Geoff W. Sutton Blog

The news about a college closing got my attention. I had a friend who attended the soon-to-be-closed MacMurray ( CNBC ). The cost of a college degree has consumed more and more of the limited budgets available to all but wealthy Americans. In recent years, student loans were cheap and easy to come by. And the payback of loans seemed so far away as undergraduates embarked on four years of fun— often not affordable by their parents or grandparents who attended local colleges or none at all. Of course, there always were serious students who needed a college degree to enter their chosen career. We'll still need higher education as along as advanced knowledge and skills are necessary to success in one career or another. INFLATED ENTRY REQUIREMENTS The idea of career entry requirements has been inflated as though those making the rules for licenses and certifications were connected to higher education and stood to profit from them. Take my profession of psycholog...

What are people praying about?  When it comes to the most popular topics of prayer among the 27 millions of UK adults who say they pray, family (71%) leads the way, followed by thanking God (42%), praying for healing (40%) and friends (40%). Worldwide issues, such as praying for global poverty or natural disasters, rank seventh on the list (24%), highlighting the challenge for Tearfund to encourage more people to pray for issues of extreme poverty. ( Tearfund , 2018)  Why pray? Among those who pray, half (49%) agree that God hears their prayers and two in five (39%) agree that prayer changes the world. Praying also makes people feel better, with those who do so most likely to say they feel reassured or hopeful after having prayed (40% say this). ( Tearfund , 2018) Ad. Get help with Creating Surveys Available on AMAZON  More results from Tearfund One in five (20%) UK adults say they pray regularly (at least once a month). While 51% of U...

Hero is a word often used nowadays, but in this extraordinary year there is a convergence of historic events giving many thoughtful people pause for reflection. I am writing this on Memorial Day in the USA, so it is natural to think about those warriors who died in service to a nation whose defenders made a significant difference in two global wars in the first half of the last century. Cemeteries in the US and on foreign soil are eternal reminders of the sacrifice of young Americans. We do well to honor them and their families. How we honor those who died fighting for us says as much about us and our values as it does about those who died. I hold these Americans in high esteem because of their tremendous contribution to ending the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime on my family and nation. So, this Memorial Day takes on more importance as we celebrated the 75 th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day just a couple of weeks ago (8 May). It is the very horror of t...

Dawn French, Vicar of Dibley, BBC TV Survey results from Tearfund as reported in The Guardian  and CoE data indicate an increase in religious practices during the Covid-19 lockdown. Psychologists will recognize this as consistent with Terror Management Theory as people become more conservative when death awareness increases. The CoE reported 6,000 people called a prayerline during its first two days. The CHURCHTIMES provides some results Among the respondents who said that they prayed more than once a month, the largest age bracket were adults aged 18 to 24 (30 per cent), while 25 per cent of adults who prayed more than once a month were aged 55 and over. Adults aged between 18 and 24 were also more likely to pray about the Government’s response to Covid-19 : 25 per cent, compared with 23 per cent of those aged 65 and over, and 15 per cent of those aged 25-64. 34 per cent of the respondents aged 18 to 24 said that they had watched or listened to a religious service ...