 2.39 seconds live onstage (with a driver). Also unlike last year’s car, Faraday has plans for the FF 91, including the production of 300 limited editions in March and mass production sometime in 2018.

What was like last year’s show was the raft of big promises. The FF 91 is “the first of a new species,” said Nick Sampson, senior vice president of R&D and engineering. Sampson and other Faraday Future presenters heralded the FF 91’s unparalleled intelligence, cutting-edge design, fast charging, and pure, raw speed. They even promised a mobility ecosystem where the car would provide connectivity, convenience, and customization to enhance the user’s driving experience.

It’s certainly impressive on video. But as Apple, Google, and even Tesla are learning, mass automobile production is hard.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Why I Left a Polygamist Colony but Stayed in My Plural Marriage. “Sometimes when the kids say they have two moms other kids think that we’re lesbians.”

THE INTERNET OF DIRTY THINGS: Amazon’s Alexa Mistakes Children’s Song for Porn Request.

I’m a gadget nerd and an early adopter, but I won’t have one of these things in my house.

YOU CAN GET 30 DAYS OF FREE HBO at Amazon Channels.

SHALE SUPPORTS AMERICAN FAMILIES: “On average, counties with more production have household wages that are 8 per cent higher and house prices that are 6 per cent higher than in areas with less activity.”

THIS IS WHAT A HOSTILE EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT CONSTITUTING SEX DISCRIMINATION LOOKS LIKE: Male college students to undergo ‘critical self-reflection’ of masculinity. “The University of Wisconsin-Madison is not the only university offering such a program. Many other campuses, both public and private across the nation, now offer programs, trainings, guest lectures and other educational techniques that seek to purge male students of their so-called toxic masculinity.”

It’s also funny to me that if you’re a man who identifies as a woman, the university has nothing critical to say to you, but if you’re a man who identifies as a man they’re happy to tell you that you’re doing it wrong.

YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT: We have mandates because we want preexisting-conditions coverage.

There are two big, important pieces of the Affordable Care Act that will be of concern as Republicans go about replacing it. The first is the so-called individual mandate, which actually isn’t all that much of a mandate but which theoretically requires the great majority of American adults to purchase a federally defined minimum level of health insurance. The second is the rule requiring that insurance companies cover “preexisting conditions,” which mandates that U.S. insurance companies participate in the fantasy that we can insure against events that already have happened.

The preexisting-coverage rule defies economic reality (also space-time reality) and hence is the popular part of the law. The individual mandate is less popular, because people do not like being told what to do by the government, especially if it costs them money.

You can see the obvious problem here.

We have to have an individual mandate because we want a preexisting-coverage mandate.
…
If you want to keep the preexisting-coverage rule — and Republicans say they do — then you are going to end up with Obamacare, or at least a version of it. It might be a slightly better or slightly worse version, but that is what you will have.

If diplomacy is the art of saying “Nice doggie!” until you can find a rock, then conservative politics must become the art of saying “No, voters!” while still beating Democrats.

You can see the obvious problem here, too.

AN APP TO FIGHT drowsy driving. “If you get up at six in the morning on New Year’s Eve and hit the road an hour after the clock tolls midnight, you’ll be up for 19 hours straight. No matter when you went to bed, that means you’ve slept only five hours in the past 24, making you as good as drunk, according to a recent study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.”

GUT FEELING: Scientists confirm a ‘new’ human organ.

For centuries, the mesentery (which links the intestine to the abdomen) has been treated as a group of distinct structures in your digestive system. It wasn’t anything special. However, the medical world now has to rethink that belief. Scientists recently determined that the mesentery is really one, cohesive entity — that’s right, they confirmed the existence of a ‘new’ organ. Researchers first discovered the continuous nature of the mesentery through microscopic examinations in 2012, but the past few years have shown that it has enough function to be considered an organ.

This doesn’t mean that the scientific community understands exactly what the mesentery does. With that in mind, the very act of classifying it as an organ should have a far-reaching impact. On a basic level, it’s shaking up education. The medical field had to update its definitive Gray’s Anatomy textbook to account for the new findings, and students are already learning about the mesentery as a matter of course.

More importantly, it’s opening up a line of inquiry that hadn’t been available before — it’s a “whole new area of science,” the discovery team’s J. Calvin Coffey says. If scientists can learn more about how the mesentery interacts with the digestive system, they could develop better treatments for diseases and identify conditions that are specific to this part of the body.

It’s unusual to wake up one day to learn you have an organ you never knew you had before.

HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM: For University Endowments, There’s No Time like the Present.

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump argued that requiring wealthy universities to spend more of their endowment funds on tuition aid would reduce students’ financial burdens.

Whether implementing that idea—which has floated around Congress since 2008—would lower college costs on the whole is doubtful. And, in my view, the federal government is already meddling too much in university policies.

Nevertheless, Trump raised an important issue when he discussed endowment spending at a campaign stop in September. Universities, by hoarding their donations, may not be serving the best interests of students and benefactors.

To unpack this issue, I would like to ask a fundamental question: why do universities have endowments, anyway?

A few years ago Vance Fried, an Oklahoma State University professor of entrepreneurship, addressed that question and found few satisfactory answers.

He concluded that there are just two legitimate reasons for a university endowment—a school needs a “rainy day” fund (within reason; not a fund worth billions of dollars), and sometimes donors want their gifts to produce income in perpetuity.

But otherwise an endowment, which spends only a small percentage of its income each year, accomplishes less for a university’s mission than would making investments in education today—through scholarships, tuition reductions, research, or hiring professors. Currently, many endowments hold back millions—and at some elite schools, billions—of dollars for the future. . . .

President-elect Trump and analysts such as Fried are not alone in their belief that endowments should provide more immediate payoffs. Earlier this year, Senator Orrin Hatch and U.S. Representatives Kevin Brady and Peter J. Roskam, citing the apparent disconnect between schools’ having large endowments and tuition increases “far in excess of inflation,” asked 56 well-off colleges for details about their endowments. The responses, while often elaborate, revealed only vague justifications for them.

There are a lot of potential reforms here. Cap university presidents’ pay at the level of a Supreme Court Justice, cap tuition at schools receiving federal aid, require schools to spend at least 5% of their endowment per year on student assistance, limit the ratio of administrators to full-time teaching faculty: The possibilities are mind-boggling.

CHANGE? Senator Cruz, Rep. DeSantis Introduce Constitutional Amendment to Impose Term Limits.

I once opposed term limits on philosophical grounds, but as a practical matter they’ve become an absolute necessity.