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Thanks for listening and thanks for your support at the end of 2023. 23. Well, I suppose this year, 2023, we cannot complain that religion is not in the news when the top religion story for

2023 according to the Religion News Association is distinctly religious incidents of hate against Jews and Muslims skyrocket after

October 7th attack by Hamas against Israel.

Greetings and welcome to issues etc on this Friday afternoon December the 29th I'm Todd

Wilkin thanks for tuning us in we're going to be going through the top religion

news stories for 2023 with Terry Mattingley of Gitt Religion.

In the next hour we'll study the hymn,

Oh God, our help in ages past,

with Pastor Brian Wolfmeller.

Terry Mattingley is senior fellow at the Overby Center

for Southern Journalism and Politics at the University of Mississippi.

He's founder and editor of Get Religion, author of the weekly On Religion column for the Universal

Syndicate and the book Pop Goes Religion. Terry, welcome back.

Glad to be here.

So did the Religion News Association send out its poll results too early this year?

That's a great question.

You know, there's a tradition in Washington that people, if they want to cover up something that's happening to their organization, let's say you are a president who's falling further and further behind in the polls and you fall down a flight of steps outside Air Force One and this is on all the news

and you want to get it off you you announce something big on Friday,

...