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In the US, Republicans, Democrats divided on impact of religion

RNS

Do churches and other religious organisations have a positive impact on the way things are going in the United States?

Americans are divided on that point, according to a Pew Research Center survey released on Monday that shows they align along predictable party lines.

Pew Graphic2 

 

“Wide partisan differences over the impact of major institutions on the country.” GRAPHIC: Pew Research Center

Overall, a majority of Americans (59 per cent) see religion as a positive, compared to 26 per cent who say it has a negative impact on the way things are going in the US, according to Pew. Those numbers have held fairly steady in surveys since 2010.

Nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of Republicans or those who lean Republican said churches and religious organizations have a positive impact, with 14 per cent saying that impact is negative, according to Pew.

Meanwhile, Democrats are split: Half of those who are or lean Democrat believe religious institutions have a positive impact, according to the survey, while 36 per cent said they have a negative impact.

And those divides become stronger as one’s political ideology becomes stronger, particularly among Democrats, according to the data.

Liberal Democrats are about as likely to say religious institutions have a negative impact on the way things are going in the US (44 per cent) as they are positive (40 per cent). But more conservative and moderate Democrats said such organizations have a positive effect on the country (58 per cent, compared to 29 per cent who say it is negative).

A majority of all Republicans — 75 per cent of those who identify as conservative Republicans and Republican-leaning and 68 per cent of those who are moderate and liberal Republicans — said religious institutions have a positive impact.

“While party plays a role, really what matters a great deal is people’s own religiosity and whether they belong to a denomination or not,” said Carroll Doherty, Pew’s director of political research.

White evangelical Protestant Christians were most likely (80 per cent) to view religious institutions positively, along with majorities across Protestant and Catholic denominations, according to the study. Comparatively, Americans unaffiliated with a religion were more likely to say religious institutions had a negative (46 per cent) impact than positive (34 per cent).

Those views also were much more negative among Americans who never or seldom attend religious services and among those who have a postgraduate degree.

The Pew survey also found Republicans increasingly said colleges and universities have a negative impact on the US (58 per cent, up from 45 last year). Also, the partisan gap in views on the news media has widened, with 85 per cent of Republicans reporting a negative view of the media’s effects, compared to 46 per cent of Democrats.

Pew surveyed 2,504 American adults by phone between 8th to 18th June. The margin of error for the survey overall is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points, it said.

 

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