Figure 8.4: Do You Have an Unfavorable Opinion of This Religious Group? (Christian Respondents)
Sociologist Christian Smith interviewed Evangelical Christians nationwide about how they felt Evangelicals should respond to people of other beliefs, and they articulated eight principles. In interacting with non-believers, Christians should be faithful in their own lives, always be loving and confident, show tolerance and respect, allow others to have their own opinions, never force Christian beliefs on others, avoid disruptive confrontations, set a good example, and use voluntary persuasion through positive communication.[16] All these sound like good ideas, really good ideas in fact, and so it seems that we Christians know how we should treat others. The findings presented above, however, identify some ambivalence in how we feel about them, which suggests that we might not be as successful in living out our principles in this area as we would like.
Are Non-Christians’ Opinions of Christians Growing More Negative?
The next issue to analyze is UnChristian’s claim that attitudes toward Christians are becoming more negative over time. This claim lends a sense of urgency to their argument, because if it’s true, it may require immediate action. It turns out that the survey question analyzed in the above figures, which was collected in 2007, was also asked at other times, starting in 1990. This allows us to examine whether non-Christians have increasingly negative attitudes toward Christians. To the contrary, their attitudes toward us actually have become increasingly positive in recent years. Figure 8.5 presents attitudes toward Evangelical Christians over time among three groups—Christians, members of other religions, and the religiously unaffiliated. In the 1990s, about 70% of the religiously unaffiliated had a negative opinion of Evangelical Christians, and now only about 40% do. In the 1990s, 50 to 60% of members of other religions thought negatively of Evangelicals, but now it’s down to 35%. Even among Christians, the negative views of Evangelicals has dropped from about 40% to about 20%.
Figure 8.5: Do You Have an Overall Unfavorable Opinion of Evangelical Christians?
This increasingly positive view of Evangelicals raises the question of why. One possibility, and this is speculation on my part, is based on the observation that the 1990s were a time of increased religious disaffiliation, and so perhaps the religious disaffiliation of that time shared the same causes as the heightened negative attitudes toward Evangelicals. As discussed in chapter 2, the increased religious disaffiliation was probably due to Evangelicals’ organizational involvement in partisan politics. That was the heyday of the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition. But now the figureheads of Evangelical Christianity are much less political, for example, Rick Warren, and the Willow Creek Association. So quite possibly, non-Christians (and Christians as well) think more favorably of Evangelical Christianity now because they are much less political as a group. If so, then an effective way to lessen negative public opinion of Evangelicals would be to not align our churches and denominations with specific political parties or candidates.
What About the Attitudes of the Young? Yet Another Surprise!
A final claim in UnChristian that I examine is that young people are particularly hostile toward Christianity. Now, it so happens that I am writing this on my forty-seventh birthday, and so how people change with age is very much on my mind. (I seem to be getting increasingly absentminded—but that may just be because I’m a professor.) To examine differences in attitudes toward religious groups in relation to age, I returned to the 2007 Pew Study, and I divided the non-Christian respondents (i.e., members of other religions and the religiously unaffiliated) into three age groups: 18–29, 30–49, and 50+. I then calculated the attitudes-toward-religions of each age group, and as shown in Figure 8.6, there are a lot of differences. Young non-Christians have the most negative views of some religious groups, including Jews, Catholics, and Mormons. However, when it comes to Evangelical Christians, it is the oldest respondents, and not the youngest, who are the most negative. Forty-five percent of those over fifty years of age report an unfavorable opinion of Evangelicals, compared to 36% of young people and 32% of people in their thirties and forties.[17] It appears that to the extent that Evangelicals have an image problem, it’s among older folks, not the young.
Figure 8.6: Do You Have an Unfavorable Overall Opinion of This Religious Group? (Non-Christian Respondents)
So far in this chapter, I’ve analyzed survey questions that ask respondents about their feelings or opinions toward specific religious groups. Another approach is to ask them how someone else’s religion would affect their decisions about that person. The 2007 Pew Religion and Public Life Study asked respondents if they would be more or less likely to support a presidential candidate who professed a specific religion. According to the survey, Jewish and Catholic candidates would receive the most support, atheist and Muslim candidates would receive the least support, and Evangelicals and Mormons are somewhere in the middle. About 20% of the respondents reported being more likely to support an Evangelical candidate, 20% reported being less likely, and 60% said it would make no difference. This pattern highlights the very real discrimination faced by political candidates on the basis of their religion. It’s no surprise, then, that most politicians are Mainline Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish. In fact, while over 15% of the American adult population is religiously unaffiliated, only 1% (six) of the members of the U.S. Congress identifies themselves as such.[18]
If we break the numbers down further, we find that respondents’ own religious preference affects who they would support as president. Among the religiously unaffiliated, about one-third would be less supportive of an Evangelical or Muslim candidate. Among members of other religions, over 40% would be less supportive of an atheist candidate, and about one-third less supportive of Evangelical or Muslim candidates. The most negative attitudes, however, come from Christian respondents. Seventy-one percent of Christian respondents would be less likely to vote for an atheist candidate and half would be less likely to vote for a Muslim candidate.
