BOO!

She relates to Tom Cruise, who has taken endless flak for being a Scientologist. “If it makes Tom Cruise happy, I don’t care if he prays to turtles,” Madonna says. “And I don’t think anybody else should.”

“I’m not thinking of quitting,” she says with a big laugh. “I ain’t going nowhere.”

Not so the Protestants. The bottom is dropping out.

After decades of Protestant stability, pollsters chart a dramatic nose dive since 1993 among people who identify themselves as Protestant (the group including Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Holiness, Disciples of Christ, Congregationalist and, in this survey, Mormon).

Among the reasons: a continuing hemorrhage of liberal mainline church membership, defections by young people who were raised Protestant and fewer youths getting any religious training at all.

In other words, Happy Deformation Day!