Recently there has been some comment here about Ralph Reed departing the Christian Coalition for greener pastures as a more secular lobbyist in DC. Steven Glass comments on this in his article "After the fall" in the New Republic for May 26, 1997, pp 14-16. Glass' point is that Ralphie baby is hauling arse while the getting is good.

The Christian Coalition sends its mag Christian American to everybody dumb enough to contribute at least $15. In 1995, when the CC was claiming a membership of more than 1.7 million, post office records show that it mailed out only 310,296 copies of the mag. The group's reported contributions for that year were $18.7 million, down $2.5 million from the year before, yet they would have us believe that their membership is going up all the time. Today, they claim a membership of 1.9 million.

We all know from what we read here that pi = 3 and that christians make up 2/3 of the world's population: now we learn that 0.3 million = 1.7 million. Perhaps Christians ought to stay away from numbers entirely for the good of their souls.