Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

About half of Americans (49% - 50%) believe the Bible should have at least some influence on U.S. laws, and one-fourth say the Bible should take precedence over the will of the people, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

The poll of 6,395 adults found that 49 percent of Americans believe the Bible should influence U.S. laws. This includes 23 percent who say it should have a “great deal” of influence and 26 percent who say it should have “some” influence. Nineteen percent of Americans say the Bible should have “not much” influence on U.S. laws, while 31 percent say it should have no influence.

The survey was highlighted in a March 13 “Fact Tank” blog at Pew’s website.

Among specific religious groups, the survey found a wide range of opinions on whether the Bible should have at least some influence on U.S. laws. For example, 76 percent of Protestants, 89 percent of white evangelicals, 76 percent of black Protestant church members, 51 percent of Catholics and 31 percent of Jewish Americans say the Bible should have at least some influence.

A total of 58 percent of white evangelicals and 47 percent of black Protestant church members say the Bible should have “a great deal” of influence.

But there is a sharp political divide on the issue. A full 67 percent of Republicans (34 percent “a great deal,” 33 percent “some”) but only 33 percent of Democrats (13 percent “a great deal,” 20 percent “some”) believe the Bible should have at least some influence on U.S. laws.

There also is an age gap.

“Older Americans are much more likely than younger adults to want biblical influence on U.S. laws,” Pew’s Michael Lipka wrote in an online analysis.

Sixty-one percent of those ages 50-64 and 64 percent of those 65 and up believe the Bible should have at least some influence. Yet only 30 percent of 18-29-year olds and 43 percent those ages 30-49 believe so.

Meanwhile, 28 percent of Americans believe the Bible “should have more influence” on U.S. laws than the will of the people when the two conflict. Among religious groups, 68 percent of white evangelicals, 50 percent of black Protestant church members, 25 percent of Catholics and 12 percent of Jewish Americans believe the Bible should have more influence.


Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, The Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.





https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/michael-foust/49-percent-of-americans-say-bible-should-influence-us-laws.html?utm_source=ChristianHeadlines%20Daily&utm_campaign=Trending%20Now%20-%20ChristianHeadlines.com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=3210130&bcid=4391e93be7eef1895c943c9f755f8e07&recip=531887681%20

bylm1-Bernie

I wonder what a similar survey, had one been taken in 1950, would have shown. My guess is that we would be shown what inroads the left has made into the erosion of our culture.

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

I couldn't find any poll referenced from the 50s, but here is additional information that is online:

Fifty years after TIME posed the question "Is God Dead?" on the cover of the magazine, Americans’ belief in a supreme deity appears to be declining.

The article, which focused on a group of Christian theologians grappling with the idea of a world without an active God, cited a 1965 poll by Lou Harris finding that 97% of Americans still believed in God. By the time Gallup.com asked the same question in 2014, that number had fallen to 86%, with 12% of Americans claiming no belief and 2% with no opinion.

From the mid-1970s through 1984, according to Gallup.com, close to 40% of Americans considered the Bible the literal word of God, but this has been declining ever since, along with a shrinking percentage of self-identified Christians in the U.S. Meanwhile, the percentage defining the Bible as mere stories has doubled, with much of that change occurring in the past three years.

According to a recent Gallup poll, about six in ten Americans (59%) say they read the Bible at least on occasion, with the most likely readers being women, nonwhites, older people, Republicans, and political conservatives. Readership of the Bible has declined from the 1980s overall, from 73% to 59% today.

bylm1-Bernie

Those figures do show a decline in those worshipping God but not as much as I might have expected. I can only judge from anecdotal experience that seems to indicate a decline. One person I know who is a minister, has a very liberal view of the Bible, if he believes it at all. As far as I can tell, he pretty much interprets the Bible to be whatever he thinks sounds reasonable to him. Another man, once a Church-goer, has admitted to me that he isn't sure if there is a God. It seems much of his doubt has stemmed from his service in Vietnam, not being able to understand how a just God would allow such atrocities. What we see on TV and the movies today would seem to verify that trend. It appears that an increasing number of people view Biblical truths in light of how they stand up to the way they see current culture, instead of the reverse, of judging proper behavior based on Biblical teachings. Perhaps these catastrophic happenings of 2020 will cause a reassessment of our beliefs.

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

The greatest indicator to me, Bernie, is our society at large. Begin with our nation's greatest disgrace.

I was born in the 40s, and grew to adulthood in the 50s and early 60s. When teenagers became pregnant, they married, and moved in with one or another set of parents to at least complete high school, then get a job and rent or buy a home.

Everyone understood the expected baby was a miniature human being, created in God's image. Never, was there any thought of flushing that child down a toilet, or discarding it in the trash.

When raising the baby was not possible, there were dozens of responsible licensed Adoption Centers within any given area, and across the country, thousands of prospective parents eager to adopt. The thought that anyone would someday have to travel to Russia or even China to adopt a child because this nation's expectant mothers were willingly and legally having their unborn slaughtered in the womb would never have been tolerated or even believed.

That attitude was founded in the public's absolute belief in the reality and presence of Almighty God.

There were no homeless wandering the streets in any United States city when I was a child, no families living in abandoned vehicles, and absolutely no American veterans living in cardboard boxes under Highway overpasses.

Every county, borough or township had a "poor house," or "poor farm" where the indigent were given food, a bed, heat in the winter, and a roof over their head, and if able, they contributed to raising garden vegetables or doing house chores.

It was a Christian society.

When a generation of our children saw God escorted from the public School House in 1963, as the Supreme Court threw out the public prayer and the Bible was no longer allowed, and a decade later in 1973, with Roe vs Wade, the Supreme Court sanctioned the savage slaughter of the unborn, now standing at 63,000,000 (sixty three million) never to be U.S citizens or tax payers, God lost His relevancy in their eyes.

What kind of worship could they offer to such an impotent God?

Succeeding generations have been taught to worship hedonism, and to practice it, to cohabit without marriage, and encouraged to practice homosexuality, and call it Holy Matrimony.

Witnessing the flagrant disregard of God's Ten Commandments, and the hypocrisy of those who profess Christianity, but in their lifestyles disavow His teachings, it is a miracle
that defies all reason that this nation's citizens have among them, retained the number of dedicated and faithful Christians to which these polls testify.

bahmer

Amen and Amen an interesting report.👍👍👍👍👍

bahmer

Amen and Amen

Armageddun Loc: The show me state

Amen