Survey Finds Church-Going Americans Less Tolerant
Sat Jan 22, 2005 06:37 PM ET
By Michael Conlon
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Church-going Americans have grown increasingly
intolerant in the past four years of politicians making compromises on
such hot issues as abortion and gay rights, according to a survey
released on Saturday.
At the same time, those polled said they were growing bolder about
pushing their beliefs on others -- even at the risk of offending
someone.
The trends could indicate that religion has become "more prominent in
American discourse ... more salient," according to Ruth Wooden,
president of Public Agenda, a nonpartisan research organization which
released the survey.
It could also indicate "more polarized political thinking. There do
not seem to be very many voices arguing for compromise today," she
said in an interview. "It could be that more religious voices feel
under siege, pinned against the wall by cultural developments. They
may feel more emboldened as a result."
The November U.S. election saw voters in a number of states back gay
marriage bans, and President Bush won re-election with heavy support
from fellow religious conservatives.
The findings came from a telephone survey of 1,507 adults made in 2000
and a second similar survey of 1,004 adults done during the summer of
2004 that tracked the same issues. It had a margin of error of plus or
minus 3 percentage points.
Those surveyed were nearly all Christians, not by design but because
the sample reflected the makeup of the population, the group said. A
2002 Pew Research Council survey found that 82 percent of the U.S.
populace considered itself to be Christian, while 10 percent
identified with no religious group.
On the question of whether elected officials should set their
convictions aside to get results in government, 84 percent agreed in
2000. However, four years later that had dropped to 74 percent. There
was a sharper decline on the same question among weekly church-goers
from 82 percent in the first survey to 63 percent in the second.
About 40 percent of Americans claim to be weekly church-goers,
according to Corwin Smidt, director of the Henry Institute for the
Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College in Michigan. Some
surveys have placed the figure at 25 percent.
In the survey, 32 percent of those who attended church once a week
said they were willing to compromise on abortion issues -- a 19-point
drop in four years. Among the same group the question of compromising
beliefs on gay rights was acceptable to only 39 percent, down 18
points from 2000.
The poll also found that 37 percent overall felt that deeply religious
people should be careful not to offend anyone when they "spread the
word of God," a decline from 46 percent four years earlier.
The number of those who felt that committed faithful should spread the
word "whenever they can" rose to 41 percent, up 6 points.
On another issue, the survey found little change in opinion on whether
the U.S. political system can handle greater interaction between
religion and politics. Asked if there was a threat if religious
leaders and groups got a lot more involved in politics, 63 percent in
2000 and 61 percent in 2004 said the system could "easily handle" it.
But the remainder continue to believe the system would be threatened.
---
Stop Elmer Fudd web site: http://www.ElmerFudd.US/
Covert text file server: http://www.notserver.com/
Scientology crooks: http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/otiii-gif.html
.
|
