I was baptized 5 times in 5 different churches by the time I was a teen. 5 times dipped into icy cold water. By the fifth time, in a small Baptist church in Toledo, I had pretty much decided the whole affair was ridiculous. The first baptism came as a child at the Catholic church when I was 6 years old.
According to the Pew Research article, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, “87% of African-Americans describing themselves as belonging to one religious group or another, according to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted in 2007 by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life. Latinos also report affiliating with a religion at a similarly high rate of 85%; among the public overall, 83% are affiliated with a religion.” This is perhaps the most successful religious brainwashing of one group over another in recorded history.
