Faith Digest

Bible museum settles on site. Planners of a Bible museum in Washington, D.C., closed a $50 million deal on a building two blocks from the National Mall. The Museum of the Bible, a nonprofit group planning the museum, announced it will be housed at 300 D Street, SW, in what is now the Washington Design Center, a series of showrooms of luxury home furnishings. The museum, which likely will open in 2016, will highlight the collection of the billionaire Green family of Oklahoma. That collection features more than 55,000 items, including biblical artifacts ranging from Dead Sea Scrolls to Torah scrolls that survived the Holocaust. Planners considered Dallas and New York in addition to Washington for the museum site, but research showed people were more interested in traveling to a Bible-focused museum in the nation's capital.

Most Americans would vote for an atheist. For the second time in less than a year, the Gallup poll reports a majority of Americans would vote for an atheist for president. The latest survey, from June, found 54 percent of those asked said they would vote a hypothetical "well-qualified" atheist into the Oval Office—the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 1958, when only 18 percent said they would back a nonbeliever. On the other hand, the survey showed those who do not believe in God still come in behind every other group polled for, including gays and lesbians (68 percent) and Muslims (58 percent).

Catholics agree with bishops, up to a point. A new poll shows American Catholics tend to agree with their bishops' concerns that religious liberties are at risk in the United States. But they seem warm to President Obama, in spite of their bishops' criticisms of his administration in their fight to roll back a federal mandate that requires employers—with some exceptions—to cover birth control in their health plans. The poll, released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, found that among Catholics who are aware of the bishops' protests, 56 percent say they agree with the bishops' concerns, as opposed to 36 percent who disagree. That's stronger than among Americans at large who have heard of the bishops' concerns, where 41 percent agree with the bishops and 47 percent disagree. But when it comes to Catholic voters' presidential preferences, 51 percent say they support or lean toward Obama, and 42 percent back Mitt Romney. The Pew poll of 619 Catholics, taken June 28 to July 9, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.6 percentage points.

No Church of Facebook? A new survey finds Americans, while mostly religious, generally do not use social media to supplement worship and mostly keep their faith private online. The Public Religion Research Institute survey found only about one in 20 Americans followed a religious leader on Twitter or Facebook. A similar number belonged to a religious or spiritual Facebook group. White evangelicals were much more likely to use social media for religious purposes, although only a minority did so. The survey of 1,026 American adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.