Although its historical roots are mostly in Northern Europe and North America, evangelical Protestantism is a global phenomenon today. In 1910, by one estimate, there were about 80 million evangelicals, and more than 90% of them lived in Europe and North America. By 2010, the number of evangelicals had risen to at least 260 million, and most lived outside Europe or North America. Indeed, the “Global South” (sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and most of Asia) is home to more evangelicals today than the “Global North” (Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand).

As the evangelical movement has grown and spread around the globe over the past century, it has become enormously diverse, ranging from Anglicans in Africa, to Baptists in Russia, to independent house churches in China, to Pentecostals in Latin America. And this diversity, in turn, gives rise to numerous questions. How much do evangelicals around the world have in common? What unites them? What divides them? Do leading evangelicals in the Global South see eye-to-eye with those in the Global North on what is essential to their faith, what is important but not essential and what is simply incompatible with evangelical Christianity?

To help answer these kinds of questions, the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life conducted a survey of participants in the Third Lausanne Congress of World Evangelization. The congress takes its name from a worldwide gathering of evangelical leaders convened by the Rev. Billy Graham in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1974.

The organizers of the Cape Town 2010 gathering sought to bring together a geographically representative “global parliament” of evangelical leaders that would reflect the “demographic, cultural, theological and ecclesiastical diversity of the global Church.” The selection of participants was largely decentralized, with the LCWE’s international deputy directors working in each of 12 regions to invite participants in approximate proportion to each country’s share of the global evangelical population. This selection process resulted in a body that was ethnically and linguistically diverse. At the same time, however, the participants surveyed by the Pew Forum differ in important ways from rank-and-file evangelicals in their home countries. They are predominantly male, middle-aged and college-educated, and nearly three-quarters (74%) are employed by churches or religious organizations. Fully half (51%) are ordained ministers. Hence, the survey results do not necessarily reflect the views of evangelicals as a whole.

One advantage of surveying a leadership group, as opposed to the general public, is that the questions can be more specialized and presume more knowledge among the respondents. The Pew Forum survey asked the Lausanne Congress participants to rate the prospects for evangelical Christianity in their home countries, to express their views on what it means to be an evangelical and to describe their beliefs on a number of theological, social and political issues. We also asked for their perceptions about the relationship between evangelical Protestants and other religious groups, for their assessment of the greatest threats to evangelicalism today and for their views on evangelization, including whom to evangelize and how. The resulting report offers a detailed portrait of the beliefs and practices of this group of global evangelical leaders.

Luis Lugo, Director
Alan Cooperman, Associate Director, Research

Executive Summary

Evangelical Protestant leaders who live in the Global South (sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and most of Asia) generally are optimistic about the prospects for evangelicalism in their countries. But those who live in the Global North (Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) tend to be more pessimistic.

Seven-in-ten evangelical leaders who live in the Global South (71%) expect that five years from now the state of evangelicalism in their countries will be better than it is today. But a majority of evangelical leaders in the Global North expect that the state of evangelicalism in their countries will either stay about the same (21%) or worsen (33%) over the next five years.

In addition, most leaders in the Global South (58%) say that evangelical Christians are gaining influence on life in their countries.
By contrast, most leaders in the Global North (66%) say that, in the societies in which they live, evangelicals are losing influence. U.S. evangelical leaders are especially downbeat about the prospects for evangelical Christianity in their society; 82% say evangelicals are losing influence in the United States today, while only 17% think evangelicals are gaining influence.

These are among the key findings of a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life of 2,196 evangelical leaders from 166 countries and territories who were invited to attend the Third Lausanne Congress of World Evangelization, a 10-day gathering of ministers and lay leaders held in October 2010 in Cape Town, South Africa.

The survey finds nearly unanimous agreement among the global evangelical leaders on some key beliefs, such as that Christianity is the one, true faith leading to eternal life. They also hold traditional views on family and social issues. For example, more than nine-in-ten say abortion is usually wrong (45%) or always wrong (51%). About eight-in-ten say that society should discourage homosexuality (84%) and that men should serve as the religious leaders in the marriage and family (79%).

Virtually all the leaders surveyed (98%) also agree that the Bible is the word of God. But they are almost evenly divided between those who say the Bible should be read literally, word for word (50%), and those who do not think that everything in the Bible should be taken literally (48%). They are similarly split on whether it is necessary to believe in God in order to be a moral person (49% yes, 49% no), and whether drinking alcohol is compatible with being a good evangelical (42% yes, 52% no).

In a number of ways, leaders in the Global South are more conservative than those in the Global North. For instance, leaders in the Global South are more likely than those in the Global North to read the Bible literally (58% vs. 40%) and to favor making the Bible the official law of the land in their countries (58% vs. 28%). More evangelical leaders in the Global South than in the Global North take the position that abortion is always wrong (59% vs. 41%), and more say that a wife must always obey her husband (67% vs. 39%). Leaders in the Global South are also much more inclined than those in the Global North to say that consuming alcohol is incompatible with being a good evangelical (75% vs. 23%).

Overall, evangelical leaders around the world view secularism, consumerism and popular culture as the greatest threats they face today. More of the leaders express concern about these aspects of modern life than express concern about other religions, internal disagree-ments among evangelicals or government restrictions on religion.

Of the nearly 2,200 evangelical leaders surveyed by the Pew Forum, about seven-in-ten (71%) see the influence of secularism as a major threat to evangelical Christianity in the countries where they live. Two-thirds (67%) also cite “too much emphasis on consumerism and material goods” as a major threat to evangelicalism, and nearly six-in-ten (59%) put “sex and violence in popular culture” into the same category. In addition, nearly two-thirds of the global evangelical leaders (64%) say there is a “natural conflict” between being an evangelical and living in a modern society.

Conflict between religious groups, by contrast, does not loom as a particularly large concern for most of the evangelical leaders surveyed. A majority says that conflict between religious groups is either a small problem (41%) or not a problem at all (14%) in their countries – though a sizeable minority considers it either a moderately big problem (27%) or a very big problem (17%). Those who live in the Middle East and North Africa are especially inclined to see inter-religious conflict as a moderately big (37%) or very big problem (35%). Nine-in-ten evangelical leaders (90%) who live in Muslim-majority countries say the influence of Islam is a major threat, compared with 41% of leaders who live elsewhere.

On the whole, the evangelical Protestant leaders express favorable opinions of adherents of other faiths in the Judeo-Christian tradition, including Judaism, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. But of those who express an opinion, solid majorities express unfavorable views of Buddhists (65%), Hindus (65%), Muslims (67%) and atheists (70%). Interestingly, the leaders who live in Muslim-majority countries generally are more positive in their assessments of Muslims than are the evangelical leaders overall.

Other Findings

In addition, the survey finds:

• Evangelical leaders in both the Global North and the Global South agree that their colleagues in Africa, Asia and Latin America have “too little influence” on global Christianity; in fact, leaders from the Global North are even more inclined than those from the Global South to say this.

• The leaders are divided on evolution. Slightly more reject the idea of evolution (47%) than believe in theistic evolution, the notion that God has used evolution for the purpose of creating humans and other life (41%). Few (3%) believe that human life has evolved solely by natural processes with no involvement from a supreme being.

• A slight majority of the leaders surveyed believe that the Second Coming of Jesus probably (44%) or definitely (8%) will occur in their lifetimes.

• Nine-in-ten of the leaders (90%) reject the so-called prosperity gospel, the notion that God will grant wealth and good health to those who have enough faith.

• The evangelical leaders overwhelmingly express positive views of Pentecostal Christians (92% favorable, 8% unfavorable), Catholics (76% favorable, 24% unfavorable) and Jews (75% favorable, 25% unfavorable).

• More of the leaders say they sympathize with Israel (34%) than with the Palestinians (11%), but a small majority says they sympathize either with both sides equally (39%)
or with neither side (13%).

• Nearly three-quarters of the evangelical leaders (73%) say it is a “top priority” to evangelize among non-religious people. Fewer say it is a top priority to evangelize among Muslims (59%), Buddhists (39%), Hindus (39%), Jews (27%), non-evangelical Christians (26%) and Catholics (20%).

• Most say that men should be the religious leaders in the marriage and family (79%) and the main financial providers for the family (53%). But most do not think that women must stay home and raise children (63%). And a solid majority favors allowing women to serve as pastors (75%).

• The global evangelical leaders are strongly inclined to participate in politics; 84% say religious leaders should express their views on political matters, and 56% say that to be a good evangelical, it is essential to take a public stand on social and political issues when they conflict with moral and biblical principles.

Read the full report at pewforum.org.

Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church

The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life invited Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., to discuss how this political association has affected the evangelical movement, what evangelicals’ most important concerns are today, and how the movement is evolving. Warren, author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” hosted a presidential candidate forum at his church during the 2008 campaign. Several months later he delivered the inaugural prayer at President Barack Obama’s swearing-in.

Speaker:
Rick Warren, Pastor, Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, Calif.
Moderator:
Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics and Public Policy Center

In the following excerpt, ellipses have been omitted to facilitate reading. Find the full transcript at pewforum.org.

WARREN: The last 50 years has seen the greatest redistribution of a religion ever in the history of the world. There is nothing even to compare to it. For instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, in 1900, 71% of all, quote, “Christians” lived in Europe. By 2000 only 28% claimed to be Christian, and I’m sure it’s far smaller than that who actually even go to a church.

On the other hand, Christianity was exploding in Africa, Asia and Latin America. If you want to know the future of evangelicalism, it is in those continents. To give you an example, in 1900 there were only 10 million Christians in all of Africa — 10% of the population. Today there are 360 million Christians in Africa, over half the population. That is a complete turnaround on a continent that’s never, ever been seen or done in history.

You may be surprised to know that there are more Christians in China than there are in America, by far. There are more Presbyterians in Ghana than there are in Scotland, where they came out of with John Knox. There are more Baptists in Nagaland, a state in India, than there are in the South here in America. There are more Anglicans in either Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria — any of these — than in England. There are 2 million Anglicans in England. There are 17 million Anglicans in Nigeria.

The Church of England is a misnomer. It is now the Church of Africa. I have been involved in the ordination of many of those Anglican leaders. They have spread all over. Last Sunday there were more Christians who went to church in China than all of Europe combined. That is a fundamental shift. If you want to know the future of Christianity, it is the developing world. It’s Africa, it’s Latin America, and it’s Asia.