Figure 8.7: Would You Be Less Likely to Support
a Presidential Candidate of This Religion?
Confidence in Institutions
The analyses above focus on attitudes toward specific religious groups, but we can approach the issue differently by asking people how much confidence they have in various social institutions—including religion. The General Social Survey lists various social institutions and asks: “As far as the people running these institutions are concerned, would you say you have a great deal of confidence, only some confidence, or hardly any confidence at all in them?” One institution they ask about is “organized religion.” While this question does not refer to the Christian church specifically, it’s not unreasonable to assume that many Americans have Christian churches in mind when they answer it.
As shown in Figure 8.8, Americans have the least amount of confidence in the press and television, with only 10% of respondents expressing “a great deal” of confidence in them. At the high end are medicine, the scientific community, and the military—each with 40% or more respondents expressing lots of confidence. Organized religion is in the middle of the pack, with 24%. Among religiously unaffiliated respondents, however, there is much less confidence in organized religion, with only 8% of them expressing a great deal of confidence. This isn’t too surprising, given that the religiously unaffiliated are defined, as a group, by their rejection of organized religion. It would be like asking Boston Red Sox fans if they liked the New York Yankees (which, by the way, we don’t). This finding suggests that the unaffiliated may react negatively toward organized religion as a whole, regardless of the particular religion. It’s also worth noting that the religiously unaffiliated have a particularly high level of confidence in the scientific community—51%. Whereas only 42% of the general population has great confidence in it. This might reflect the religiously unaffiliated turning to science—having “faith” in it—to address questions answered for others by religion.
&n
bsp; Figure 8.8: Do You Have a Great Deal of Confidence in This Institution?
The General Social Survey has asked this question about social institutions since 1973, which allows us to track confidence in religion over time. Currently, Black Protestants, Catholics, Mainline Protestants, and Evangelicals have the most confidence in organized religion; Jews and members of other religions have less confidence; and the religiously unaffiliated have the least amount of confidence. The significant trend over time, however, has been that confidence levels in organized religion have dropped for just about every single group, and the drops were particularly steep in the 1970s and 1980s. For example, 39% of Evangelicals had a great deal of confidence in the 1970s, and this dropped to 30% in the 1980s and has stayed at that level since. It turns out, however, that a steady erosion of confidence has occurred with other social institutions as well, suggesting that Americans are losing faith in institutions as a whole.[19] In addition, specific institutions lose credibility when they experience scandals. Watergate, for example, lessened confidence in the executive branch, and financial scandals have done the same thing for financial institutions. We might assume, then, that highly publicized sexual and other scandals have had the same effect on organized religion.
Our Inaccurate Perceptions of Others’ Attitudes
Most of the books and articles that I’ve read on this topic ask what others think of Christians. We can take this thinking one step further, however, by asking what we think other people think of us. There’s a whole line of social psychological research that suggests that people are affected more by what we think others think of us than we are by what they actually think of us. That is, our perceptions of their attitudes often matter more than their actual attitudes.[20]
Figure 8.9: Are Evangelicals Looked Down upon by Most Americans?
Is the Mass Media Hostile to Your Values?
What, then, do Evangelicals think others think? Two survey questions along this line come from the 2004 America’s Evangelicals Study. The respondents in this study were drawn from the general population, and they were asked whether they agreed that “Evangelical Christians are looked down upon by most Americans.” As shown in Figure 8.9, 53% of Evangelicals believed that Evangelicals are looked down upon, and about 40 to 45% of the remaining respondents agreed with this statement. As you’ll remember from the start of this chapter, the actual percentage of Americans who view Evangelicals negatively is closer to 20 to 25%. In other words, both Evangelicals and others think that Evangelicals are disrespected more than they are. Evangelical Christians in particular overinflate the negative opinions held about them by the general population.
Research by Christian Smith extends this finding. In interviews of Evangelical Christians, he found that the majority of them believed that Christians’ values are under attack in the United States, and yet almost none of them had personally experienced hostility or discrimination as a Christian.[21] This is more evidence that we disproportionally fear negative treatment from others.
