Recent polling finds evangelical leaders’ recent support for reform has strong backing in the pews

Full religion, values, and immigration poll report and topline questionnaire available here.

(WASHINGTON, DC) Evangelical leaders’ recent show of support for comprehensive immigration reform has strong backing from white evangelical Americans, according to March 2010 national poll on religion, values, and immigration reform.  The poll was sponsored by the Ford Foundation and conducted by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent research organization.

“American evangelicals are strongly in favor of comprehensive immigration reform,” said Dr. Robert P. Jones, CEO of PRRI.  “Pro-reform evangelical leaders have powerful support from people in the pews.  Our survey refutes suggestions by some critics that pro-reform leaders are out of sync with their congregants.”

The PRRI poll shows that while white evangelicals overwhelmingly support a practical approach to reform that includes not only stronger border and workplace enforcement, but also an earned path to citizenship for immigrants now in the country illegally.  When asked to choose between a comprehensive approach to immigration reform that includes an earned path to citizenship over alternative approaches that emphasize enforcement only, evangelicals choose the comprehensive approach by approximately a two-to-one margin (61% vs. 30%).

In fact, nine-in-ten white evangelicals favor an earned path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are already in the country, with fully two-thirds saying they strongly favor it.   And 83% of white evangelicals - and a nearly identical number (84%) of Americans generally - say that the American economy would benefit if current illegal immigrants became taxpaying citizens.   A majority (56%) of white evangelicals, like most Americans, think the current immigration system is either mostly or completely broken.

Evangelicals are also comfortable with their leaders speaking out on the issue.  White evangelicals say they are very or somewhat comfortable with clergy speaking out about immigration in a local community meeting (78%), in the local media (76%), in adult education classes (74%), in the congregational newsletter or website (58%), and from the pulpit (54%).

Among white evangelicals, this strong support for comprehensive immigration reform coexists with concerns about immigration. For example, evangelicals are more likely than Americans overall to register concerns about the impact of immigrants on the country. A majority (54%) of evangelicals say immigrants are a burden on the country because they take American jobs, housing, and healthcare, compared to 31% who say immigrants strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents.  Americans overall are nearly evenly divided on this question (45% to 43%). It is notable that the number of evangelicals saying immigrants are a burden has dropped 10 percentage points since the question was asked on a Pew Research Center poll in 2006.

“The fact that evangelicals have concerns about the impact of illegal immigration, however, doesn’t mean they don’t support comprehensive reform,” noted Jones.  “They believe the system is broken, that reform should be guided by deeply held values, and that comprehensive reform is the way to fix it.”

Like other religious groups in the country and the general population, evangelicals say four values are very or extremely important as guides for immigration reform policy: enforcing the rule of law and promoting national security (89%), ensuring fairness to taxpayers (86%), protecting the dignity of every person (81%), and keeping families together (79%). White evangelicals are somewhat more likely to say that the biblical value of welcoming the stranger is an important moral guide than other religious groups (65% vs. 53% of the general public).

The full survey report is available at www.publicreligion.org/research/?id=279

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Over the past few months, we’ve highlighted the way Public Religion Research findings are making a public impact and being used in a variety of ways–by denominational news agencies to clarify the terrain in debates about gay and lesbian ordination among Mainline Protestants, by newsroom editorial writers reflecting on strategic outreach to young voters, and by community leaders testifying about marriage equality in Washington, DC.

On Tuesday, November 17th, Public Religion Research findings were also featured in a gathering of an influential group of climate scientists and evangelical leaders who met with Senators on Capitol Hill to speak with one voice about the challenge of climate change. The Senate briefing “Scientists and Evangelicals Share Concerns on Climate Change (PDF)” was organized by the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.

Richard Cizik, New Evangelicals president and leading evangelical environmental advocate, spoke eloquently about the moral imperative of addressing climate change.

I call climate change the ‘civil rights issue of the 21st century”. My father’s generation sat on its hands in the 1950s and ’60s when black Americans sought equal rights. Today, I won’t sit on my hands when the rights of millions and potentially billions around the globe are in jeopardy. God help us if we choose to pretend this can’t happen. We must act now, while we still have the chance. So must our governmental leaders. We will be held accountable.