In fact, there are about 15,000 missionaries now working in England from Brazil, China, Korea, other countries that you used to think, well, those would receive missionaries. In fact, Brazil sends out far more missionaries than either Great Britain or Canada combined. So that’s a fundamental shift.

That’s all I’m going to say about the future of evangelicalism. It ain’t here. Okay? It isn’t Europe. Now, I will say this: The world is becoming more religious. There are 600 million Buddhists. There are 800 million Hindus. There are 1.[57] billion Muslims. And there are 2.3 billion Christians.

That means the actual number of secularists outside of Europe and Manhattan is quite small. It really is quite small, and we don’t understand it. We’re in this little bubble that we think most people don’t have a faith. Well, you need to get a life and get around the world because most people have some kind of faith.

What I’m going to do is I’m going to give you an outline of the signature issues of Saddleback Church. If you want to talk about any of those, we can. So I’ll just quickly give them to you. I started Saddleback Church in January of 1980. Our first service was on Easter 1980, in April. I had one member — my wife. I preached the first sermon. She thought it was too long. It’s been downhill ever since.

Today Saddleback is a 120-acre campus. It looks like a college. We typically will have 25,000 people on the weekend. I have over 100,000 names on a church roll. You need to understand I grew up in a little town in Northern California during Haight-Ashbury, and in the town I was in we had 500 people, so my church is like 1,000-times bigger than the town I grew up in. I could be a mayor.

I actually know my valley far more than any politician will ever know them because I’ve spent 30 years there. This will be my 30th anniversary year. I’ve been listening to them, talking to them, praying with them, walking through the weddings and the funerals and the proms and all those different divorces and different things like that.

When we started Saddleback, we said, we’re going to develop what we call signature issues that we want our church to be famous for because we think that they’re important. Not every church is called to do these, but we are called to do these. There are actually six signature issues.

The first one is what we call purpose-driven training. We began that signature issue in 1983 and today that network of churches, as I said, is in 162 countries. It’s global leadership training. We do training of what we call the three legs of the stool: business leadership, church leadership and public leadership in government.

The second signature issue of our church we started in 1993. Celebrate Recovery is a Bible-based recovery program. It’s similar to AA but it’s built on the actual words of Jesus. It began in 1993. In our church alone we’ve had over 13,000 people go through recovery. We’re talking about addictions and you name it. You couldn’t name a problem we haven’t dealt with in our church over those years. Now thousands of churches around the world use Celebrate Recovery. It is the official recovery program in 17 state prison systems here in America. It’s an official program in Russia and many, many other countries use this.

This fall we did a 50-day campaign called Life’s Healing Choices based around that. It’s the third time we’ve done it in our 30 years, and thousands of churches will begin that in January. You’re going to be hearing about churches doing Life’s Healing Choices, a recovery program, there.

The third signature issue we began in 2002, and that is our AIDS initiative for people infected and affected with AIDS. I credit my wife for this. My wife got cancer, and one day, laying on a couch after some chemo and radiation, she read an article that said 14 million kids were orphaned by AIDS in Africa. And she said, I have to admit I didn’t know a single orphan. I couldn’t imagine them being orphaned by just one disease.

We began to study that and began to be a part of it and actually took literally millions of dollars from the profit of the book and opened a foundation called Acts of Mercy to help those infected and affected with AIDS around the world. We do an annual global summit on AIDS to which pretty much every world leader who has been involved in that fight has been, including last year or two years ago during the campaign every one of the presidential candidates was represented there, either video or live.

You tell me in prevention whether you want to slow AIDS or you want to stop it, and I’ll tell you what it’s going to take. We are mobilizing churches literally all around the world to work with people with AIDS. That’s a signature issue with us.

The fourth signature issue we began in 2003. It’s called the P.E.A.C.E. Plan. It’s a global humanitarian effort to take on the five biggest problems on the planet: poverty, disease, illiteracy, corruption and conflict. P.E.A.C.E. stands for Promote reconciliation, Equip ethical leaders, “A” is assist the poor, “C” is care for the sick and “E” is educate the next generation. We believe that these problems are so big government can’t do it alone; business can’t do it alone; churches can’t do it alone. Some problems are so big you have to team tackle them.

I could take you to 10 million villages in the world; there’s nothing in them but a church. The church has more locations than all the Wal-Marts and Starbucks and everything else combined. It has more volunteers. The church was global 200 years before anybody started talking about globalization. Nothing has as many people groups, as many languages, as many contacts as the church.

Now you add in Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus — as I said, you’ve basically got most of the world, and so we cannot ignore that area. If you want to talk about that, I would be glad to. As I said, I’m taking Tony Blair with me to inspect some of our P.E.A.C.E. sites in Africa. We intend to be the first church in the history of Christianity to literally fulfill the great commission. Jesus’ last words were: “Go to every nation.”

There are 195 nations in the world. In the last five years, I’ve sent out over 9,000 of my members to 146 countries. We have 49 countries left. We’ll easily meet that goal by the end of this next year. We will be the first church in 2000 years of Christianity to literally go to every nation. And what are we doing? Promoting reconciliation, equipping ethical leaders, assisting the poor, caring for the sick, educating the next generation. That’s our fourth signature issue.

Our fifth signature issue is what we call our Civil Society Initiative. I believe that civilization is losing its civility. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not but the world is getting ruder. We’re getting more crass. You may not demonize a person just because they’re different, and differences do not demonize. Somehow we’ve got to follow that great theologian, Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?”

You don’t have to agree with someone [not] to be disagreeable. You can walk hand in hand without seeing eye to eye. And the fact is, America is a democracy. In a democracy nobody wins all the time. I don’t. You don’t. Nobody does. That’s called a democracy. It doesn’t mean we pack up and leave the country because we don’t win.

I believe in the “good news.” I’m a Christian, I’m an evangelical and I’m a pastor. I believe in Jesus Christ. But I also believe in the common good and that there are some issues that have to be dealt with everybody on the common good. I don’t win all the time and neither do you, and so we have to learn to be civil. That’s why I spend most of my time not speaking to Christian groups.

In the last year I’ve spoken to atheist groups, secularist groups. I’ve spoken to the two largest Muslim conventions. I was the keynote speaker at the Reform convention of Judaism. I spend most of my time actually speaking to people who disagree with me, but I’m trying to build bridges because we’re on this planet together promoting civility and the common good.

Two other issues and then I’ll open it up [to questions]. The fifth signature issue is our orphan care issue. This is a brand-new one. We just began it two years ago, in 2007. As I said, there are 146 million orphans in the world. Whoever gets to those people first is going to get their hearts and minds — either madrassas or radicals or fundamentalists or whatever. [T]hat’s anarchy waiting to happen, 146 million orphans growing up without moms and dads.

I have been trying to convince both the Bush administration and the Obama administration — it’s the only thing I actually have ever talked to — I don’t talk policy ever with politicians — never. But I do care about orphans. And the one issue that I have talked to them about is it’s just good foreign policy to help the sick and help orphans.

It’s interesting that if you cross Africa — Bush is a hero all across Africa. I can’t tell you how many times people have said, my husband is alive because of PEPFAR [the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief]. My wife is still alive because of PEPFAR. It is good foreign policy — and it’s a whole lot cheaper than tanks — to help people get well and to care for orphans.

But in our personal case in Saddleback, we have a goal of 500 families in our church adopting within the next three years. We already have 182 families that have adopted so far in this signature issue of orphan care. My wife Kay is actually right now – she’s spoken to four universities in the last two weeks. She’s in Michigan — spoke last night to 1,700 people on this issue of orphans and orphan care.

The last issue, which is our newest signature issue, is religious freedom and persecution. Many of you know that we do these civil forums. The first one that we ever did was actually on the Holocaust. I brought in six 90-year-old Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and let them tell their stories to 4,000 people in our church. We all wept and said, we must not ever let that happen again.

Read the full transcript at pewforum.org.

_{Source: Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted in 2007 and released in 2008. Results for other religious groups are not reported due to small Hispanic sample sizes.}

_{“All” results are based on 35,556 respondents, including 9,472 evangelical Protestants, 7,470 mainline Protestants, 8,054 Catholics and 5,048 unaffiliated respondents.}

”

_{Hispanic” results are based on 3,151 Hispanic respondents, including 509 evangelical Protestants, 185 mainline Protestants, 1,748 Catholics and 446 unaffiliated respondents.}

Americans change religious affiliation early and often. In total, about half of American adults have changed religious affiliation at least once during their lives. Most people who change their religion leave their childhood faith before age 24, and many of those who change religion do so more than once. These are among the key findings of a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. The survey documents the fluidity of religious affiliation in the U.S. and describes in detail the patterns and reasons for change.

The reasons people give for changing their religion — or leaving religion altogether — differ widely depending on the origin and destination of the convert. The group that has grown the most in recent years due to religious change is the unaffiliated population. Two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated and half of former Protestants who have become unaffiliated say they left their childhood faith because they stopped believing in its teachings, and roughly four-in-ten say they became unaffiliated because they do not believe in God or the teachings of most religions.¹ Additionally, many people who left a religion to become unaffiliated say they did so in part because they think of religious people as hypocritical or judgmental, because religious organizations focus too much on rules or because religious leaders are too focused on power and money. Far fewer say they became unaffiliated because they believe that modern science proves that religion is just superstition.

Catholicism has suffered the greatest net loss in the process of religious change. Many people who leave the Catholic Church do so for religious reasons; two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated say they left the Catholic faith because they stopped believing in its teachings, as do half of former Catholics who are now Protestant. Fewer than three-in-ten former Catholics, however, say the clergy sexual abuse scandal factored into their decision to leave Catholicism.

In contrast with other groups, those who switch from one Protestant denominational family to another (e.g., were raised Baptist and are now Methodist) tend to be more likely to do so in response to changed circumstances in their lives. Nearly four-in-ten people who have changed religious affiliation within Protestantism say they left their childhood faith, in part, because they relocated to a new community, and nearly as many say they left their former faith because they married someone from a different religious background.

