WASHINGTON (RNS)—The head of the public policy arm of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination caused a stir this election season when he said he no longer wanted to be called an “evangelical Christian.” But an evangelical identity crisis has been simmering for some time.

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, sought to distance his own faith from the one surveyed at the polls or preached by televangelists promising riches as a reward for belief in God.

“Any definition that includes both a health and wealth prosperity gospel teacher and me is a word that’s so broad it’s meaningless,” he said.

Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate, points to Liberty University President Jerry Falwall, Jr. after speaking in Lynchburg, Va., in January. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Joshua RobertsFor Moore, evangelical leaders’ support for—or silence on—Republican candidate Donald Trump in the current presidential race was the last straw.

For bloggers Micah J. Murray or Rachel Held Evans, who wrote about her struggles with the church in her 2015 book Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church, it was the number of evangelical Christians who cancelled sponsorships for children in need after World Vision announced in 2014 it would employ people in same-sex marriages. The agency later reversed that decision.

Growing up in an evangelical family, she said, the word “evangelical” seemed synonymous with “real” or “authentic” Christian. But that changed.

“The World Vision incident confirmed what I’d been suspecting for a while—that my values were simply out of line with the evangelical culture’s values. And by then, I’d just grown weary of fighting for a label that no longer fit,” she said.

Deborah Jian Lee “If you look through evangelical history, conservatives and progressives have been in this tug of war about what it means to be evangelical,” said Deborah Jian Lee, author of Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women and Queer Christians are Reclaiming Evangelicalism.

“People are either leaving and distancing themselves from the evangelical label, and others are staying and trying to change it.”

She puts herself in that first group, she said, along with a number of post-evangelical Christians she interviewed for “Rescuing Jesus” who now call themselves simply “Christian”—or by labels like “progressive Christian” or “spiritual, but not religious.”

Murray calls himself an “angsty, post-evangelical, progressive-ish Christian.”

These Christians maintain, “The gospel is for everyone—no exceptions,” Lee said. But, for many, evangelicalism has become about “rules and boundaries and who’s in and who’s out,” she said.

“That doesn’t sound like good news. That doesn’t sound like the message of the gospel,” Lee said.

Tracing history

It’s an age-old question, according to Lee: What is an evangelical?

Nobody agrees, she said. Some exclude black Protestants from the label, counting “black Protestant” as its own category in polls, although many would identify with beliefs considered evangelical, she said. Some measure behavioral benchmarks like Scripture reading and church attendance.

The Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., estimates the total number of evangelicals at up to 100 million Americans, she noted. Meantime, she said, the Pew Research Center puts that number closer to 62 million.

What is clear is the evangelical Christian movement “wields huge influence in America,” she said. That’s reflected in the polls and in how evangelical leaders shape policy and culture, she observed.

Larry EskridgeAnd that’s nothing new, said Larry Eskridge, former associate director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, which closed in 2014.

“These are hardly new arrivals in American culture. This is part of the makeup of the country,” Eskridge said.

The movement has its roots in the early church—from the Greek word “euangelion,” meaning “the good news”—and the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther called his church the “evangelische Kirche,” or “evangelical church.”

It came to the United States, as the country declared its independence, with evangelists John Wesley, George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, Eskridge said. By the 1820s, evangelical Protestantism was the dominant form of Christianity in the United States, he said.

It split from fundamentalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wanting to be more engaged in the world and across Christian denominations, and it coalesced around places like Wheaton and the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and people like Billy Graham, he said.

“To get that army to march to the beat of a single drum is nigh on impossible,” he said. And that confusion is showing now, as evangelicals try to hold their coalition together.

The problem with polling

Russell Moore isn’t ready to give up on the term “evangelical.” It’s a beautiful word, he said, and one that “we can and ought to reclaim.”

Part of the confusion is a misunderstanding by those outside the church of what “evangelism” means, Moore insisted. It becomes a political voting bloc in many media reports, he said.

