We’ve just received an email asking us to clarify our religious affiliation by choosing one of the options on this long and peculiar menu:
NO – None
BP – Baptist
BU – Buddhist
CA – Catholic
CG – Congregational
DC – Disciples of Christ
EP – Episcopal
HI – Hindu
IS – Islam
JE – Jewish
LD – Latter-Day Saints
LU – Lutheran
LW – Other
ME – Methodist
MN – Mennonite
OR – Orthodox
PR – Presbyterian
PT – Other Protestant
OT – Other
UC – United Church of Christ
It’s a pretty standard list used by colleges and other institutions which find it useful to gather aggregate demographic statistics. We’re sure we’ve seen this exact religious run-down before, but for the first time we noticed that while there is just one type of Jewish listed, there are two types of Other. Anyone care to guess what distinguishes one Other from the other Other?
Special bonus question for the salaried, Jumble-loving time-wasters among you: Can you make a sentence using only words formed with the letter groups above?
5 Comments
September 25, 2007 at 12:35 pm
difenitely listed by an x-ian.
silly list….
Why not list:
SU – Sunni islam
SH – Shia islam
ZO – Zorastrian
AS – Ashkenazim jewish
SE – Sephardic jewish
etc, etc etc
October 8, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Ha! The Mennonites make the list! Not the Amish? I guess they don’t host web sites?
October 26, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Perhaps OT – Scientology (Operating Thetan)?
October 27, 2007 at 9:28 pm
What about the Unitarian Universalists?
November 23, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Well, I cheated and looked of Lutheran on Wikipedia (since one of the Others was “LW”), and got lost in an incredibly arcane miasma of theological differences within the Lutheran church. There was a Lutheran World Council….?
Yes, a peculiar list, compiled by someone who’s never heard of the Jains or the Sikhs, let alone less easily classified religions such as animism or Macumba.