The new survey is a follow-up to the “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” conducted by the Pew Forum in 2007 and released in 2008, and is based on recontact interviews with members of the largest segments of the population that have changed religious affiliation. This includes more than 300 interviews each with former Catholics who are now unaffiliated, former Catholics who are now Protestant, former Protestants who are now unaffiliated and those raised unaffiliated who now belong to a religious faith. The survey also includes nearly 300 interviews with people who have gone from one denominational family to another within Protestantism and nearly 1,000 interviews with people who still belong to the group in which they were raised. In total, the new survey allows for in-depth analysis of about eight-in-ten of those who now have a different religious affiliation than the one in which they were raised.²

One of the most striking findings from the 2007 Landscape Survey was the large number of people who have left their childhood faith. The 2007 survey found that more than one-in-four American adults (28%) have changed their religious affiliation from that in which they were raised. This number includes people who have changed from one major religious tradition to another, for instance, from Protestantism to Catholicism or from Judaism to no religion. If change within religious traditions is included (e.g., from one Protestant denominational family to another), the survey found that roughly 44% of Americans now profess a religious affiliation different from that in which they were raised.

The results of the new survey offer a fuller picture of the churn within American religion and suggest that previous estimates actually may have understated the amount of religious change taking place in the U.S. First, among the 56% of the population that currently belongs to the same religion as the one in which they were raised, one-in-six (16%) say there was a time in their life when they had a different faith than they have now. Combined with the 44% of the public that currently espouses a religion different than their childhood faith, this means that roughly half of the U.S. adult population has changed religion at some point in their life.³ Moreover, it is also clear that many people have changed religious affiliation more than once. For example, roughly two-thirds of those who were raised Catholic or Protestant but now say they are not affiliated with any particular religion have changed faiths at least twice in their life, including those who have changed within the unaffiliated tradition (e.g., from atheist to agnostic). The same is true for roughly half of former Catholics who have become Protestant, people who have changed denominational families within Protestantism and people who have become affiliated with a religion after having been raised unaffiliated

The survey finds that religious change begins early in life. Most of those who decided to leave their childhood faith say they did so before reaching age 24, and a large majority say they joined their current religion before reaching age 36. Very few report changing religions after reaching age 50.

Religious commitment as a child and teenager may be related to the propensity to change religion. The survey finds key differences, for example, in the levels of teenage (ages 13-18) religious commitment between former Catholics who have become unaffiliated and those who have kept their childhood faith. Former Catholics who are now unaffiliated are much less likely than lifelong Catholics to have attended Mass regularly or to have had very strong faith as teenagers.

Similarly, currently unaffiliated former Catholics are somewhat less likely than those who have remained Catholic to say they had very strong faith as children. On other measures, however, such as participation in youth groups or religious education classes, there are few differences in childhood religious commitment between those who have remained Catholic and those who have left the Catholic Church to become unaffiliated.

The survey also finds major differences in childhood religious practices and commitment between lifelong Protestants and those who have left Protestantism to become unaffiliated. Former Protestants who are now unaffiliated are less likely to have regularly attended worship services as a child and even less likely to have attended regularly as a teenager. They also are much less likely to report having attended Sunday school or having had very strong religious faith as a child or a teenager.

The faith of most people who have changed religions was on the wane in the year or two prior to leaving their childhood religion, with few saying they had very strong faith during this time. Among those who left Catholicism and are now Protestant, for example, fewer than one-in-four (23%) say their faith was very strong just prior to leaving the Catholic Church. Among those who switched from one Protestant denominational family to another, only 30% say their faith was very strong just prior to leaving their childhood religion. The numbers are even lower among those who have become unaffiliated, with only 10% of former Catholics and 11% of former Protestants saying they had very strong faith just before leaving their former religion. This is consistent with another of the survey’s key findings — that among both former Protestants and former Catholics who are now unaffiliated, more than seven-in-ten say they just gradually drifted away from their childhood religion.

Reasons for Changing Religions

The new survey includes two types of questions that probe the reasons people change religious affiliation. Respondents received a set of closed-ended (yes-or-no) questions that asked whether or not various reasons factored into their decision to leave their former religion and join their current one. Respondents also were asked open-ended questions that gave them the opportunity to explain in their own words the main reason they left their former religion and joined their current one.

In response to the yes-or-no questions, people give a diverse array of reasons for changing their religion. For instance, the most common reason for leaving Catholicism cited by former Catholics who have become Protestant is that their spiritual needs were not being met (71%). A similar number of former Catholics who have become Protestant say they left their former religion because they found another faith they liked more; nearly six-in-ten of those who changed denominational families within Protestantism also say this.

Not surprisingly, many who have changed religion say they left their former religion because they stopped believing in its teachings. For example, nearly two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated say they left the Catholic Church because they stopped believing in its teachings. This sentiment is also expressed by half of former Catholics who have become Protestant as well as half of former Protestants who have become unaffiliated.

When asked in the open-ended question to explain in their own words the main reason they are no longer part of their former religion, roughly half of former Catholics who are now unafilliated give an explanation related to religious and moral beliefs. The same is true of roughly four-in-ten former Catholics who have become Protestant and Protestants who have become unaffiliated.

By contrast, those who have changed denominational families within Protestantism are much less likely to cite beliefs as the main reason for leaving their former religious group; the same is true for those who have become affiliated with a religion after having been raised unaffiliated. Instead, those changing within Protestantism tend to cite likes and dislikes about religious institutions, practices and people (32%) as the main reason for leaving their former faith.

Life cycle changes also figure prominently for this group, with nearly three-in-ten mentioning marriage, family or other changes in their life as reasons for their departure from their childhood faith. Many (25%) of those who have become affiliated after having been raised unaffiliated cite reasons related to personal spirituality as an explanation for why they first became involved with a religion. These and other topics are explored in greater detail in the remainder of this report, which focuses on the largest segments of the U.S. population that have changed religious affiliation. The first section looks at those who have entered or departed the ranks of the unaffiliated. The second section takes a detailed look at those who have left Catholicism. And the third section examines the reasons why people change affiliation within Protestantism.

Key Findings

Entering and Leaving the Ranks of the Unaffiliated

The category of people who are unaffiliated with any particular religion has grown more rapidly than any other religious group in recent decades. According to the 2007 Landscape Survey, 16% of American adults say they are currently unaffiliated with any particular religion, compared with only 7% who were raised unaffiliated. About half of those who have become unaffiliated say — in response to the survey’s yes-or-no questions — that they became unaffiliated, at least in part, because they think of religious people as hypocritical, judgmental or insincere. Large numbers also say they became unaffiliated because they think that religious organizations focus too much on rules and not enough on spirituality, or that religious leaders are too focused on money and power rather than truth and spirituality.

Another reason cited by many people who are now unaffiliated is the belief that many religions are partly true but no single religion is completely true. Fewer people, however, say they became unaffiliated because they think modern science proves that religion is just superstition, indicating that the belief that science disproves religion is a less important reason for becoming unaffiliated than disenchantment with religious people or institutions. At the same time that the ranks of the unaffiliated have grown, the Landscape Survey also revealed that the unaffiliated have one of the lowest retention rates of any of the major religious groups, with most people who were raised unaffiliated now belonging to one religion or another.

Those who leave the ranks of the unaffiliated cite several reasons for joining a faith, such as the attraction of religious services and styles of worship (74%), having been spiritually unfulfilled while unaffiliated (51%) or feeling called by God (55%). One of the key findings of the Landscape Survey was that the unaffiliated population is a very diverse group. Not all those who are unaffiliated lack spiritual beliefs or religious behaviors; in fact, roughly four-in-ten unaffiliated individuals say religion is at least somewhat important in their lives. The new survey shows that a significant number of those who left their childhood faith and have become unaffiliated leave open the possibility that they may one day join a religion. Among both those who were raised Catholic and Protestant who are now unaffiliated, for example, roughly one-in-three say they just have not found the right religion yet.

Leaving Catholicism

One-in-ten American adults is a former Catholic. Former Catholics are about evenly divided between those who have become unaffiliated and those who have become Protestant, with a smaller number leaving Catholicism for other faiths. In response to the yes-or-no questions about why they left the Catholic Church, nearly six-in-ten former Catholics who are now unaffiliated say they left Catholicism due to dissatisfaction with Catholic teachings on abortion and homosexuality, about half cite concerns about Catholic teachings on birth control and roughly four-in-ten name unhappiness with Catholicism’s treatment of women.

The reasons for leaving Catholicism given by former Catholics who have converted to evangelical Protestantism differ in some important ways from those offered by former Catholics who have joined mainline Protestant churches.⁴

Most former Catholics who are now evangelical Protestants, for example, say they left Catholicism in part because they stopped believing in Catholic teachings (62%) and specifically because they were unhappy with Catholic teachings about the Bible (55%). These sentiments are expressed by far fewer converts to mainline Protestantism (20% stopped believing in Catholic teachings and 16% specifically were unhappy with Catholic teachings about the Bible), who instead are much more likely to say they left Catholicism because they married a non-Catholic (44%) or because they were dissatisfied with the priests at their parish (39%).

Changing Within Protestantism

The single largest group in the U.S. adult population that has changed affiliation is made up of those who have changed from one Protestant denominational family to another. Overall, 15% of Americans were raised as Protestants and now belong to a different Protestant faith than the one in which they were raised.

More so than for those in other groups, those who change affiliation within Protestantism tend to do so because of life cycle changes. In response to the survey’s yes-or-no questions, nearly four-in-ten within this group say they left their childhood denominational family because they moved to a new community, and one-third say they left their former faith because they married someone from a different religious background.

Those who have changed within Protestantism also are less likely than others to say their decision to leave their childhood faith was motivated by a loss of belief in the religion’s teachings. Nevertheless, majorities of those who have changed affiliations within Protestantism say they left their childhood faith in part because they found another religion that is preferable (58%) or because they were spiritually unfulfilled in their former faith (51%).

Read the full report at pewforum.org

Interactive Graphic: Reasons for Joining, Reasons for Leaving

*Revised February 2011 to correct minor reporting errors in responses to Q.3 and Q.16, the open-ended questions that asked respondents why they left their childhood religion and joined their current religion. Due to double-counting, some reasons for leaving and joining religions were overstated in the previous version.

