Why religion will matter in 2012

Why religion will matter in 2012 - Figuring Faith - The Washington Post

 

By Robert P. Jones

After the release of our poll last week showing the impact of perceptions of religious differences on support for President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, I’ve been answering a lot of questions about why religion will matter in the 2012 elections.  There is both a particular and a general answer to this question.

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks in the warehouse at Screen Machine Industries during a campaign stop in Pataskala, Ohio in July 2011. (Jay LaPrete - AP)

The 2012 presidential election is more than 15 months away, but Republican presidential hopefuls are already simultaneously burnishing their religious credentials and trying to address potentially problematic religious connections. Although only four-in-ten Americans currently know Mitt Romney is Mormon, as his campaign proceeds, he will need to negotiate negative perceptions of his Mormon faith, particularly among white evangelical Protestants who make up a sizeable portion of the Republican base.  Michele Bachmann has faced criticisms that her former long-time church holds anti-Catholics views and that her husband’s Christian counseling practice offers discredited ex-gay “reparative therapy.” Texas Governor Rick Perry is holding an all-day Christian prayer event this weekend on August 6 in Houston, an event that many see as a de facto presidential campaign launch.  And on the Democratic side, President Obama continues to have his own problems with perceptions of his faith: only four-in-ten Americans correctly identify his religion as Christian, and 18 percent of Americans continue to wrongly believe he is Muslim. 

Texas Gov. Rick Perry addresses the Western Conservative Summit in Denver on Friday, July 29, 2011. (Ed Andrieski - AP) In addition to the specifics of the 2012 horse race, there is a second, simpler answer to why religion will matter in the 2012 election: Americans are generally highly religious, and it is at least one important lens influencing Americans’ views of political candidates.

Sociologists have long noticed that Americans registered much higher levels of religiosity than most industrialized nations. G.K. Chesterton called America “the nation with the soul of a church,” and Max Weber, de Tocqueville, and other prominent observers of America all saw the peculiarly strong religious character of American culture as a mark of its uniqueness.

These earlier observations stand up today in scientific surveys. Gallup found that Americans register higher religiosity scores—as measured by self-reported worship attendance, salience of religion in their personal lives, and confidence in religious institutions—than other residents of North America and every western European country except Ireland. 

Consider these findings from the 2010 American Values Survey, conducted by Public Religion Research Institute:

·         Nearly six-in-ten (57 percent) Americans say religion is very important or the most important thing in their lives.

·         A majority (51 percent) of Americans report attending religious services at least a few times per month.

·         Nine-in-ten Americans report that they believe in God. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) believe that God is a person with whom one can have a relationship.

·         Nearly seven-in-ten (69 percent) Americans believe that the Bible is the word of God, and nearly half of this group (33 percent) believe that the Bible should also be taken literally, word for word.

Moreover, religion is not only a personal matter for many Americans, but it is also something they see as important in evaluating political leaders.

·         A July 2011 PRRI survey found that a majority (56 percent) of Americans say it is very or somewhat important for a presidential candidate to have strong religious beliefs, regardless of whether those beliefs are the same as their own.  Majorities of both Democrats (51 percent) and Republicans (71 percent) agree with this statement.

·         A 2010 survey by Pew Research Center found that approximately six-in-ten (61 percent) Americans agree that it is important that members of Congress have strong religious beliefs, including 55 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of Republicans.

While it is too soon to say for certain what will happen in 2012, understanding the religious forces in American culture will be sure to help make sense not only of the twists and turns of the campaigns but of the final tallies at the ballot box.