WASHINGTON (ABP) — A new poll suggests that American voters hold complex — and seemingly contradictory — views on religion and politics.
The poll's results were released Aug. 24 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Center for the People and the Press. They suggested that both Democrats and Republicans have strengths and weaknesses on religious and ethical issues.
For instance, a majority of respondents — 52 percent — said they viewed the Republican Party as more religion-friendly than the Democratic Party. Forty percent said the Democrats were friendlier to religious values.
But an identical 52 percent majority of voters favored Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry's view on embryonic stem-cell research, which President Bush opposes. That figure is up significantly from a similar poll in 2002.
Similarly, while 53 percent of respondents said they were comfortable with the way Bush's religious beliefs affect his policymaking, he and Kerry were statistically tied on the question of whether voters were comfortable with the amount of time each candidate spent talking about his faith. Fifty-six percent of respondents were comfortable with Kerry's discussion of faith, while 53 percent were comfortable with Bush's religious language.
It also showed that a large majority of Americans (60 percent) oppose same-sex marriage, but only 34 percent of all respondents consider a candidate's views on the issue a “very important” factor in deciding how to cast their vote. Another 30 percent of respondents said the issue would be “not at all” important in their electoral decision-making.
A majority of white evangelicals surveyed viewed the marriage issue as “very important” in their decision-making, but no other ethnic or religious grouping in the poll showed more than 35 percent of its voters considering the issue as being of top priority.
Bush has endorsed a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage nationwide. While Kerry has said he opposes legalizing same-sex marriage, he also opposes the amendment and supports marriage-like civil unions for same-sex couples.
The survey also revealed something of a schizophrenic view of the role of religion in the public square. While an overwhelming majority of respondents — 72 percent — support the display of the Ten Commandments in government buildings, 65 percent of respondents opposed the idea of churches endorsing political candidates or parties.
Republicans in Congress have proposed a bill that would allow churches to maintain their tax-exempt status while endorsing candidates or parties — something tax law currently bans all non-profit organizations from doing. Many conservative evangelical Protestant leaders have expressed strong support for the bill. But the poll showed that, even among evangelicals who attend church weekly, only 42 percent supported the idea.
Testing whether respondents agreed with the stance of some Catholic bishops, who have said in recent months they would withhold communion from Kerry or any other Catholic politician who supports abortion rights, respondents overwhelmingly disagreed. Of all voters, 64 percent said it was improper to deny communion over the issue.
Among Catholics, disapproval for the practice was even higher. Seventy-two percent of Catholics disagreed with denying communion to those who oppose the church's policy on abortion rights. Even among Catholics who attend church weekly or more often, 63 percent said bishops should not deny communion to politicians over the issue.
The poll was conducted Aug. 5-10. It involved 1,512 adult respondents from across the nation.
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