By Christy Barritt

New Words Admitted into Dictionary

New words have been admitted into the online dictionaries of the Oxford University Press. Words were chosen based on how often they appeared both online and in the media.

One of the new words was binge-watch, which occurs whena person watches a TV series all at once. People who get rid of their old landline phones and only use a cell are known as cord
cutters. Articles that number points from 1 to 10 and contain statistics are called listicles. Another word was vaping, a term used with e-cigarettes.

Not all of these words are guaranteed to end up in the printed edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, however.

Do Americans Want “Under God” Out of Pledge?

A new poll by a secular organization claims that more than one-third of Americans support removing the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.

The survey was done by the American Humanist Association. The organization’s executive director told The
Christian
Post that he felt the unusually high percentage of people supporting the removal of the phrase was, in part, because those doing the survey provided background on the pledge’s history during the poll. For example, survey takers were told that the phrase was absent from the pledge up until the 1950s.

According to the study, of those who supported the removal, 21.4 percent were Christian respondents, 40.9 percent professed different faiths, and 62.7 percent professed no religious affiliation. One thousand American adults were sampled for the study.

Christian Author Gets HGTV Show

A new show called My Big Family Renovation premiered on HGTV in August and featured Christian author and speaker Jen Hatmaker, her husband Brandon, and their five children.

For the TV series, the family sold their old house, which they’d outgrown, and purchased a 100-year-old farmhouse that was a fixer upper. The family has three biological kids and two adopted children from Ethiopia. Brandon is a minister.

Jen speaks frequently about her faith and her family on her blog and in her books. One of her bestselling books is 7:
An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess, which followed her family’s 30-day fasts to combat excessive consumption.

In an interview with Christianity
Today, Jen said that she told HGTV that her family was “super-Christian” before agreeing to sign on for the series. The network, according to the Hatmakers, had no problems with the family’s faith.

Religions Differ on Views of Government Involvement

A new study done by political science professor Tobin Grant found diversity among the religiously minded in the U.S. when it comes to the government’s involvement in economics and morality.

Grant, who works at Southern Illinois University, used data from a Pew Research study to compile his statistics. He analyzed 44 different religious groups.

Among some of the more interesting facts he discovered were: 

• Pentecostals want a larger role for government on economic issues.

• Evangelicals believe in a smaller governmental role in the economy and the importance of protecting morality.

• Christians in traditionally black denominations are similar to evangelicals on the whole in their views toward morality policy but are largely divided on economics.

• The “nones” are united on the ideology toward morality, but there were divides on government services: atheists want more government services, while agnostics favor less government involvement.

Christy Barritt is an award-winning author, freelance writer, and speaker living in Chesapeake, Virginia. She and her husband Scott have two sons.
www.christybarritt.com