Robert P. Jones of Public Religion Research and John C. Green of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron have just released their 2009 Religious Activists Surveys, “the first-ever mirrored surveys of conservative and progressive activists.” Key findings include:
Religion in public life. Conservative and progressive religious activists both support a role for religion in public life, but the groups have strongly diverging views of church-state separation. Eighty-one percent of progressive religious activists say the U.S. “should maintain a strict separation of church and state,” a position taken by only 21% of conservative activists. Nearly all conservative activists believe America was founded as a Christian nation, a view shared by only 37% progressive activists.
More than two-thirds of conservative religious activists say there was not enough public expression of faith and prayer by political leaders during the 2008 election, compared to only 5% of progressive religious activists. Among progressive activists, a majority (52%) say the amount of religious expression by political leaders in 2008 was about right.
In terms of future public engagement, both conservative and progressive activists strongly emphasized the importance of being publicly visible and politically active. Conservative activists were more likely to emphasize the importance of prayer, whereas progressive activists were more likely to emphasize the importance of civility, pluralism, and social justice.
Read a summary of their findings here, and download the full report, “Faithful, Engaged, and Divergent: Conservative and Progressive Religious Activists in the 2008 Election and Beyond,” here. For more information, visit the Public Religion Research blog, “At the Intersection,” where Jones takes stock of their findings.