Most U.S. adults believe America’s founders intended the country to be a Christian nation, and many say they think it should be a Christian nation today, according to a new Pew Research Center survey designed to explore Americans’ views on the topic.
Our school history classes are worthless.
I’ve got kids in my family and they are very aware that America is not a Christian nation. It’s totally taught in California schools. The lack of memory in our adult pop is the issue imo.
My daughter is also very aware. It pisses me off how much I have to supplement and/or correct what she learns in school about U.S. history.
That’s a bummer. I think citizens like yourself are the reason we continually hold it together as a country :)
I refuse to believe it’s really that high.
I want to belive it’s how the question and answers were phrased, and what they think of as ‘Christian’
And TFA does dig into that thankfully
“would you rather the US be a Christian nation, or sign up to kick puppies and kittens on video?”
If you read the article, it’s actually a fairly nuanced look at how a “Christian Nation” means very different things to different people. Most people who say they want it have relatively benign thoughts about what it means.
I’m just saying that the article doesn’t say nearly half of Americans want a theocracy.
45% of 5,311 people said that, but 2/3 also said churches should stay out of politics. Also what “a Christian nation” was wasn’t defined and there was no consensus (suprise).
Polls are dumb.
A large part of the intent of the survey seems to be to tease out some understanding of what people actually mean by the term. Polls have limits and can be bad, but I think this one provides some good insight into how to communicate about these issues, and how worried we ought to be, or not be, about public support for Christian nationalism. I think, in part based on this survey data, that a lot of people are likely to support Christian nationalist candidates, despite not being Christian nationalists themselves, only because they hear the same rhetoric that you and I do, and interpret something very different. I think this is a good indicator that reaching out to educate people about what extremist Christians are really saying could go far to prevent a christofascist regime.
about three-quarters of U.S. adults (77%) say that churches and other houses of worship should not endorse candidates for political offices. Two-thirds (67%) say that religious institutions should keep out of political matters rather than expressing their views on day-to-day social or political questions.
As with most articles online, the real headline is: Deliberately Misleading Headline Obscures More Complicated Reality.
No, 45% of people in the US don’t support christian nationalism.
Considering that only ~22% of the population voted for trump in 2020, I’d guess that maybe a third to a half of that 45% just think the words christian and nation both sound like good things and responded yes without any real awareness of what a christian nation would mean in reality.
The questions were asked to make a clickbait article.
45% of respondents said America should be a “Christian Nation”.
The problem with that question is that “Christian Nation” is a vague term that’s only really loaded for all the non-Christian’s.
Christian’s understanding of the term range from christofascist’s version of Sharia law through the more nuanced and relatively benign idea that everyone should be converted to Christianity and in that sense be a “Christian” nation while nominally maintaining separation of church and state.
You can see that in demographics of the US’s faith which is still something like 68% “Christian” (a large percentage of which probably are at best non practicing or people who are “Christian” in the sense that’s what their parents told them and they never thought about it)
Conveniently left out are the survey results with “Christian nationalists” instead. Though, 66% say churches should stay out of politics and 77% say they shouldn’t endorse candidates; suggesting a distinction there; and of the people who say the us should be Christian… over half said it should not be public.
the more nuanced and relatively benign idea that everyone should be converted to Christianity and in that sense be a “Christian” nation while nominally maintaining separation of church and state.
Forcible conversion and theocracy is benign and nuanced to you?
Nope.
But the more benign ones won’t “force” it, so much as just try and annoy the fuck out of everyone. They’re largely of the belief that it’s inevitable, all they have to do is keep doing what they’re doing and everybody will just convert… because something.
It’s like that guy who believe everyone should be NFL fans for…whatever reason.
Which is, of course, my entire point. There’s different perspectives on what “christian nation” even means to them. ranging from the relatively benign “we should just convince everyone to be christians” through to the “every one whose not should be beheaded.”… and I think you knew that. I’m not defending christianity- it’s awful. But, that study had some glaringly bad decisions in questions.
Unless they have updated their data gathering methods. They still rely on over the phone surveys. Which skews this dataset to a point of being unreliable at best.
FTA:
Pew Research Center conducted this survey to explore Americans’ attitudes about religion’s role in public life. The survey asked respondents whether they think churches and other religious organizations should be involved in politics, whether the U.S. should be a “Christian nation,” whether they have heard of “Christian nationalism” (and if so, what they think of it), and about their perceptions of religion’s role in the Supreme Court, among other topics.
For this report, we surveyed 10,588 U.S. adults from Sept. 13 to 18, 2022. Roughly half of the survey’s respondents (5,311 participants) were randomly assigned to receive the questions about whether the U.S. should be a “Christian nation,” and the other half of respondents (5,277) were randomly assigned to receive the “Christian nationalism” questions. All respondents to the survey are part of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, religious affiliation and other categories. For more, see the ATP’s methodology and the methodology for this report.