 _{1 Throughout this report, analyses of the reasons respondents give for leaving their childhood faith and joining their current faith do not include those who say they changed religions as minors as a result of their parents’ decision. See Q.2 and Q.15 in survey topline for details.}

_{2 The survey excludes respondents from the following religious traditions as defined in the 2007 Landscape Survey: “other Christian,” “other world religions” and “other faiths.” It also excludes “converts” within the ranks of the unaffiliated (e.g., those who were raised atheist and are now agnostic, or those who were raised agnostic and are now nothing in particular), as well as those who gave an ambiguous current or childhood religion in the original survey. See survey methodology for details.}

_{3 The original Landscape Survey had a margin of error of ±0.6 percentage points and estimated that 44% of adults currently belong to a religion different than the one in which they were raised, while 56% still belong to their childhood faith. The estimate that 16% of those who still belong to their childhood religion (9% of the total population) say there was a time in their life when they had a different faith than they have now comes from the 973 follow-up interviews and has a margin of error of ±5 percentage points. Thus, we estimate that as few as 47% [(44-1)+(9-5)=47] and as many as 59% [(44+1) + (9+5)=59] of U.S. adults have changed religious affiliation at least once.}

_{4 The recontact survey did not include enough interviews with formerly Catholic members of historically black Protestant churches to be able to examine them separately.}

_{Data from Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted in 2007, released in 2008. For question wording (pdf) and to see where other groups stand (pdf) on this question, see the full report.}

Leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2008 for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. D. Michael Lindsay, author of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite,¹ described how, in the three years of his extensive research, he made surprising discoveries about the true power brokers and centers of power in American evangelicalism. He also found that the deep divisions in this movement are not between the political left and right, nor between young and old, but between “cosmopolitan” and “populist” evangelicals. Lindsay discussed the implications for this election year as well as the future of the evangelical movement. David Kirkpatrick, Washington Correspondent for The New York Times, added some history about “old-school” evangelicalism and ways of categorizing the changes that are occurring within the American evangelical movement.

Speaker:

D. Michael Lindsay, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Rice University

Respondent:

David Kirkpatrick, Washington Correspondent, The New York Times

Moderator:

Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics & Public Policy Center; Senior Advisor, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

In the following edited excerpt, ellipses have been eliminated to facilitate reading.

MICHAEL LINDSAY: I started thinking about evangelicals in the late ’90s. I was working for the Gallup Organization as a consultant for religion and culture. In the run-up to the 2000 election, some folks in this room — and some of your colleagues — would call me and say, Michael, I need the data from Gallup on the percentage of evangelicals in America. George W. Bush was running in the race, and everybody was interested. The assumption was that there are a lot more evangelicals in America today than there were in ’76 when Jimmy Carter ran for office. And then I’d have to go through a long spiel to explain that, depending on how you measure it, evangelicals constitute somewhere between 7% and 47% of the adult population. That’s a pretty wide margin there, but most people who study it think it’s probably around a quarter to a third of the adult population. And the intriguing thing is that the percentages have not really changed over the last 30 years.

Michael Lindsay

Well, that gets us scratching our heads. There certainly seem to be a lot more evangelicals. They’re certainly more public in lots of different areas. We hear about them in politics; we hear about them in Hollywood. What’s bringing about the change? My hunch was that a group of leaders, people in national positions leading major social institutions in this country, were self-identifying as evangelical. Either they had become evangelical on the rise to the top, or they had been evangelical and somehow they had navigated their way into powerful positions. And so I set out to try and study them.

So I did 360 face-to-face interviews, spent three years doing the research, traveled to 72 different research sites, logged about 300,000 miles and collected about 5,000 pages worth of transcript data. For every one hour of interview I did, I did about eight hours of background research to try and learn the individual stories. What I’ll share with you this morning are eight fallacies I had walking into the project that in the end proved to be completely wrong.

Elastic Orthodoxy

First, I assumed that evangelicals had succeeded in politics because they had been united, and that unity had been the way that evangelicals have become an important factor in the Republican Party. In reality, I found that evangelicals, not surprisingly, are divided across the political spectrum and that those divisions are quite significant. Jim Wallis,² the head of Sojourners, and James Dobson,³ the head of Focus on the Family, really see the world in very different ways. That left-right divide within American evangelicalism is a very significant fracture and oftentimes results in very tense relationships — even among folks who go to the very same church. People who are in the same Bible study or fellowship group oftentimes cannot talk about elections because it’s something that is quite divisive.

I knew that that existed, but I did not realize that within the same White House you could actually have significant division. For example, one of the persons I interviewed for the project was C. Everett Koop (surgeon general under President Reagan).⁴ He told me about how in 1986 he became increasingly convinced that AIDS ought to be treated as a public health crisis. Now, when Koop was nominated in 1981, many evangelicals were very excited about this. He was a symbolic appointment; and although he didn’t have experience in public health, he was a world-class surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He eventually got confirmed, even though the public health community was not very excited. But evangelicals were thrilled, and for five years he had a very good relationship with the evangelical community.

Then in 1986 he began to say the White House ought to treat AIDS as a real public-health concern. But remember, in 1986, most evangelicals saw AIDS as God’s punishment against a homosexual lifestyle. One who held that position was Gary Bauer;⁵ he was serving as President Reagan’s domestic policy advisor. In a matter of a few months, Bauer and Koop began to lock horns. Koop would try and get a meeting with the president; Gary Bauer’s staff would get the meeting removed. And in fact, when I did the interview with Dr. Koop — he has an institute up at Dartmouth now — he didn’t have very nice things to say about Gary Bauer. There are these tensions — and they last.

And so, unity is not what has given evangelicals success in politics. No, the reason why evangelicals have succeeded in politics is because they fundamentally believe something is wrong with the world and they can help set it aright. This gives a fire in their belly that motivates them not just to be active in politics but also to be involved in a whole range of activity. It sustains them through political defeats.

Michael Lindsay

Evangelicals embody what I call “elastic orthodoxy.” For a movement to succeed, you have to have some measure of unity; that, for evangelicals, is a core set of shared beliefs that are religious. Most evangelicals believe the same things about God, the Bible, heaven and hell, and who gets there. That provides a sense of cohesion for the movement. The other thing, though, that makes evangelicals unique is that they have an elasticity to this orthodoxy so that they can build bridges in very interesting and creative ways, so they have been able to build alliances with a whole range of different religious groups and with secular groups as well.

The difference between evangelicals and fundamentalists is how they respond to secular society. A fundamentalist comes into contact with secular society and his or her natural inclination is to pull back, to withdraw, to maintain the integrity of his or her faith. Evangelicals, on the other hand, encounter secular society and their natural inclination is to engage it because they’re wanting to win it over. Now, it doesn’t mean that they’re losing their faith. Books have been written about how evangelicals are becoming more secular; they’re losing their distinctiveness. I think you can certainly say that [with regard to] commitment to organized religion or a couple of other things that we’ll talk about; but in terms of core beliefs, evangelicals that I interview today look very, very similar to previous generations of evangelicals. The core beliefs have not changed.

The 1998 Apex

The second fallacy that I walked into the project with is that I assumed that 2004 was the apex, the pinnacle of evangelical influence in American politics. And I agree with Michael Gerson that it certainly did demonstrate how evangelicals were able to be a very significant force in a presidential election; but many people that I interviewed talked about how very often they voted their person into office and got nothing to show for it. And many evangelicals — although they had very positive things to say about the president personally — didn’t feel like that he had delivered as much as they wanted.

When have been moments where evangelicals have succeeded on the policy front? I’d have to say 1998 is incredibly important. In 1998, evangelicals led a broad coalition of different religious groups to lead the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act, a significant development because it said that religious freedom is a basic human right and that it ought to be a fundamental part of American foreign policy. It set up an independent commission that investigates concerns about religious liberty around the world and issues an annual report through the State Department. It established an ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom, and is probably, in my opinion, the most significant piece of legislation that has been enacted that deals with religious issues over the last quarter century. And evangelicals were at the heart of a broad coalition that brought that about.

Big Personalities, Not King-Makers

The third fallacy I walked into the project with was that there was select group of evangelical movement leaders who functioned as king-makers within the Republican Party. Folks like James Dobson or Chuck Colson had enough clout because evangelicals are the largest, single element of the Republican constituency. What I learned is that evangelicalism is a movement dominated by big personalities, but based upon the interviews that I conducted with cabinet secretaries, senior White House officials, heads of federal bureaus and agencies, I can tell you that these evangelicals movement leaders are important constituents to keep in the fold, but they certainly do not have make-or-break status within the Republican Party — not at all. In fact, many times there are very deep tensions.

One of the persons that I interviewed for the project was Dick Armey [who] served as majority leader of the House in the late ’90s. He’s no longer in politics, so Armey can say pretty much whatever he thinks, and he gives really great interviews. I had heard that after the Republican revolution in 1994, evangelical movement leaders would meet with Republican leadership in Washington five or six times a year. As the years went by, these meetings became increasingly acrimonious. In one particular meeting, things really hit a flashpoint. Majority Leader Armey was recounting the story and said, “I said to James Dobson,” quote, ‘You don’t know how the legislative process works. All you want to do is come up here whining and complaining about the failures we’ve experienced when you really ought to mind your own business.’” Then Armey turns to me and says, “You know, there’s a song by the Pointer Sisters, ‘Mr. big shot, who do you think you are?’⁶ Also, there was this little wimpy guy that ran for president, Gary Bauer, and he’s one of these arrogant guys that was telling me about how he made me the majority. Well, Shania Twain says, ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much.’” So, very deep tensions occur.

Now, what role do evangelicals have in setting up Republican power structures? Well, Republicans are keenly concerned not to have a repeat in 2008 of what they saw happen in 1996. In 1996, most evangelicals were not necessarily excited by the presidential candidacy of Bob Dole. Some movement leaders spoke out against him, saying that he wasn’t conservative enough; he didn’t hold to some of their core convictions. So in many ways, evangelicals were not a force to be reckoned with in the 1996 election. And Republicans are concerned about that with a moderate candidate like John McCain.

The big questions in 2008 — there’s two: Will there be a slim segment of the evangelical population that could, in fact, go for a Democratic candidate? Senators Obama and Clinton have certainly done more outreach and have been more outspoken about signaling their faith than any candidate since Jimmy Carter on the Democratic side. And so in tight races in Missouri and in Pennsylvania, it very well could be that they’re able to shave off some of that support, and that could be quite significant. The other very significant question, though, is will evangelicals, by and large, stay home when John McCain is a candidate? Because if they’re not mobilized behind him, it could indeed be a repeat of 1996.

The Cosmopolitan/Populist Divide

Fourth, I assumed that centers of evangelical power, like Wheaton, Ill. and Colorado Springs, Colo. were the central places, the sites of evangelical power. When in fact, the evangelical power brokers are where the rest of the power brokers for American society are. They are in New York, in Washington, and in L.A.