Cizik buttressed his appeal with data from a recent climate change survey conducted by Public Religion Research and sponsored by Faith in Public Life and Oxfam America.

More than six in ten of all white evangelicals agree that climate change is making it harder for the world’s poor to support their families by causing increased drought and crop failure. A majority of Americans, including evangelicals, support addressing climate change even in our challenging current economic conditions.

Over 270 top evangelical leaders have signed the Evangelical Climate Initiative. To read more about PRR’s climate change survey, click here.

The following article by Public Religion Research President Robert P. Jones is cross-posted from Newsweek/Washington Post “On Faith” site. You can read the full piece at the Post here.

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This weekend, conservative Christian activists will gather at the fourth annual “Values Voter Summit” in Washington, DC. Sponsored by Family Research Council and other conservative Christian and political groups, the gathering will feature prominent conservative Christians and other leaders and sessions with titles such as “Silencing the Christians,” “Obamacare: Rationing Your Life Away,” and “Thugocracy: Fighting the Vast Left-wing Conspiracy.”

With titles like that, there is sure to be good, perhaps irresistible, religious and political theater, but sorting out the realities from the rhetoric can be a real challenge both for reporters and for readers who hope to come away from new stories with a critical understanding of the current state of the conservative religious activist movement and its relationship to the wider group of white evangelical Christians for which it claims to speak.

Below are four recommended questions that readers should use to evaluate the quality of the upcoming media coverage. These recommendations are largely based on findings from our newly released 2009 Religious Activists Surveys, conducted by the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics in partnership with Public Religion Research.

Question 1: Does the story note that conservative Christian activists are only one kind of “values voter”?

Our recent Religious Activists Surveys, the most comprehensive comparative portraits of conservative and progressive religious activists to date, are an important reminder that the conservative Christian activists attending the “Values Voter Summit” are just one kind of religious activist with one set of values. There is also another group of religious activists, progressive religious activists, who hold their own set of values and who have been making their presence known in recent years.

We found activists on both the right and the left who were both politically engaged and more highly religious than the general public. Referencing the so-called “God gap” during his remarks at our recent press conference, Michael Cromartie, Vice President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, concluded, “Well clearly, from this data, the God Gap is not only closing, it is closed.” In fact, in our surveys, while conservative and progressive activists didn’t agree on many political issues, they did agree that progressive religious groups had wielded a greater influence than conservative religious groups in the 2008 election.

Question 2: Does the coverage give a nod to the important differences between the priorities of conservative religious activists and the broader group of white evangelical Christians for whom these activists claim to speak?

Activists are elites who close ranks easily, and their views rarely correspond in a one-to-one fashion with the more diverse and less predictable rank and file. The Religious Activists Surveys confirmed that conservative religious activists ranked only two issues as the most important for religious people to engage: abortion and same-sex marriage. While this narrow agenda has the strategic advantage of being focused and clear, it does not map cleanly onto the priorities of white evangelicals overall, who have broader political priorities. The 2008 Faith and American Politics Survey (FAPS), for example, found that white evangelicals did not rank abortion or same-sex marriage in the top five issues that were most important to their vote. White evangelicals overall ranked these cultural issues lower than the economy, terrorism, energy and gas, the war in Iraq, and health care as the important factors in their vote. This is not to say that white evangelicals do not have strong opinions about opposing abortion and same-sex marriage (even here, not surprisingly, activist opinions are more polarized than opinions of white evangelicals in the general population), but it is important to note that the priorities of conservative religious activists do not necessarily square with the priorities of evangelicals overall.

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In the remainder of the article, I recommend readers ask two other questions when evaluating the upcoming media coverage:

• Question 3: Does the story attempt to understand the deeper cultural and theological influences underneath the issues?
• Question 4: Does the coverage attend to the role of younger activists and to generational differences that challenge conventional wisdom?

You can read the rest of the piece at the Washington Post here.

Tom Schaller over at fivethiryeight reviews our piece at Religion Dispatches.

