WASHINGTON (ABP) — A large study of religious Americans suggests that white evangelicals' views on gay rights may be shifting, rapidly, to the left.
The survey, which includes one of the largest samples of younger voters' political and religious views ever taken, indicates gay rights are quickly gaining ground among even the most religious of Americans — and especially among the youngest voters.
It also suggests that contentious issues such as abortion and homosexuality will not be nearly as important in voting decisions this year as they were in the last presidential election. And it concludes that the Democratic presidential nominee, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, has made little headway in wooing white evangelical voters compared to his predecessor from 2004, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.
"Younger Americans, including younger Americans of faith, are not the culture-war generation," Robert Jones, head of the firm that conducted the poll, said in an Oct. 8 conference call with reporters. "On issues from gay and lesbian rights to the role of government at home and around the world, young Catholics, mainline Protestants and evangelicals are bridging the divides that entrenched their elders and [are] ushering in an era of consensus in which the common good trumps the clash of ideologies."
Jones is president of Public Religion Research, which was commissioned by the left-leaning policy group Faith in Public Life to conduct the study. It included a sample of 2,000 voting-age Americans, with an oversample of 974 respondents age 18-34.
Echoing the results from a similar, but smaller, poll released the week before, the survey found that younger white evangelicals oppose abortion rights in numbers comparable to their elders.
However, they also are far more supportive of legal recognition for same-sex relationships — whether through marriage rights or "civil unions" with rights and responsibilities virtually identical to marriage.
A slight majority — 52 percent — of white evangelical respondents aged 34 and under favor same-sex marriage or civil unions, compared to only 37 percent of all white evangelicals. Both figures are significantly higher than in 2004.
The generation gap is particularly striking on the issue of full same-sex marriage rights. Younger evangelicals are nearly 2 1/2 times more likely (24 percent to 10 percent) than the overall white evangelical population to support legalizing gay marriage.
That may be due, in part, to higher exposure among younger evangelicals to openly gay people. While just 16 percent of older evangelicals say they have a close friend or family member who is gay or lesbian, 37 percent of their younger counterparts do. That figure is very similar to the 38 percent of all 18-to-34-year-old respondents who say they have a close relationship with an open homosexual.
Younger white evangelicals are also far less likely than their elders to consider themselves "conservative." Just under half identify themselves that way, compared to nearly two-thirds of older evangelicals.
Nonetheless, support for Arizona Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee, seems to be only slightly lower among younger white evangelicals than their elders. The survey showed that 68 percent of older white evangelicals support McCain to Obama's 25 percent. For younger evangelicals, the figures were 65 percent for McCain and 29 percent for Obama.
Both figures are similar to the support that President Bush garnered among white evangelicals as the GOP nominee in 2004.
McCain also enjoys a significant advantage over Obama among all voters who attend worship services weekly or more often. That lead is similar to the one that Bush held over Kerry in 2004.
But a significant shift has occurred in religious voters who attend religious services once or twice a month. Those voters narrowly preferred Bush over Kerry in 2004, but now 60 percent of them favor Obama.
Younger evangelicals also show far more openness to religious pluralism than their older counterparts. While only 30 percent of evangelicals over 34 say a person can be moral without believing in God, 44 percent of younger evangelicals agree with that statement.
Culture-war issues that were at the top of many conservative voters' agendas in 2004 also take a back seat in the latest survey.
Economic issues far outrank concerns over abortion and same-sex marriage as chief concerns in the election. That holds true even for white evangelicals, who did not rank abortion or gay marriage among the top five most important issues.
The survey also shows that younger voters across religious groups are far more supportive of diplomatic efforts over military efforts than their elders. Younger voters — and especially younger Catholics — are also more open to government solutions to social problems.
"Younger believers — including Catholics and white evangelicals — are significantly more supportive of bigger government and expanding diplomatic efforts abroad," said Rice University sociology professor Michael Lindsay, a Baptist. "It's not surprising, therefore, that they are supporting some of the ideas put forward by the Democrats in 2008. It may very well be that in this election, the conventional wisdom about the 'values voters' — who they are and what they want — gets turned on its head."
The survey was conducted between Aug. 28 and Sept. 19. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent for the overall sample, and 3 percent for the oversample of younger voters.
The poll's sponsors said it may be more accurate than many other surveys because it included mobile-phone numbers, which younger voters rely on as their main residential number in numbers disproportionate to their elders.
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Faith in Public Life survey: "The Young and the Faithful"
Young evangelicals differ from elders on gays, similar on abortion rights (10/3)