There are very significant divisions within the evangelical movement. Most people who have studied evangelicalism recognize this. They say, well, it’s divided between the political left and political right, or it’s divided between the ages: you’ve got the older generation and the younger generation. But as I did the research, none of those really held up. You know, Jim Dobson and Jim Wallis used the exact same strategies to mobilize their base. They come to different outcomes but they look very, very similar. And I also learned that it wasn’t a pure generational divide. What I encountered was that there were people in the study who tried to sort of distance themselves.

One of the questions that I asked the leaders was, “Tell me some of the books that you’ve read that have been really important in your life” — a seemingly innocuous question. People would say, well, I’ve read C.S. Lewis, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer,⁷ or some other things. And then, after I’d done about a dozen interviews, one person, said, “But I’ll tell you, I have never read one of those Left Behind⁸ books.” And I thought, well, that’s kind of interesting; I didn’t ask you what you didn’t read. And then I did another couple of interviews and somebody else said, “Now, that Tim LaHaye, that whole Left Behind, that’s not for me; that’s not my kind of reading.” And then somebody said to me, “And you know, I not only don’t read that Left Behind, but also I would never hang a Thomas Kinkade⁹ painting in my home.”

And I began to realize that there is a whole segment of the evangelical movement –many of those folks who are in the elite — who were trying to distinguish themselves from the rest of the evangelical subculture. And so I began to think more about this and pay more attention to it. And the real divide, in my opinion, in evangelicalism is not between the left and the right; it’s not between the young and the old. It is between a group that I call the “cosmopolitan” evangelicals and “populist” evangelicals. And these are very, very significant divisions.

You see, populist evangelicals are what we oftentimes think about evangelicals. These are the folks who are culture warriors, who say that they want to take back the country for their faith. They see themselves as embattled against secular society. They are very much concerned that they are in a minority position, and they’ve got to somehow use very strong-arm tactics to win the day. That populist evangelicalism is alive and strong, especially in the evangelical subculture: the music, the publishing, the entertainment segment of the evangelical subculture. But there is a whole other segment.

[But] the people who I interviewed, by and large, fit more this cosmopolitan outlook. They are less interested in taking back the country for their faith. They really are more interested in their faith being seen as authentic, reasonable, and winsome. So they still have an evangelistic impulse, but their whole modus operandi looks quite different. Because of that they have different ultimate goals. They want to have a seat at the table, to be seen as legitimate. They are concerned about what The New York Times or Time magazine thinks about evangelicals because they [the cosmopolitan evangelicals] are concerned about cultural elites. Legitimacy is actually more important to them than necessarily taking back the country.

Within that cosmopolitan element a whole new set of faces have emerged within the evangelical movement. Let me just mention five or six interesting people to consider. Most of evangelicalism does tend to still embrace a traditionalist understanding about gender relations, but that’s changing. Cherie Harder, for example, was recently named the president of the Trinity Forum, a group of folks who provide support and continuing education programs for many of the cosmopolitan evangelicals that I interviewed. Cherie is a very dynamic woman — served most recently in the first lady’s office. She has been in government for a long time, is Harvard educated, very bright and very sharp. She happens to be a cosmopolitan evangelical. Or Catherine Rohr, an investment banker who has founded an organization called the Prison Entrepreneurship Program. It is designed to help folks transitioning out of prison learn entrepreneurial skills. She’s one of the featured speakers this year at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, the largest leadership conference for evangelical pastors held every August.

Or think about Latinos: Luis Palau, Argentine-born evangelical based out of Portland, Oregon. You don’t think of Portland as a hub of evangelical activity all that often, but there’s Luis. And he sponsors citywide events called festivals that draw even more people than the Billy Graham Crusades do — quite significant.

Or the rise of Asian-Americans. Here’s an interesting tidbit: Twenty years ago, the Campus Crusade for Christ chapter at Yale University, one of the leading evangelical campus ministries, was 100% white. Today it’s 90% Asian-American. This dramatic growth in the percentage of Asians at elite college campuses paralleled the rise of evangelical influence on these elite college campuses. Dan Cho is the executive director of something called the Veritas Forum; it sponsors conversations, debates, engagements on leading college campuses where the reasonableness of evangelical Christianity is discussed — not in an angry, red-faced manner, but actually quite cosmopolitan in its outlook.

Who is the most celebrated evangelical today? Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, is an outspoken theistic evolutionist. And that’s significant because the close identification of evangelicals with either traditional creationism or intelligent design is actually going to be giving way, I think, to a whole new generation of theistic evolutionists. Who are some of the new political figures? Well, I really do think that the whole Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson generation is being replaced by a whole new face. And who best personifies that than Mike Huckabee? Huckabee is more telegenic than Falwell; he’s more measured than Robertson; he’s more winsome than Dobson. And he has the ability to appeal to both the populist and the cosmopolitan evangelical crowds.

A whole range of other scholars have found that actually, in the United States, cultural capital is revealed by having an omnivorous approach to cultural artifacts. You not only have to like the opera and the symphony; you also have to like jazz and hip hop. That’s exactly the case for political figures. You have to be able to have a very interesting conversation with nuclear physicists at 12 o’clock and at 2 o’clock be bowling with the folks down the street. You have to be able to walk in these two arenas, and Huckabee actually can do that.

Still Faithful Republicans

Fifth, I assumed that the new issues, the new political issues that were developing across the evangelical political landscape necessarily signaled a party realignment [with] especially younger generations moving more and more into the Democratic Party. The data actually just does not support that. Evangelicals still are center right, and they are among the most loyal of Republicans. In 1992, for President George H.W. Bush, at the very end of his campaign, most Republicans were leaving him left and right — but not the evangelicals. They were among his most loyal constituency until the very end. And he wasn’t even necessarily one who they identified with, but they were incredibly loyal.

Also, I think we have to recognize that there are very interesting ways in which parties can change. Think about the issue of AIDS. In 1983, most evangelicals thought of AIDS as God’s punishment for a homosexual lifestyle. Fast-forward 20 years. By using a whole variety of modes of reasoning (some of which included religious reasoning), Michael Gerson and others are able to persuade the president to allocate $15 billion for AIDS relief in Africa. Now, the fact that the evangelical community not only thought that that was legitimate but actually embraced the idea — and have seen now AIDS is one of their celebrated causes — shows just how fast a movement can change its political direction without changing its party affiliation.

It’s true that the Democrats today — Senators Obama and Clinton — are more open and than ever toward evangelicals. But remember this: the Focus on the Family mailing list is 10 times the size of the Sojourners’ mailing list. It’s still a difference of size and scope. I do think that some issues are emerging. I think that the faith-based environmentalism called Creation Care¹⁰ is going to be increasingly important. I also see issues like abortion not going away at all. Is it possible for Obama or Clinton to say things that could somehow win over some evangelicals? It comes down to: are they willing to say that abortion is not just a tragic choice but one that we want to try and reduce the incidence of — and propose some policies that might do that?

I think there are some issues that people assume will be huge elements that I think are going to go away: same-sex unions, for example. I don’t think evangelicals 20 years from now will be raising concerns about it. This is one of the issues where you do see very significant generational divides. Older evangelicals are very opposed to it; younger evangelicals are not. And in this way, it mirrors the rest of the country.

Focus on Foreign Policy

The sixth fallacy I had is that if we have to look at how religion fits into politics, it is most centrally about domestic issues, when in fact the real interesting story, is foreign affairs. Fifty years ago, evangelicals were vehemently opposed to foreign aid, to interventionism. In fact, some of the strongest opposition that President Woodrow Wilson received for some of his policies when he was in office was from fellow conservative Christians. The major turnaround that evangelicals have made on issues about foreign aid and foreign investment is quite significant.

Today, for example, evangelicals are very high on USAID and the State Department. Why is this? Well, over the last 20 years, we have witnessed a de-professionalization of foreign missions. Fifty years ago, evangelicals were sending missionaries by the droves to China, to India, to all over. Now you don’t necessarily send somebody for the rest of his or her life to go and do foreign missions; now you send a lot more people for shorter-term ventures. People go for two weeks, for a month, for a summer, for a year, for two years, and this has changed the dynamic. What it’s done is exposed a lot more average evangelicals to a global culture. So you’ve got 7,000 members of Saddleback Church¹¹ who have now traveled to Rwanda to go and do development and aid in very interesting ways.

What has happened is that evangelicals are far friendlier to issues about foreign affairs than they ever were, and they have built very major institutions around the idea. World Vision,¹² one of the very largest foreign relief and development agencies based here in the U.S., is a $2.6 billion enterprise. They distribute most of the food for the hungry that’s given by the United States. And it’s headed by Rich Stearns, who used to be the CEO of Lenox china, and before that, Parker Brothers games. In fact, one of the interesting developments is that there is a trend within evangelical parachurch ministries: they are no longer headed by people who are pastors and preachers, who have divinity degrees. They are now headed by business executives.

Few Theologians

Seventh, I assumed that church life and theology really drove evangelicals’ political activism. In fact, church involvement is actually quite low among the cosmopolitan evangelicals I’ve studied. Sixty percent of them have low denominational loyalty or low church affiliation. Some are members of their church but only show up on Sunday morning; they’re not very engaged. Others are members in name only. Others are not members of any congregation whatsoever, and yet they are on the board of some of evangelicalism’s most important organizations. They just happen to be in the parachurch sector. You see, the parachurch is the real driver of how evangelicals have become so significant in a short span of time. These include operations like the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, World Vision, as I’ve mentioned, as well as a whole range of educational institutions.

There are some theologically literate cosmopolitan evangelicals, people who are able to articulate how their faith matters and drives them to particular positions. But on the whole, most of the evangelical leaders that I interviewed are like most of their fellow churchgoers: they don’t know what they believe or why. They cannot articulate basic theological ideas. There have been a number of folks who have written books about how America is becoming a theocracy. One of the interesting notes they talk about is how evangelical ideas about the apocalypse or eschatology are driving American foreign policy. You know, that would be interesting, except most of the people I interviewed do not know the difference between premillenialist and postmillennialist13theology. So the idea that they’re driven by this concern that the rest of the country or the world is getting worse and worse and eventually there’s going to be this kind of cataclysmic result, I don’t find that to be the case at all.

