More on “Christianizing” America

I wrote recently about a survey indicating that millions of Americans would support a constitutional amendment making Christianity the nation's official religion. Well, that survey was done by Barna and at the same time they got some interesting results on lots of other questions as well.

Barna reports:

Ten Commandments:

Less than one out of every five adults (18%) supports “removing signs that list the Ten Commandments from government buildings.” In contrast, 79% of all adults rejected this policy – including 60% of adults who were “strongly opposed” to removing the Commandments. ... Less than one-half of one percent of evangelicals favored the elimination of the Ten Commandments from government buildings and just 6% of non-evangelical born again adults and one-sixth of notional Christians (16%) supported such a policy. Catholics and Protestants agree that this policy makes little sense: only 6% of Protestants and 18% of Catholics favor the removal policy. Even a minority (32%) of the Americans aligned with non-Christian faith groups indicated their support. The only faith group among which a majority gave its support was atheists and agnostics: 55% said this was a good idea.

Setting aside the error involved with describing atheists and agnostics as a “faith group,” I’m surprised that 45% didn’t support removing Ten Commandments displays from government buildings. Who are they and what are there reasons??

Removing “In God We Trust”:

Overall, only 13% favored eliminating the phrase from currency, while 84% oppose the idea. Nearly three-quarters of the public (72%) are “strongly opposed” to making this change. ... Again, few evangelicals (1%) and non-evangelical born again Christians (4%) supported the idea. Catholics were four times more likely than Protestants to hail the concept (15% versus 4%), but even so only one-seventh of Catholics like the notion.

No surprise there, though it’s curious that atheists aren’t mentioned this time.

Removing “One Nation Under God”:

Only 15% of adults said they would support the change, compared to 84% who dismissed it. ... Only 4% of evangelicals and 6% of non-evangelical born again Christians supported this change, with one-eighth of notional Christians (13%) in favor of it. Almost one-quarter of the non-Christian faith adherents (24%) liked the idea. A mere 7% of Protestants and 13% of Catholics bought into this concept.

This seems to have more support than removing “In God We Trust” from money — why do you suppose that is? It could be that the recent Newdow case has increased public discussion and personal thinking on it, which suggests that further efforts could lead to more discussion and, over the long term, even less support for these examples of government-endorsed religious beliefs.

Creationism in Public Schools:

About six out of every ten adults (59%) favor teaching creationism while less than four out of ten (38%) do not want it added to the public school curriculum content. ... Almost nine out of ten evangelicals (86%) support teaching creationism, along with 70% of non-evangelical born against and 60% of notional Christians. Most Protestants (69%) and Catholics (59%) support this approach to explaining the genesis of the universe.

I wonder if they bothered to define “creationism” when taking the poll? Different people can understand different concepts under the term.

Using the “F-word” on Television

Only one out of seven adults (15%) felt allowing the word on broadcast TV was acceptable, while 83% dismissed this as inappropriate. ... less than one-tenth of evangelicals (6%) and non-evangelical born again adults (8%) favored using the word. In contrast, more than twice as many adults associated with non-Christian faiths (21%) and up to six times as many atheists and agnostics (35%) were comfortable with the word being used on broadcast channels. Following the established patterns, Catholics were twice as likely as Protestants (19% versus 9%, respectively) to favor using the term.

I wonder why they didn’t ask about politicians using the “F-word” in the Senate? It’s curious that atheists and agnostics show up here again after being absent through most of the survey results. I wonder why?

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