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.

This most recent selection from National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” mentions the work of Public Religion Research, noting the positive shift in the relationship between the Democratic Party and religious voters. The full text is available from NPR’s website here.

Obama Redraws Map of Religious Voters
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

Religious language trips off Barack Obama’s tongue as if he were a native of the Bible Belt. From the moment he emerged on the national scene, he has spoken to believers in a language few Democrats have mastered: the language of the Bible and of a personal relationship with God…

Pollster Robert P. Jones of Public Religion Research says that Obama’s appearance at the 2004 convention was a turning point in the relationship between Democrats and believers. Then, a majority of Americans viewed the Democratic Party as hostile to religion. But Jones’ poll this month found a remarkable shift.

“Barack Obama was perceived to be more friendly to religion than John McCain,” he says. “And that is, I think, an indication of the real sea change that’s under way, and the way in which religion is interacting in public life.”

Continue reading the full piece from NPR here.

This piece from National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” talks about the work of Public Religion Research, Robert P. Jones’ new book, Progressive and Religious, and the change in the political landscape from 2004 to 2008. The full text from NPR’s website is available here.

How McCain Shed Pariah Status Among Evangelicals
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

When it comes to evangelicals, John McCain has remade himself in eight short years. The Republican candidate was a pariah to religious conservatives during his run for the White House in 2000. This time around, he’s not exactly a Messiah but he has won over his base…

“I think 2004 really was the high-water mark of the religious right in America,” says Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research and author of Progressive and Religious.

Jones says the culture wars do not excite religious voters the way they used to.

“What we had in 2004 was a very artificial constriction of religion to be about abortion and same-sex marriage,” he says. “We also had in a way we hadn’t seen before an artificial constriction of religion to be about one political party. And it’s not sustainable.”

Jones’ polls show abortion and same-sex marriage don’t even rank in the top five issues for evangelicals, much less other religious voters.

Continue reading the full piece from NPR here.

The Nation is out with story detailing the progressive efforts to build bridges and find common ground with white evangelicals. We have have been working with a number of organizations to work for a broader religious agenda of social justice and the common good. With these efforts, we are finding that there are shared values and common ground in unexpected places.

Peeling away moderate and conservative evangelicals with a message of public service and social justice may prove to be a challenge, even with evangelical discontent with the GOP. But Robert Jones, author of the new book Progressive and Religious, maintains that “the real numbers are yet to be seen…there are still double-digit uncommitted voters. Those folks who aren’t knee-jerk partisan voters will wait it out.” Jones admitted that in 2006 “most of those evangelicals came home to the Republican Party,” but he is not so sure this year. “The story will be where the uncommitted evangelicals break…I think we will see numbers breaking in a way that will surprise people.”

Creating such a surprise has been the goal of Jones and some of the clients of his consulting firm, Public Religion Research, which has worked with new organizations in Washington to promote a broader religious agenda. One of his clients, Faith in Public Life (FPL), a nonprofit incubated at the Center for American Progress after the 2004 election, was at the forefront of promoting a more robust discussion of faith in this year’s presidential campaign. Throughout the season, FPL has advanced the story line that less conservative religious voters are not only keen on having their voices heard in the public square but also on hearing about how presidential candidates’ values guide their policy decisions. FPL organized the Compassion Forum at Messiah College in April, at which Obama and Hillary Clinton were put to the test of establishing their religious credentials, and pressed for the one at Warren’s Saddleback Church.

Another one of Jones’s clients, the centrist think tank Third Way, partnered with prominent evangelicals to produce an October 2007 white paper, “Come Let Us Reason Together,” on how progressives and evangelicals could find common ground on divisive culture-war issues like abortion and gay rights. (Jones was a co-author.) FPL played a key role in promoting its signers, evangelical centrists like David Gushee, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights and professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University; Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, who moderated two of the four Faith Caucus panels at the DNC; and Joel Hunter, the Florida mega-church pastor and registered Republican who gave the benediction on the closing day of the DNC. All three have been promoting evangelical interests in non-culture-war issues, with Gushee focused on environmental issues and ending torture, Wallis emphasizing fighting poverty and Hunter addressing environmental issues.

“Come Let Us Reason Together” focuses on an issue that is anathema to the religious right, and may also spoil Democratic chances to peel off moderate evangelicals and Catholics–abortion. The white paper stresses the value of abortion reduction, and while no reproductive rights groups were openly critical of it, none endorsed it. Wallis and Hunter lauded the adoption of the abortion reduction plank in the Democratic platform, hailing language that they said was included after religious leaders’ input. (Reproductive rights advocates also declared victory, claiming the strongest prochoice plank in party history.) In his acceptance speech, Obama tried to straddle the line between his prochoice base and the religious abortion-reduction advocates: “We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.”

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You can read the full the article in the Nation here.