Eighth and finally, I assumed that politics had been the main thing for most evangelicals. The way that evangelicals had succeeded in public life was because politics was a central driving force. In fact, most of the people I interviewed articulated a basic idea that they see politics as simply downstream from culture. Now, part of this is a disillusionment with the fact that they have invested a lot of energy and resources in politics, and it hasn’t resulted in long-term cultural change. But also there has been just this recognition that there are other institutions that are very, very significant.

And so you have, for example, a new document being released at the National Press Club. It’s called, The Evangelical Manifesto.¹⁴ It’s signed by, I don’t know, a hundred evangelical leaders and many mega-church pastors. It is a very significant development. It is drafted by Os Guiness and edited by David Neff, managing editor of Christianity Today. One of the things that’s written in there is that they very much endorse the idea that the first thing to say about politics is that politics is not the first thing. Well, what is the first thing? In terms of cultural life and desire to be involved, I found a lot more energy, enthusiasm, excitement for being engaged in things like Hollywood or on elite college campuses than in Washington. In fact, many times, people that I interviewed said that they were far more mobilized about some of the changes that they had seen going on in Hollywood over the last 5, 10 years than anything they’d seen in Washington over the last 30 years. So if you assume that politics is the principal development, I’d have to say that that didn’t wind up how I found it.

So, there’s eight things that I encountered while doing the research. I encountered some new leaders, new faces, new issues; and hopefully that sparks some good conversation.

Read the full transcript including remarks by David Kirkpatrick, Washington Correspondent, The New York Times and others at the conference at pewforum.org.

Notes

¹ Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, Oxford University Press, 2007. The book was named one of the best books of 2007 by Publishers Weekly, received a Christianity Today‘s 2008 book award, and was Oxford University Press’s nominee for the 2008 nonfiction Pulitzer Prize.

² Jim Wallis is president and executive director, Sojourners. His latest book is The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America (HarperOne, 2008).

³ James C. Dobson is founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, a non-profit organization that produces his internationally syndicated radio programs.

⁴ C. Everett Koop is now senior scholar at the <a href=”“>C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth.

⁵ Gary L. Bauer, president of American Values, served in President Ronald Reagan’s administration for eight years, as Under Secretary of Education and as President Reagan’s Chief Domestic Policy Advisor. While serving at the Education Department, Bauer was named Chairman of President Reagan’s Special Working Group on the Family.

⁶ The actual lyrics to the Pointer Sisters’ song are: “Mr. big stuff, who do you think you are?”

⁷ Read more about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

⁸ The Left Behind series of novels by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye envisions events surrounding the Rapture, battle of Armageddon and second coming of Christ.

⁹ See Thomas Kinkade paintings at his website.

¹⁰ Creation Care magazine provides more information about the Creation Care movement.

¹¹ Saddleback Church operates four campuses in California.

¹² Read more about World Vision.

¹³ Beliefnet provides a summary of the differences between pre- and post-millennialism and other aspects of eschatological thinking.

¹⁴ Read more about “An Envangelical Manifesto,” at pewforum.org.

John McCain has been subject to criticism from evangelical Christian leaders, such as James Dobson, in recent weeks. Pew Forum Senior Fellow John Green looks at the importance of the evangelical vote for the McCain campaign, the impact of Mitt Romney’s withdrawal on the race for the Republican nomination and the challenges posed by religious constituencies for the remaining Republican and Democratic candidates.

Featuring:

John Green, Senior Fellow in Religion and American Politics, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Interviewer:

Mark O’Keefe, Associate Director, Web Publishing, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

How important are evangelicals to John McCain’s candidacy?

John McCain has built a broad coalition of different groups in the Republican Party, and white evangelical Protestants are part of that coalition. For instance, when he won in South Carolina, he received 27% of the evangelical vote, a little bit behind Mike Huckabee but still quite respectable in a multi-candidate race. In the key primary state of Florida, McCain got 28% of the evangelical vote, also just behind Huckabee. And in New Hampshire, he actually tied with Huckabee, each with 29% of this religious group’s vote. So white evangelicals have played an important role in the McCain campaign thus far, even though he hasn’t come in first among them. It looks like McCain may win the Republican presidential nomination with this level of support from white evangelicals.

But the more interesting question is what this level of support would mean for the fall election. White evangelicals have been a very strong Republican constituency — the exit polls in the 2004 general election showed that 78% of white, born-again Protestants voted for George W. Bush. Thus, in that very close election, evangelicals were quite important to Bush. And if the 2008 election is close, they would be as important to the Republican nominee. McCain may have some trouble achieving that level of support from white evangelicals given that a majority of them preferred other candidates in the primaries. In addition, many of the leaders of the Christian right have been hostile to McCain.

In fact, evangelical broadcaster and psychologist James Dobson said in a statement this week that he does not consider McCain a conservative and if McCain is the Republican nominee in November, he will not vote for him. What influence might Dobson have on evangelical voters in regards to McCain?

John Green

I was not at all surprised by James Dobson’s comments¹ about McCain because there’s been a lot of tension between Christian right leaders and McCain for quite some time. In the 2000 presidential election, there was a rather famous speech² in which McCain identified Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as “agents of intolerance.” There have been policy differences between Dobson and McCain, and McCain is not the kind of Republican Dobson would like to see heading the ticket in any election, let alone what appears to be a crucial and close election in 2008.

It’s unclear, however, exactly how much influence Dobson might have on the evangelical vote. We know that Dobson is viewed favorably among white evangelicals. For instance, a summer 2007 survey by the Pew Forum and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that 44% of white evangelicals had a favorable view of Dobson, 7% had an unfavorable view and the remaining 49% had no opinion³. If a large portion of the evangelicals who have a favorable view of Dobson developed an unfavorable view of McCain, it could pose a problem for the campaign. But we don’t know how many of these evangelicals take political advice from Dobson as opposed to taking advice about family life.

In fact, most evangelicals have a positive view of McCain: In the most recent Pew Research Center poll⁴, 59% of white evangelicals hold favorable views and 28% hold unfavorable ones. By way of reference, 56% of white evangelicals in the same survey have favorable views of President Bush and 40% have unfavorable views. Of course, these views could change, especially in the face of criticism from leaders such Dobson. McCain may have some work to do with the evangelical community, but he has a lot to work with.

What does McCain need to do to rally evangelicals?

I would not presume to advise the McCain campaign on strategy or tactics. However, recent history would suggest that he needs to mend fences with the leaders of the Christian right and also find ways to appeal to rank-and-file evangelicals directly. It’s important to remember that when Bush first ran for president in 2000, he was not the favorite candidate of evangelicals or of the Christian right. In fact, there was some prospect that McCain, a Bush opponent in that race, might have been favored by evangelicals. During the course of the campaign, Bush developed a rapport with evangelical voters, essentially going around the leaders of the Christian right. Eventually, however, the leaders came into the Bush camp as well. In contrast, McCain developed a negative relationship with evangelicals and particularly with Christian right leaders. There is some evidence that the McCain campaign has been trying to repair this damage. In 2006, McCain spoke at Liberty University⁵, the college founded by Jerry Falwell. And in the 2008 campaign, McCain has stressed his social issue credentials, such as his anti-abortion position.

Could criticism from religious conservatives actually help McCain with independents or moderates who may consider voting for him?

Overall, McCain is perceived as a moderate Republican. This perception has arisen in part from his actions during the Bush administration. For example, on some matters, such as the Iraq war, he’s been very supportive of the president, but on other matters, such as tax cuts, he has challenged Bush. So McCain may benefit from conservative criticism because it further establishes him as a moderate and independent voice in politics. This effect could also occur within the evangelical community itself, among voters who are not supportive of the Christian right. So there are often numerous effects of criticism from Christian right leaders.

A Pew Research Center for the People & the Press analysis of polling data showed that McCain had actually pulled even with Huckabee among evangelicals heading into Super Tuesday. Is that at all surprising?

Sen. McCain has been winning primaries, and a recent Pew survey⁶ shows that he’s been gaining among most religious communities in the Republican Party, including evangelicals. That may be largely just an effect of the primary process itself. It could also be that many Republican voters, evangelical or otherwise, are concluding that John McCain would be the best of the available candidates to be their party’s presidential nominee. In addition, the Florida exit polls⁷ asked Huckabee voters who their second choice would be for the GOP nomination, and 55% said McCain. Taken together, these findings suggest that McCain can improve his standing among evangelicals.

How might Mitt Romney’s withdrawal from the campaign impact religious voters who supported him? Are most of them likely to shift their allegiance to McCain, Huckabee or neither one?

Romney’s exit may effectively end the Republican nominating contest. But if it does not, many of Romney’s supporters may support Huckabee as opposed to McCain. In fact, there is survey evidence⁸ that many of Romney’s backers do not like McCain. But many of these same voters may find McCain more attractive on economic and foreign policy issues than Huckabee.

How important have evangelicals been to Huckabee’s success thus far?

Evangelicals have been absolutely critical to Mike Huckabee, beginning with his surprise victory in the Iowa caucuses and continuing down to his victories in Southern states on Super Tuesday. Even in states where Huckabee hasn’t won, evangelicals supplied a very large portion of his vote. Gov. Huckabee has simply not been able to expand his support to other religious groups beyond the evangelical community. Absent an expansion of his supporters, Huckabee may find it difficult to effectively challenge McCain in the next round of primaries.

What do you make of Dobson’s endorsement of Huckebee?

If nothing else, Dobson is consistent: He is opposed to McCain, and Huckabee is McCain’s strongest opponent still in the race. This endorsement may help Huckabee increase his support among evangelicals, although as with Dobson’s criticism of McCain, it is hard to gauge how large that effect might be. However, Huckabee already has strong support among evangelicals and this endorsement is unlikely to help him reach beyond evangelical voters to other Republicans.

Are other candidates facing similar challenges with religious constituencies?

Religious constituencies present quite a few challenges across the primary field. For instance, if Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, she would need to mobilize black Protestants, a key Democratic constituency that has been very supportive of Barack Obama. And Obama has had some difficulty with white Catholics, a constituency he will need to swing his way if he is the Democratic nominee. So both Clinton and Obama may have problems with key religious groups, similar to McCain’s problem with white evangelicals.

There also has been some discussion that Obama has much work to do to appeal to Jewish voters. Is there evidence of this?