The second question in the America’s Evangelicals Study asks respondents if they agree that “the mass media is hostile toward my moral and spiritual values.” That is, do Evangelicals think the media is hostile to Evangelical values, do Catholics think the media is hostile to Catholic values, do the religiously unaffiliated think the media is hostile to their values, and so on. As shown in Figure 8.9, a majority of each Christian group believes that the mass media is hostile toward its values. A full 79% of Evangelicals believe this, as do 58% of other Protestants and 52% of Catholics. Among members of other religions, 46% believed that media hostility existed toward them, and 42% of the religiously unaffiliated agreed.[22]
The Real Home of Anti-Christian Attitudes
Before leaving this chapter, I want to address one more issue about perceptions of Evangelical Christians, and given the nature of my work, it’s one that I’m particularly aware of: the attitudes of college faculty members. In 2007, the Institute for Jewish and Community Research surveyed the religious beliefs of over twelve hundred faculty members at various American colleges and universities.[23] As I understand it, this study was looking for anti-Semitism among faculty members, but they instead found something surprising: a strong intolerance toward Evangelical Christians.
Figure 8.10: Do You Have Negative Feelings toward This Religious Group?
(Asked of College Professors)
One of the questions asked faculty members if they had negative feelings toward various religious groups. As shown in Figure 8.10, over half—53%—of the faculty members reported having negative feelings toward Evangelical Christians, and this was far more than toward any other group. Twenty-two percent of faculty members had negative feelings toward Muslims, 18% toward atheists, 13% toward Catholics, 9% toward non-Evangelical Christians, 4% toward Buddhists, and 3% toward Jews.[24] The study’s authors concluded that “if not outright prejudice, faculty sentiment about the largest religious group in the American public borders dangerously close.”
So if Evangelicals really want to find a place where they are thought poorly of, go to college. With no little irony, the faculty of America’s colleges and universities rally under the banner of tolerance and diversity, but this may not be extended to all religious groups. In fact, whether intentional or not, American college campuses may have fostered climates of open hostility to Evangelical students, faculty, and staff who display their religious beliefs.
As an Evangelical Christian at a state university, this is something that I see and hear about all too often. For example, last year I attended a talk held at a humanities center about Christian missionaries in Australia. In the midst of the discussion afterward, a philosophy professor loudly exclaimed: “Christianity is a jackass religion.” Then just to make sure that we all got it, he repeated it. What amazed me was that no one challenged him on it (including me). If he had said the same thing about Islam or an Eastern religion or, especially, the indigenous Aboriginal religion of Australia, he would have been beaten by the other faculty. But it was okay to slam Christianity. I’m not saying that all of the faculty agreed with him, but rather that his statement apparently wasn’t so far out of bounds that it needed correction.
At a recent professional conference that I attended, I ended up in several conversations with Evangelical faculty members who felt discriminated against in their current or previous departments because of their religious beliefs. Even in my own career, I kept rather quiet about my faith before I got tenure because I didn’t want to risk agitating anyone in a way that would get me fired. Instead, I waited until I got tenure before I more overtly expressed my Christian faith.
I write these stories not as an exposé about academics. After all, they are just a few stories, and there’s a useful saying that the plural of anecdote is not data. Instead, my experiences in academics make it easy for me to believe in the survey findings that portray college faculty as frequently negative toward Evangelical Christianity.
CHAPTER 9
What Do We Make of It All?
This is the last chapter of the book, and I’m faced with a dilemma. I need to write a concluding chapter, because, after all, books are supposed to have them. The problem is that I usually find the concluding chapters of nonfiction books to be rather boring. Often the old adage that many of us learned in high school English class comes into play here: Say what you’re going to say, say it, and then say what you’ve said. But it can be rather tedious to read what you’ve already read. Also, some authors end their books by make sweeping generalizations about how to change the future of our world (this is a favorite approach of sociologists), but these are usually far-fetched and overly general.
So here’s what I’m going to do: I’ll give American evangelical Christianity a report card, and then I will end the book by commissioning you to be cranky and suspicious when facing all manner of studies and statistics. As a professor, I have to take students’ semester-long work and distill it into a single grade, so I’m going t
o take the same approach when it comes to concluding this book. The previous chapters have gone into some detail about various aspects of Evangelical Christianity in America; here I’ll convert our findings into grades.
You may be thinking that this is quite an oversimplification. I am taking something as complex as religion, with its various institutions, social processes, and human experiences, filtering it through survey methods, and reducing it to single letters on a five-point grading scale. You’re absolutely right; this is an oversimplification. But my hope is that it’s a more accurate oversimplification than many others out there, and it might be a good way to remember and think about the more in-depth analysis already presented in this book.
On my grading scale, Evangelicals get an A in a given area if: (1) They do well compared to other groups; (2) their frequent attendees do better than less-frequent attendees; and (3) they are improving over time. They get an F if none of these are true.
You might disagree with me, of course. Looking at the same data you might assign a different grade. Well, welcome to grading. As someone who does it professionally, I know that it can be somewhat arbitrary. With that warning in mind, here are my grades:
Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites...and Other Lies You've Been Told Page 14
