America's Religious Landscape

The Week in Review section of the New York Times had a piece on evangelicals in this country in which it details the tension between tradiationalist, centrists and modernists (available online here). The article appears to be prompted by the latest Pew Forum National Survey of Religion and Politcs.

In brief, 26.3% of Americans are evangelicals who can be broken down into traditionalists (12.6%), centrists (10.8%) and modernists (2.9%). Predictably, the traditionalists are Republican (70%), oppose evolution (93%), believe in Armageddon (77%), support "traditional marriage" exclusively (89%), and believe that abortion should either be illegal or highly restricted (84%). The comparative numbers for evangelical modernists are: 30, 10, 29, 42, and 37.

The Times article did not discuss Catholics, a group which equally seems to have been splitting over the past few years. So after reading the report, I came up with the following.

Catholics, at 22% of the American public, are the largest single denomination in this country, and are also divided into traditionalists (4.4%), centrists (8.1%) and modernists (5%). Traditionalists are likely to be Republican (57%), support "traditional marriage" exclusively (71%), and oppose abortion (79%). I cannot find the data on Catholic opposition to evolution, but I'm guessing that the Catholic supporters of intelligent design (e.g. Behe) are much more likely to be traditionalists than any other faction.

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4.4 + 8.1 + 5 != 22. Or are there some who don't characterize themselves? If so why do so many more Catholics than Evangelicals not want that characterization.

Something to bear in mind, from the article:

The evangelical movement as it is known today emerged in the 1940's and 50's as a middle way between what many Christian leaders perceived as theological liberalism in the mainline Protestant denominations and the cultural separatism of the fundamentalist movement.

The "mainline Prodestant denominations" were, at least at one pont, called "main" line for a reason; I sort of hope that reason still stands. There is much more to Christianity than the so-called evangelicals Reading some of the blogs here on scienceblogs.com and other science blogs elsewhere, you get the sense that people are condemning all Christianity on the basis of the behavior of the traditionalist evangelicals. There *are* reasonable ones out there, and it's well worth reaching out to them, for there is an awful lot of common ground culturally and practically, if not theologically, between atheist pro-science types and many mainline Protestant types. Yes, I know some like PZ are so rabidly anti-religion that any kind of reaching out to anybody with any religion at all is, to him, giving up too much, but hopefully there are enough others to realize that most of the problems we have with the religious are from the extreme, fundamentalist types, and that there *is* in fact a lot of common ground.

The remainder (4.5%) are Latino Catholics.

By John Lynch (not verified) on 16 Apr 2006 #permalink

It should be at least noted here that the official catholic stance on evolution is supportive of modern science. God, in their view, and the truth can not be at odds, and as science has been reliably established as a vehicle to the truth, overwhelming scientific evidence can not be ignored. (Granted, history has shown that sometimes it takes the church quite a while to come around...) In this respect, conservative catholicism--in the sense of strict adherence to the teachings of the church--is in no sense anti-evolutionary. It is unfortunate that some of the more public ID advocates are of the Catholic demonination, making it appear that the church somehow condones their "research."

By grrreat_ape (not verified) on 16 Apr 2006 #permalink