Barack Obama has not done very well with Jewish voters in the early primary contests. They have solidly supported Hillary Clinton in the states where Jews are numerous enough to be reported in the exit polls. There are lingering suspicions in the Jewish community about Obama’s commitment to Israel, and, on top of that, Obama is not particularly well-known in the Jewish community compared with Clinton.

¹ “Dobson whacks McCain, says he can’t vote for him,” The Boston Globe, Feb. 5, 2008.

² “Sen. John McCain Attacks Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Republican Establishment as Harming GOP Ideals,” Aired February 28, 2000, CNN.com transcripts.

³ Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “Public Expresses Mixed Views of Islam, Mormonism,” September 2007.

⁴ Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “McCain’s Support Soars, Democratic Race Tightens,” Feb. 3, 2008.

⁵ “McCain Reconnects With Liberty University,” The Washington Post, May 14, 2006.

⁶ Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “McCain’s Support Soars, Democratic Race Tightens,” Feb. 3, 2008.

⁷ See MSNBC.com, Politics/2008 Primary Results/Exit Polls/Florida-Republicans.

⁸ Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “McCain’s Support Soars, Democratic Race Tightens,” Feb. 3, 2008.

With several primary contests completed and Super Tuesday fast approaching, Forum Associate Director Mark O’Keefe interviewed Senior Research Fellow John Green about the vote of evangelical Christians in the 2008 presidential election. Green and O’Keefe spoke about evangelical voting patterns in the early primaries, evangelical response to Mitt Romney being a Mormon, the changing composition of the Republican and Democratic fields and Democratic efforts to reach out to evangelical voters.

Does anything that has happened so far suggest evangelicals will rally around a single Republican candidate?

It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s possible that it could. There are at least two candidates in the race besides Mike Huckabee that have, at one point or another, drawn significant evangelical support. One of them is Mitt Romney and the other is John McCain. Here is where a little history is helpful.

Back in 1999 and 2000, George W. Bush did not start out as the candidate of evangelicals; in fact, most evangelical leaders were endorsing other candidates. But as the campaign progressed, evangelicals began to rally around Bush, and by the time he won the nomination over McCain, a large majority of the evangelical community was in his camp. Bush has been able to maintain that level of support among evangelicals since then even in the face of declining popularity in recent times. So it’s certainly possible that evangelicals who have been coalescing a little bit around Huckabee could coalesce around another candidate, such as McCain or Romney.

To be fair, it is worth noting a counter example where evangelicals failed to rally around a single candidate. In the 1996 Republican primaries, evangelicals were divided among the candidates, including Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes and Bob Dole. Dole eventually won the nomination and received only lukewarm support from evangelicals.

What does it take for a candidate to cultivate enthusiasm among evangelical voters?

For evangelicals to become enthusiastic about a candidate, three things have to fall into place. One is they have to be minimally comfortable with the issue positions of the candidate. Most evangelicals could feel minimally comfortable with a McCain or a Romney and certainly with a Huckabee.

But there are two other factors that are also important. One is electability. A few months ago, hardly anyone thought that Huckabee was electable, but he has, of course, risen in the polls and done well in some of the early contests. Most evangelicals are likely to see McCain or Romney as electable, particularly if they do well in the primaries that will follow here in the spring.

Then there’s a third factor, and that’s personal appeal. Huckabee certainly has connected with some elements of the evangelical community but clearly not with all of it. Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith has been a bit of an impediment to that kind of connection for him, and John McCain’s history of feuding with leaders of the Christian right has also been a bit of an impediment.

So if one looks at the front-running Republican candidates, two of the three things that would need to happen for evangelicals to rally around them are plausible, if not in place. But personal appeal would still have to develop. As far as I can tell, there is not a lot of indication that that has taken place, although evangelicals do tend to have fairly favorable views of both Romney and McCain.

The other important candidate in the race is Rudy Giuliani, who has an issues problem. Many evangelicals disagree with Giuliani on social issues, and some of them may be unwilling to support him because of his stance on abortion and gay rights.

Are you seeing any patterns in the way evangelicals have been voting thus far in the presidential primaries?

Early last year, polls by the Pew Research Center and other polling organizations showed evangelicals to be very sharply divided among the various Republican candidates, with no real enthusiasm for any particular candidate. But that has changed a bit in that Mike Huckabee has cultivated a degree of enthusiasm in many of the early primaries, such as in Iowa and again in South Carolina. Huckabee received a plurality of the votes of white, born-again Protestants in these states.

If there is a pattern emerging, it has been very uneven. Huckabee has had a couple of primaries where he has done very well, but he has had some primaries where he didn’t do very well at all. For instance, in New Hampshire, not only did he place a distant third in the field, but he and John McCain were tied with 28 percent each among evangelical voters. And then, in Michigan, Mitt Romney actually won the evangelical vote over Huckabee, 34 percent to 29 percent.

Florida will be another test for Huckabee. It will be interesting to see if he can obtain a majority of the evangelical vote. Now that’s hard to do in a multi-candidate field because it doesn’t take many candidates getting 10 percent or so of the vote to make it impossible for any one candidate to get a majority.

There has been much discussion and speculation about how evangelical voters might respond to Romney’s Mormon religion. Can we come to any conclusions yet?

Well, the polling evidence from last year very clearly indicated that Gov. Romney faced a challenge with evangelicals.¹ And a lot of the things he’s done in his campaign, including his prominent speech in Texas about religion in American politics, clearly have been aimed at meeting that challenge. In the early going, we see some evidence that he did successfully meet that challenge. In Michigan, which is in some sense his home state, he won the evangelical vote. He has gotten significant portions of the evangelical vote in some of the other states, which suggests that he has been able to meet that challenge.

But he didn’t do very well in Iowa or South Carolina. And if one looks at the county-by-county breakdown of the vote for Romney and Huckabee in those states, counties with a lot of evangelicals gave Romney very few votes. In those states, Romney did well in counties that had relatively few evangelicals. Additionally, in Iowa, Romney did well in counties that had a lot of Catholics. So at least in those two states, there is some indication that the concerns about Romney’s Mormon religion had an effect at the ballot box.

Now that Fred Thompson has withdrawn, do we have any indication of who his evangelical supporters may adopt?

If one assumes that the pundits are right and that Thompson is a consistently conservative Republican, then his dropping out may benefit other more conservative candidates. According to the most recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, both Huckabee and Romney are perceived by Republican voters as being more conservative than John McCain, who is perceived as more moderate.²

So if those perceptions hold, then Thompson’s supporters may go to Huckabee or to Romney. Given some of the challenges that Romney has with evangelicals, it may well be that Thompson’s evangelical backers go to Huckabee.

If Huckabee withdraws at some point, how may that impact the political calculus for evangelical voters?

The fact that Huckabee has come this far with relatively little organization and a real lack of funds is because of the enthusiasm of some evangelicals at the grassroots level who have been campaigning for him on their own initiative. That kind of enthusiasm is difficult to shift from one candidate to another.

If Huckabee is defeated or withdraws from the race, there is a real possibility that some of those activists and voters may be discouraged and may not flock to another candidate’s banner. In fact, they may remain discouraged into the fall election.

But another possibility is that they may shift to another GOP candidate. When people become deeply involved in political campaigns, they quite often develop a taste for the process and they want to continue being engaged in politics even though their favorite candidate dropped out or was defeated. It is interesting to me that there appears to have been relatively little public animosity between John McCain and Mike Huckabee.

This suggests that it’s at least plausible that if Huckabee’s followers stay involved in the process, they may find John McCain more congenial than some of the other GOP candidates.

That would be an interesting development when one considers that in his 2000 campaign McCain was highly critical of evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, calling them “agents of intolerance.”³

McCain is still feuding with some leaders on the Christian right, and that very well could be a problem for him. The thing about Huckabee’s evangelical supporters, though, is they seem to have a different approach to politics. A lot of the anecdotal evidence from the campaign trail suggests that these are folks that may like to see a different relationship between evangelicals and the Republican Party.

First, Huckabee supporters appear to be concerned with a broader range of issues. They are certainly conservative on the social issues, but they appear to adopt more moderate positions on economic and foreign policy issues.

Second, many of the prominent evangelical pastors and leaders who have endorsed Huckabee have decried the hard-edged politics of the Christian right. So it may very well be that Huckabee’s supporters may have less of a problem with McCain than, say, a James Dobson or a Pat Robertson would have with McCain. That also suggests that some, or even a large portion, of Huckabee’s supporters may well find McCain a congenial choice.

In recent presidential elections, including the 2004 general election, evangelicals have voted overwhelmingly Republican. Is there any indication that any of the Democratic candidates are resonating with evangelical voters?

There is some indication that the Democrats are doing a little better with evangelicals. The Clinton, Obama and Edwards campaigns have made a real effort to appeal to religious voters, including evangelicals. Some of the head-to-head matchups we see in the polls show both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama doing a bit better than John Kerry did with evangelicals in 2004. Whether those patterns will persist in the 2008 general election is hard to say. There is some indication that evangelicals have positive feelings toward Barack Obama; the conventional wisdom is that this is because he is comfortable talking about his faith.

There is some evidence that evangelicals may be less committed to the Republican Party here in the early going, thus giving the Democrats an opportunity to secure more evangelical votes than in the past. This pattern seems to be particularly strong among young evangelical voters, that is, evangelical voters under the age of 30.

Read more about religion in the 2008 elections at pewforum.org.

Notes

¹See “Clinton and Giuliani Seen as Not Highly Religious; Romney’s Religion Raises Concerns,” Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Sept. 6, 2007.

²See “In GOP Primaries: Three Victors, Three Constituencies,” Pew Center on the People & the Press, January 16, 2008.

³“Sen. John McCain Attacks Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Republican Establishment as Harming GOP Ideals,” aired February 28, 2000, CNN Transcripts.

White evangelical Protestants have been one of the most faithful Republican constituencies in presidential elections in recent years, voting overwhelmingly for GOP candidates. In 2004, for example, 79% of white evangelicals supported President Bush, while just 21% supported his Democratic opponent, John Kerry. White evangelicals also accounted for a third of Bush’s total votes that year.

White evangelicals are typically analyzed as a group, but an examination of the younger generation (those ages 18-29) provides evidence that white evangelicals may be undergoing some significant political changes. An analysis of surveys conducted between 2001 and 2007 by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press suggests that younger white evangelicals have become increasingly dissatisfied with Bush and are moving away from the GOP. The question is whether these changes will result in a shift in white evangelical votes in 2008 and beyond.

