Public Religion Research released jointly with Third Way today Beyond the God Gap: A New Roadmap for Reaching Religious Americans on Public Policy Issues.  In today’s Huffington Post, Third Way’s Jim Kessler and PRR’s Robert P. Jones outline why we created this resource to help journalists, policy makers, and the public retire old stereotypes about religious Americans and politics.

From the Huffington Post:

“Insofar as Evangelicals have demonized gays and lesbians [they] should repent before God.” Was it Jon Stewart who said that? Bill Maher? Barney Frank? No, it was said by an Evangelical pastor of a Southern megachurch — a conservative who calls Mike Huckabee a friend. We live in a new era, marked by an aging and declining Christian right that is increasingly eclipsed by the Tea Party, a nascent but growing chorus of diverse progressive religious voices, and a broadening of political agendas among many people of faith. Maybe it’s time to rethink our assumptions about religious Americans and public policy.

That conviction is the guiding principle of a new paper called Beyond the God Gap, which provides a road map for navigating the complex terrain of religion and public policy in America….

These old “god gap” assumptions [the authors] encountered in our pasts were not atypical. Public conversations about religion and politics continue to fall into well-worn ruts based on stereotypes: evangelical Christians march monolithically to a right-wing tune; mainline Protestants are no longer relevant; Catholics in the pews affirm all official church positions; and the non-religious are moral relativists. But as we have discovered through research and in our own lives, the truth is more nuanced and interesting. And understanding this truth is heartening and essential not only for anyone hoping to make progress on specific issues such as gay and lesbian rights, abortion, and immigration reform, but also for anyone working to foster a more civil dialogue throughout the country.

Today, four religious groupings make up about three-quarters of the U.S. population: white evangelical Protestants, white Mainline Protestants, African American Protestants, and Roman Catholics. In Beyond the God Gap, we took a fresh look not only at political attitudes on key issues, but also at the underlying cultural fabric and theological beliefs that help explain attitudes toward government, voting patterns, and shifts taking place within each of these religious families.

Read the rest of the article at the Huffington Post.