The Obama campaign’s response to John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his 2008 running mate was to argue that the Arizona senator had ruined his narrative of being the seasoned, experienced candidate by coupling himself with an unseasoned novice. An online article in Religion Dispatches written this week by Robert Jones and Daniel Cox confirms the Obama camp’s assertion that McCain ruined his story, but suggests that it had less to do with the Arizona senator’s experiential claims than his ability to present himself as a non-polarizing, post-partisan politician.

Using numbers from a post-election poll, Jones and Cox conclude that Palin damaged McCain’s brand because her style evoked the kind of polarizing politics that Americans had grown sick of–and to which, not coincidentally, Barack Obama offered himself as an antidote.

To read Schaller’s full take, click here.

A new survey conducted by Public Religion Research finds that a majority of Americans believe that the earth is getting warmer and that the U.S. has a responsibility to address climate change. Nearly 7-in-10 Americans and solid majorities of every religious group, including 71% of Catholics and nearly two-thirds (64%) of white evangelicals, believe there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been increasing over the last few decades. More than 6-in-10 Americans say the federal government should be doing more to address the issue. The poll also reveals that most Americans see a link between global poverty and rising global temperatures. 

Dr. Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research, says “this new poll shows that a majority of Americans, including people of faith such as Catholics and evangelicals, support addressing climate change even in our challenging current economic conditions. For most Americans, support for addressing climate change is not only about caring for the environment but about assisting the poor who are adversely affected by these changes.” 

Note: This article originally published at ReligionDispatches.org. Click here to read the full text.

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but they all come from the same Spirit. There are different ways to serve the same Lord, and we can each do different things…. If our bodies were only an eye, we couldn’t hear a thing. And if they were only an ear, we couldn’t smell a thing. But God has put all parts of our body together in the way that God decided is best. — I Corinthians 12: 4—6, 17—18 (CEV)

Third Way’s* recently released “Come Let Us Reason Together Governing Agenda” has sparked lively discussions about the policies it puts forward, but it has also cast in bold relief some tensions and factions in the growing chorus of voices that are politically progressive and religious. The two-year initiative set out to find common ground based on shared values between two groups that have traditionally been some of the fiercest political adversaries: political progressives and white evangelicals. Moreover, the project deliberately focused on some of the toughest issues that have been at the root of the worst political divisions of the last few decades (abortion and gay and lesbian issues) and more recent issues that have caused deep divides in the American electorate (torture and immigration).

Under the leadership of Rachel Laser, Director of the Third Way Culture Program, “Come Let Us Reason Together” has already accomplished two short-term goals: 1.) it has sparked serious conversations about the promise of this agenda to heal some of our nation’s deepest divides, including engaging in face-to-face conversations with members of congress in the Democratic Faith Working Group of the U.S. House of Representatives and with key members of the Obama administration; and 2.) it has highlighted an emerging evangelical center that is declaring its independence from the old Religious Right in important ways.

One unintended consequence of the project has been to highlight the existence of two streams in the left-of-center faith world. While these groups are not mutually exclusive, they flow from different sensibilities about public engagement and embody a significantly different spirit. On the one hand, some of the most vociferous critics of “Come Let Us Reason Together” have been constituted from a loose confederation of contributors to the recent book, Dispatches from the Religious Left, who generally portray a more ideological and confrontational public presence. On the other hand, the research for my own book, Progressive & Religious—based on interviews with nearly 100 religious leaders—identified a broader group of religious progressives who were largely uncomfortable with the “religious left” label and who are intentionally working to move beyond old ideological divides and build new coalitions.

Three differences between these streams are at the heart of the matter…

Click here to continue reading the full article from ReligionDispatches.org.

Yesterday, Public Religion Research President Dr. Robert P. Jones participated in a national press conference with leading Evangelical and progressive leaders to announce the Come Let us Reason Together Governing Agenda. The common ground agenda unites moderate evangelical leaders and progressives behind specific policy recommendations on abortion, gay rights, torture and immigration reform. The Governing agenda is the culmination of two years of work led by the progressive think tank Third Way, Evangelical leaders like Reverend Joel C. Hunter, Dr. David Gushee, Robert P. Jones, and and Faith in Public Life. Public Religion Research president Robert P. Jones served as the principal religion advisor for the project.

