WASHINGTON (RNS) — Father may know best, but when it comes to this year's election, fewer young evangelical voters are taking Dad's advice into the voting booth, according to a new survey.
While Sen. John McCain maintains a winning margin among white evangelical Christians of all ages, young white evangelical voters are less supportive of McCain than evangelical voters over the age of 30, according to the poll conducted for the PBS program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.
McCain has the support of 71 percent of white evangelicals, but only 62 percent of white evangelicals between the ages of 18 and 29.
“Evangelical voters have been so solidly Republican in the last 20 years, so if this signals a shift, it could have wide-ranging political implications,” said Kim Lawton, the managing editor of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.
Some differences on social issues were highlighted in the survey. A majority of younger white evangelicals support some form of legal recognition for civil unions or marriage for same-sex couples. Older evangelicals are strongly opposed.
Both age groups remain solidly opposed to abortion.
“I think younger evangelicals are less reflexively loyal to the Republican Party and its candidates,” said David Gushee, professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology who has studied the political thought of the next generation of ev-angelicals. “They are also now drawing a distinction between the life is-sues like abortion and violence over against the issue of homosexuality. Or perhaps they are properly seeing that the treatment of all people as sacred in the sight of God does require deep concern about abortion but also requires the humane treatment of homosexuals.”
Jeff Fralick, a student at Baylor University, may offer more confirmation of a generational shift. Fralick has been actively involved in campaigning for Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama on the Baylor campus. “It is a different story” for his parents, he said.
“In the past, I feel that they (older evangelicals) have been swayed by the thought that a responsible and religious person voted one way — conservative,” Fralick said of his parents. “They may not agree with it, but they can accept that I am following a good path, though it is different than theirs.”
The nationwide survey included 1,400 adults, including 400 young evangelical Christians, and was conducted Sept. 4-21.