Almost half those surveyed - 44 percent - agreed that ''Christians get on my nerves.''
But the survey of ''unchurched'' Americans by LifeWay Research also found that some 78 percent said they would be willing to listen to someone who wanted to tell them about his or her Christian beliefs. Researchers, affiliated with the Southern Baptists' LifeWay Christian Resources, defined ''unchurched'' as Christians who haven't attended church in six months as well as non-Christians such as Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists.
The findings echoed a previous study by The Barna Group that found the vast majority of young non-Christians view Christianity as anti-gay, judgmental and hypocritical.
The study was based on an overall sample of 1,402 adults who were interviewed by phone in 2007, including 900 ages 18-29 and 502 age 30 and older. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
- Religion News Service
Airline employee to appeal
case of cross necklace
LONDON - A British Airways employee who was barred from wearing a small Christian cross around her neck while at work has lost her claim against the airline for religious discrimination.
An employment tribunal ruled Jan. 8 that Nadia Eweida had brought the problem on herself when she breached British Airways' dress code regulations, which banned the open wearing of such religious symbols.
Eweida's attorneys, from the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, announced immediately they would appeal the court ruling on grounds that ''Christian employees should not be singled out for discrimination.''
Eweida, 56, works as a check-in worker at London's Heathrow airport. She argued that she, as a Christian, had been ordered to remove her religious jewelry while Muslim and Sikh employees of the airline were permitted to wear headscarves and Kara bangles, respectively.
''It's a form of discrimination against Christians,'' she claimed, and said she was ''very disappointed'' by the tribunal's decision.
''I'm speechless,'' she told journalists, ''because I went to the tribunal to seek justice.''
Eweida testified that she rejected the airline's offer to settle for about about $17,000, saying, ''I cannot be gagged about my faith.''
Meanwhile, the case goes on, and Eweida added, ''it's not over until God says it's over.''
- Religion News Service
Seventh-Day Adventists on trial on fraud charges
LONDON - Four churchgoers have gone on trial in a London court on charges of conning fellow Seventh-Day Adventists out of about $6.3 million through a series of bogus investment schemes.
Prosecutors said the quartet, themselves Seventh-Day Adventists, used their shared religious backgrounds to lure more than 1,000 of their fellow worshippers into phony investments with promises of returns as much as 25 times their original outlay.
The four posed as traders in the British capital's financial district and told their victims ''that money that was obtained from them was going to be invested on their behalf,'' one prosecuting attorney, Stephen Winberg, told Southwark Crown Court.
''It was not,'' Winberg said. ''Hardly any of it was invested.''
Instead, authorities said, the four went on a monumental escapade of ''wild extravagance,'' spending their takings from their scams on luxury cars, vacations, money-laundering and a $100,000-a-day spending spree in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East.
While in Dubai, prosecutors said, the alleged con men - Lindani Mangena, Dean Hinkson, Curtis Powell and Jordan Huie - put down a deposit on a luxury apartment valued at $9.4 million.
At one point during their seven-month scam, police said, the four were raking in so much money that they had to buy a cash-counting machine to keep track of it all.
- Religion News Service
