The Pew Research Center, which consistently does excellent non-partisan research, has an interesting new report out on religion and politics in America. It’s definitely worth reading if the topic interests you.
The report covers a lot of ground, including public attitudes on gay marriage, Bush’s use of religious rhetoric, whether Dems and Republicans are “friendly” enough to religion, and how houses of worship should speak out on public issues of the day.
The information that interested me most, however, is how respondents to the Pew poll indicated they would vote on well-qualified candidates of different religious backgrounds.
Here’s the wording of the question with the results for various groups:
Between now and the 2004 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates — their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be the following things would you vote for that person?
Catholic:
Yes: 90%
No: 8%
Don’t know/Refused: 2%
Jewish:
Yes: 85%
No: 10%
Don’t know/Refused: 5%
Muslim:
Yes: 56%
No: 38%
Don’t know/Refused: 6%
An atheist:
Yes: 46%
No: 50%
Don’t know/Refused: 4%
An evangelical Christian:
Yes: 79%
No: 15%
Don’t know/Refused: 6%
I was a little surprised by the relatively-high 15% said they would “have concerns” about voting for an otherwise well-qualified evangelical Christian, considering that Bush is a self-described “born again” Protestant, but I suspect many Americans either don’t know that, don’t know what an evangelical Christian is, or both.
I was also pleased to see anti-Catholic animus was relatively low. There’s only been one Catholic president, JFK, and when Kennedy ran, there was intense debate over whether his religion should be held against him. It would appear that these questions over Catholics’ “loyalty” are no longer relevant, which is obviously progress over the last 40 years.
But the big losers were Muslims and atheists, I suspect to no one’s surprise. After two recent wars against predominantly Muslim countries, plus the Muslim backgrounds of the 9/11 terrorists, it was disappointing but not shocking to see 38% say they wouldn’t vote for an otherwise well-qualified Muslim for president. Frankly, I would have thought the number would be higher in light of recent events, so to that extent, I suppose the poll could have been worse.
Atheists, however, remain the one group that people won’t accept and the only group that a majority would oppose for president. No big shock here. In fact, I have seen polls from recent years with even worse results for non-believers. It would appear that atheists are the one group that all religions can dislike. People don’t care which God (or Gods) you believe in, as long as you pick one. They may as well hang a sign on the White House that says, “Atheists need not apply.”
Article Six of the Constitution says there can be “no religious test for public office,” but I guess that doesn’t restrict self-imposed tests.