Accord­ing to a new poll by AP-NORC Cen­ter for Pub­lic Affairs Research, “Peo­ple with­out a reli­gious affil­i­a­tion lack faith in orga­nized reli­gion, not in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.” A key find­ing: “30% describe them­selves as hav­ing no reli­gious affil­i­a­tion. But about half of them, 54%, still con­sid­er them­selves as spir­i­tu­al, reli­gious, or both.” The top rea­sons for dis­sat­is­fac­tion are dis­agree­ment with the polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al stances of reli­gious groups, a dis­like of orga­nized reli­gion, and abuse and mis­con­duct by church lead­ers. That works out to some­thing like 50 mil­lion peo­ple who might be recep­tive to a dif­fer­ent kind of spir­i­tu­al home.

The Dar­by (Pa.) Meet­ing­house has been rec­og­nized by the Nation­al Park Ser­vice for its Under­ground Rail­road his­to­ry. The self-emancipating escapees deserve the most recog­ni­tion but I’m glad Friends could pro­vide some cov­er. I don’t think it’s easy to defin­i­tive­ly doc­u­ment an UGRR stop (the activ­i­ties were of course secret) so I’m hap­py to see the meet­ing get it.

The Octo­ber issue of Friends Jour­nal looks at Ecu­meni­cal and Inter­faith Friends. We were a bit over-ambitious, per­haps, with four­teen fea­ture arti­cles. The first fea­tured arti­cle being shared comes from my friend Peter Blood-Patterson, Many Paths to the Light: Quak­er Uni­ver­sal­ism and Inter­faith Sol­i­dar­i­ty.