The following are Dr. Jones’ remarks for the press conference (you can listen to the press conference here):

It’s a great privilege to have been part of this process of “reasoning together” over the last two years. As one who has spent considerable time in both communities represented here— professionally working among progressives and personally growing up as a Southern Baptist in Mississippi—I know how contentious debates over these issues can be, and it has been deeply meaningful for me to see this shared governing agenda emerge, which illuminates a genuinely new path for the country.

I want to make two points about the significance of this governing agenda for the increasingly complex evangelical community, which constitutes a quarter of the U.S. population. First, the Come Let Us Reason Together Governing Agenda heralds the arrival of the second wave of the evangelical center. Where the first wave was marked by a commitment to broadening the agenda beyond abortion and gay and lesbian issues, second wave evangelical centrists have recognized that a biblically balanced agenda requires reengaging with these important, difficult issues with new eyes and new ears.

Second, this governing agenda highlights the priorities of a new evangelical majority that is finding its voice. In the recent Faith and American Politics Survey, conducted by my firm Public Religion Research and sponsored by Faith in Public Life, we found that 40% of evangelicals are centrists, while 46% are traditionalists (or more conservative) and 14% are modernists (or more progressive). Among younger evangelicals (18-34), the evangelical center is even larger (45%). This means that the coalition of centrist/modernist evangelicals account for a majority of evangelicals. Our research also demonstrates that a majority of centrists/modernist evangelicals support even the most divisive areas of our governing agenda, abortion reduction and employment nondiscrimination for gay and lesbian people.

This shared governing agenda, built by big-tent progressives and the emerging evangelical center, is a cause for great hope that we may move toward the beginning of the end of the culture wars at such a critical time in our nation’s public life.

If you are interested in supporting this project visit www.comeletusreasontogether.org, where you can sign on to a letter urging President-elect Obama and congressional leaders to support the governing agenda. You can also find us on Facebook and add your support there.

Note: This article originally published at ReligionDispatches.org. Click here to read the full article.

Rich Cizik. Out of Line?

The forced resignation of National Association of Evangelicals’ (NAE) vice-president Richard Cizik over remarks supporting civil unions for gay and lesbian couples sent shockwaves through the evangelical world last week. Cizik’s abrupt ouster from the NAE after 28 years of service is one more sign of the struggle for the soul of an evolving American evangelicalism.

Recent public opinion data points to the need for the current leaders to rethink their certainty about what constitutes “evangelical values”—especially if they care about not alienating the next generation.

Rich Cizik has been no stranger to controversy during his long tenure at the NAE. In early 2007, a group of Christian Right leaders called for his resignation because they claimed his work to broaden the evangelical agenda to include the environment diluted an exclusive focus on opposing abortion and same-sex marriage. At that time, the NAE board responded by reaffirming its confidence in Cizik and its commitment to a broader “biblically balanced agenda.”

But this time, with Cizik publicly saying that his views had been shifting toward supporting civil unions, NAE president Leith Anderson asked for his resignation, declaring that “there was a loss of credibility for him clearly espousing our positions and values.” Other evangelical voices on the Christian Right were more forceful, asserting that Cizik himself had become un-evangelical. Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family declared, “He no longer represents the view of evangelicalism.” Charles Colson of the Prison Fellowship claimed that Cizik was “separating himself from the mainstream of evangelical belief and conviction.”

But as I have argued elsewhere, evangelicals are not monolithic, and the question of whether Cizik’s positions represent evangelical positions, values, views, or beliefs is an empirical one. A quick appraisal of four of Cizik’s alleged departures from the evangelical mainstream in light of the data shows him clearly within the mainstream on most questions, and on the more controversial question of civil unions, in sync with the majority of younger evangelicals.

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Click here to read the full article at Religion Dispatches.org, which includes the data showing Cizik’s views in sync with mainstream evangelical opinion, especially younger evangelicals.

PRR President Robert P. Jones interviewed on CBN News

I recently sat down with CBN News to talk about the impact religion had on America’s choice for president. The interview focused especially on Barack Obama’s modest inroads among white evangelicals, and larger shifts among Catholics and monthly church attenders.

View the video from the Christian Broadcasting Network here.