Presidential Approval Rating

Bush’s approval rating has fallen fairly steadily among almost every segment of the American public, but the drop in support has been particularly significant among white evangelicals ages 18-29. This group was among Bush’s strongest supporters in the beginning of his presidency; in 2002, for example, an overwhelming majority (87%) approved of Bush’s job performance. By August 2007, however, Bush’s approval rating among this group had plummeted by 42 percentage points, with most of the drop (25 points) coming since 2005.

By contrast, Bush’s job approval among older generations of white evangelicals (those ages 30 and older) has undergone a much more gradual decline, falling 28 points since 2002 and just 11 points since 2005.

Despite the steep decline in their support for the president since 2005, however, younger white evangelicals still remain significantly more likely than the overall population in this age group to approve of the president (45% vs. 28%, a 17-percentage-point gap).

Party Identification

In 2001, 55% of younger white evangelicals identified as Republicans – nearly three-and-a-half times the number who identified as Democrats, and more than double the number of Americans overall in this age group who identified as Republicans. Throughout Bush’s first term, party identification among younger white evangelicals remained relatively stable, but since 2005 the group’s Republican affiliation has dropped significantly – by 15 percentage points. However, the shift away from the GOP has not resulted in substantial Democratic gains; instead it has produced a small increase in the number of Democrats (five-point increase) and a ten-point increase in the number of independents and politically unaffiliated Americans. Republicans now have only a two-to-one advantage over Democrats among younger white evangelicals, compared with a nearly four-to-one edge in 2005.

By comparison, the shift in party affiliation among older white evangelicals, and Americans overall in the 18-29 age group, has been less dramatic. Older white evangelicals’ Republican Party identification has declined by just five percentage points since 2005, and among young people overall it has also declined by only five points. Yet, despite significant movement away from the GOP since 2005, younger white evangelicals still are twice as likely (40%) as young people as a whole (20%) to say they are Republican.

What Might These Trends Mean?

The trends toward dissatisfaction with Bush and away from the Republican Party by younger white evangelicals suggest that the Democratic Party may have a new opportunity to appeal to this group. Yet, while this group seems to be less loyal to the Republican Party than older white evangelicals, they remain much more conservative than the overall population in the same age group.

Young white evangelicals remain largely committed to politically conservative values and to conservative positions on a variety of issues, including the war in Iraq, capital punishment and abortion. Indeed, in 2007, more white evangelicals ages 18-29 describe their political views as conservative (44%) than moderate (34%) or liberal (15%), almost identical to their ideological leanings in 2001. So although younger white evangelicals are 14 percentage points less conservative on this measure than white evangelicals ages 30 and older, they are 17 points more conservative than young people as a whole.

Young white evangelicals exhibit this conservative tendency in their opinion on the war in Iraq. While support for the war has fallen precipitously among all Americans since 2003, the majority (60%) of younger white evangelicals still believe that using military force in Iraq was the right decision, an identical percentage to the number of older white evangelicals who express the same view. Among younger Americans overall, only 41% say that it was the right decision.

Younger white evangelicals express a similarly conservative opinion when it comes to capital punishment, with the vast majority (72%) favoring the death penalty for convicted murderers, compared with 75% of older white evangelicals but only 56% of all Americans ages 18-29.

And when it comes to abortion, younger white evangelicals are even more conservative than their older counterparts. For example, 70% of younger white evangelicals favor “making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion,” compared with 55% of older white evangelicals and 39% of young Americans overall who share this view.

This strong allegiance to conservatism and conservative positions suggests that young white evangelicals’ turn away from the president and his party may be the product of dissatisfaction with this particular administration rather than the result of an underlying shift in this group’s political values and policy views.

For more on religion and public life visit pewforum.org.

Next week hundreds of evangelical Latino pastors and church leaders will descend on Washington, D.C. for the annual National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast. Over the years, the event has steadily grown from a simple banquet to a three-day affair, running Wednesday through Friday. It includes not only the prayer breakfast but also lobbying visits to Capitol Hill, a women’s leadership dinner focusing on health issues and the release of a major study on housing issues facing the Hispanic community.

As in the past, the event will attract high-level political leaders from both parties, including President Bush, who spoke at the first annual prayer breakfast in 2002 and has appeared every year since. An array of presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani, John McCain, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson also have been invited to speak at this year’s event.

The prayer breakfast offers a vivid illustration of the growing presence and increasing political influence of Latino evangelicals, who now make up some 15% of the rapidly expanding Hispanic population in the U.S., according to a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Hispanic Center. That survey also shows that among eligible Latino voters, evangelicals are twice as likely as Latino Catholics to identify with the Republican Party (37% vs. 17%). Latino evangelicals also are far more likely than Latino Catholics to describe themselves as conservative (46% vs. 31%).

In short, if Republicans have a prayer in making deep inroads into the Hispanic community, evangelicals may well provide their most direct route.

Religious Profile

As mentioned, nearly one-in-six U.S. Hispanics (15%) identify themselves as evangelicals, making them the second largest religious group in the Latino community. Other Protestants, including mainline Protestants (5%) and members of other groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, account for another 8%. Most Hispanics (68%) are Roman Catholics, while seculars account for 8% of the total. Members of other faiths barely make up 1% of the Latino community.

The recently released Pew survey found that roughly half (51%) of Latino evangelicals are converts, mostly from Catholicism, and that more than two thirds (69%) identify with pentecostal and charismatic forms of Christianity. Although most (55%) Hispanic evangelicals are first-generation Americans, that percentage is lower than it is for Latino Catholics, more than two-thirds (68%) of whom are foreign born. This trend is reflected in the fact that nearly two-thirds of Latino evangelicals (63%) say English is their primary language or that they are bilingual, compared with less than half (45%) of Latino Catholics. Evangelicals also have slightly higher levels of education and income than the Latino population as a whole.

Latinos, who now comprise about 6% of the overall evangelical Protestant population in the U.S., are similar in many ways to their white evangelical counterparts when it comes to religious beliefs and practices. This is clearly the case with respect to the strong importance they place on religion (85% say it is very important in their lives) as well as the high proportion who say they pray daily (87%). Perhaps reflecting the zeal of recent converts, Latino evangelicals are somewhat more likely to say they attend church weekly than white evangelicals (70% compared to 61%) and to view the Bible as the literal word of God (76% compared to 62%).

Religion and Public Life

Latino evangelicals clearly stand out from other Hispanics when it comes to politics, and not just for their more Republican and conservative orientation. Latino evangelicals also show little reluctance when it comes to mixing faith and politics. For instance, they are far more likely than Hispanics generally (62% vs. 38%) to say that religion is very important in influencing their political thinking; an additional 24% say it is somewhat important. Moreover, by a solid majority (65%) they believe that churches should express their views on social and political questions, and by nearly as large a number (60%) they say that there has been too little religious expression by political leaders.

Latino evangelicals also take more conservative positions on many social issues compared with Latino Catholics and even compared with other evangelicals. For example, an overwhelming majority (86%) oppose gay marriage, compared with 52% among Latino Catholics and 79% among white evangelicals. A large majority (77%) also say that abortion should be illegal, compared with 54% and 61%, respectively, for Latino Catholics and white evangelicals.

On foreign policy issues, too, Latino evangelicals track fairly closely with the conservatism of their white evangelical counterparts. For instance, although their support for the Iraq war is not as high as among white evangelicals (49% vs. 60%, at the time the survey was conducted), they are significantly more likely than Latinos as whole (31%) to say that the use of force in Iraq was the right choice. The similarity is even more pronounced when it comes to the issue of Israel and the Palestinians, where the sympathy of a solid majority of Latino evangelicals (62%) is clearly with Israel. That level of sympathy is much higher than among Hispanics generally (33%) and rivals the level of support among non-Hispanic evangelicals (59%).

But Latino evangelicals differ from white evangelicals, and more closely resemble Latino Catholics, on other policy issues. For instance, nearly half (47%) oppose the death penalty, compared with just 16% of white evangelicals. A similar, and more predictable, departure from white evangelical attitudes is evident on the issue of immigration. While only a minority (33%) of non-Hispanic evangelicals say that immigrants strengthen American customs and values, a solid majority (59%) of Latino evangelicals hold that view. (The comparable figure among Latino Catholics is even higher at 67%.)

Latino evangelicals, along with other Latinos, also hold generally liberal views on economic issues and are more likely to support government programs and sympathize with poor people than are white evangelicals. For example, a large majority of Latino evangelicals favor government-guaranteed health insurance (70% vs. 58% of white evangelicals), and 57% (vs. 42% of white evangelicals) say poor people have hard lives due to lack of government services. Fully 66% of Latino evangelicals say they would rather pay higher taxes for more government services. In sum, Latinos in general, including evangelicals, tend to be big government social conservatives.

Recent Voting Patterns

The strong Republican orientation of Latino evangelicals compared with other Latinos was clearly evident in the 2004 presidential election. In that race, according to an analysis of state exit polls conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, President Bush received 40% of the overall Latino vote, up from 34% in 2000.

That same analysis shows that Latino Protestants, the great majority of whom are evangelicals, accounted almost entirely for this increase. (The percentage of the Hispanic Catholic vote remained unchanged at 33%.) And not only did Latino Protestants vote more heavily Republican in 2004, they also represented a higher percentage of the Latino electorate than in 2000 (32% vs. 25%).

National exit poll numbers from 2006 suggest that Hispanics, along with the electorate as a whole, shifted away from the Republicans, giving only 30% of their vote to GOP candidates in the U.S. House of Representatives races. An analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of U.S. Senate and state gubernatorial races around the country reveal a similar split in partisan preference. This represents a 10-point swing away from Republicans compared with 2004 and a seven-point swing compared with the midterm elections of 2002.

But the results were not entirely bleak for the Republicans. As the Pew Hispanic Center report points out, some Republican candidates in states with sizable Hispanic electorates, such as California, Texas and Arizona, did much better than their party’s showing at the national level, and, in fact, received a share of the Latino vote that was comparable to the portion of the vote Bush received in 2004.

Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign manager Ken Mehlman called the Latino vote “the single most important number” that came out of the 2004 election. More recently, in a piece posted on The Politico, Mehlman stated: “The majority party in the 21st century will be the party that reaches out to Hispanics.” If that truly is the case, then the growing Latino evangelical community will have a significant say in the future direction of American politics.