Guest Post by Morbo
A poll released last week revealed, once again, that Americans like religion.
In results that surprised absolutely no one, a solid majority of Americans told pollsters they consider faith important. Another key finding, that people in Western Europe are less religious than Americans, also restated the obvious.
The poll, conducted by the Associated Press and a Canadian polling group called Ipsos, surveyed attitudes toward religion in 10 countries. Several U.S. media outlets breathlessly reported the results as if they were somehow surprising. One headline I saw read, “AP Poll: Religion Key in American Lives.” What’s next: “Sun Rises in East”?
The AP seemed to think it was news that 39 percent of Americans believe religious leaders should try to influence elected officials. The AP noted that this figure is “notably higher than in other countries.”
But this is not news. Polls always show that Americans are more religious than the residents of other Western nations and more likely to tolerate religious groups meddling in politics. What is news is that 61 percent of Americans say religious leaders should not try to influence elected officials. This is news for two reasons: one, the number has increased over the years and two, the finding undercuts the common Religious Right claim that Americans want more intervention in their lives from conservative clerics.
Going a little deeper, one can conclude from these results that most Americans have reconciled their personal religious beliefs with an acknowledgment of the need for some form of separation of church and state. Again, this debunks the Religious Right’s view. According to the Religious Right, if you’re really serious about religion, you will support government action to push your faith onto everyone else. The poll says the opposite: Most Americans value religion but reject state promotion of specific sectarian views.
I’ve long believed that when it comes to religion, most Americans have adopted a “live-and-let-live” attitude. You do your thing, and I’ll do mine. Americans probably aren’t bothered by generic endorsements of watered-down civic religion by the government. They don’t care if there is a Nativity Scene in front of city hall in late December. I think they should care, but the fact is most don’t and probably never will.
But they do care if a pharmacist who opposes birth control on religious grounds won’t fill their prescription for contraceptives. They care when aggressive fundamentalists intervene in a personal family matter and insist that a dying person be kept alive through artificial means. They care when their kid is pressured to recite someone else’s prayer in a public school. They care when far-right zealots try to remove books from the public library.
In other words, they care when it hits home.
It’s interesting to read the poll results and speculate why religion remains so strong in American and so anemic in Western Europe. I have some thoughts on that but will save them for another time. I find the poll worthwhile, but I wish the media had not missed the real story: Mainly, that it is possible to be a person of faith and still strongly oppose religious control of the government.
Now that’s news.