The week's most popular post caused quite a bit of discussion and debate among the GOOD community. A collaboration between GOOD and Column Five Media, Transparency: America's Wealthiest Religions illustrates a comparison between the income levels of major religious groups and the national average income.Twelve religions were represented, as well as an "Other" and "Unaffiliated" category. After seeing that the infographic shows that 46% of followers of the Jewish faith make over $100,000 annually, joshisjosh commented, "Dammit, that's it, I'm converting…where is the nearest synagogue? I'm ready to be a chosen person."The bulk of debate stemmed from the graphic's grouping choices, as ripvan80 noted, "A bad graphic that will feed anti-Semitic feelings. You lump together all Jews in one column, but they have many sects and denominations. You split up Christians into several columns, but if you combine them, as the Jews are, then Christians + Catholics + Mormons have 82% of the incomes over $100,000."Sam Ellens later commented, "As far as those of you who are complaining about jews being lumped and christians being separated...there are 6.5 million jews and 235 million christians in america. There are less jews than members of mainline christian denominations. And it's not like the Christians will suddenly rival jews if put together - the overall average would obviously be between the lowest and highest percentages of the listed denominations."Other commenters hoped for more information. Commenter yvonnewilber, for example, said, "I would like to see percentage of income given to charity for each group" and sodapopinski wrote, "I'd be curious to see the stats on Scientoloty. Are there any poor Scientologists, or are they all just Hollywood folks?" Are there more religion-based infographics you'd like to see illustrated in the future?
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