And the religious right mobilized by the late Jerry Falwell and others has “done a good job of defining of what it means to be evangelical in the public sphere and the media” over the past 40 years, Lee said. That’s overshadowed the progressives who have been part of that sphere this whole time, she said. And it’s put off a number of Christians who previously identified as evangelical, Murray added.

“Donald Trump’s support among many evangelicals has brought these tensions to a head, and I’ve been encouraged to see evangelical leaders like Russell Moore begin preaching a gospel that transcends a single political party,” Evans said.

Instead of asking respondents if they identify as evangelical, the Barna Group asks whether they met nine specific theological criteria, such as whether they say their faith is very important in their lives, the Bible is accurate and sharing their religious beliefs with non-Christians is essential.

Moore agrees with that kind of approach. To be considered an evangelical, one should agree on theological positions and be actively engaged in a local congregation, he said.

But a Pew Research Center analysis released March 14 showed those who self-identify as “evangelical” or “born again” in its polling meet many of the same criteria tracked by Barna. They are more than twice as likely as other voters to attend church at least once a week, share their faith with others and agree that religion is “very important” in their lives and that the Bible is the literal word of God.

Shifts in evangelical culture

Part of the confusion over the term also is an identity crisis within evangelicalism, Moore said. The movement “often does a very poor job of maintaining its theological identity.”

“I think that’s changing because when one looks at what’s happening in the universities, in the seminaries, in the major conferences across the country, there’s an evangelicalism that is much more subconsciously, theologically aligned,” Moore said.

That’s not all subconscious, though. More careful attention to theology “has been necessitated by shifts in evangelical culture,” Moore said.

When agreement on cultural values was assumed, he said, evangelicals downplayed their unique beliefs—both with each other and with those outside the church.

But, Lee said, “The demographics of this country are changing rapidly, and the demographics of the church are following suit.”

Non-white Christians made up 19 percent of evangelicals in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center. By 2014, that number had increased to 24 percent.

Not only has the racial makeup of church people changed, but also the generational makeup, she said. Those communities are bringing their own values, and they’re offering competing visions for who is an evangelical, Eskridge said.

The “self-appointed leaders” of evangelicalism have been “conservative, white, straight” and male, and they view Scripture through that lens, Lee said. They may not understand there are many other segments of the church “that cherish Scripture just as much and love Jesus just as much and want to live that out in their lives—they just look different,” she said.

And younger generations of evangelicals tend to fall in the center of the political spectrum, shifting the emphasis to social justice issues, according to Eskridge. Even that isn’t entirely new to evangelicalism, he said: William Wilberforce, for one, helped lead the movement to end slavery in the United States.

“It’s been a contentious and puzzling question all along. So, in a lot of ways, this is nothing new, because it has spilled over so much into the cultural stereotypes and the public arena because of the political edge,” he said.

Defining ‘evangelicalism’

The most famous definition of evangelicalism—and the one many evangelicals and evangelical organizations like Moore, LifeWay Research and the National Association of Evangelicals continue to point back to—is the Bebbington Quadrilateral.

In 1989, David Bebbington of the University of Stirling in Scotland identified four characteristics that define evangelicals:

• Conversionism—a belief each person must experience a conversion and be born again.
• Activism—a need to express one’s belief in the gospel through action.
• Biblicism—a high regard for the Bible as the ultimate authority.
• Crucicentrism—an emphasis on Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

“Evangelicalism is not some abstract ideology. It’s a commitment to the gospel that people who have submitted themselves to the lordship of Jesus Christ have made, including in their church lives,” Moore said.

There’s a “big tent” on issues that are considered secondary, he said. For instance, Moore is a committed Baptist, but he thinks a “believer’s baptism”—in which Christians are baptized after making a profession of faith, rather than as infants—is negotiable for evangelicals. There’s room for disagreement, too, on the nature of spiritual gifts or the role of women in the church, he said.

Evangelicals are “obsessed with Scripture,” Lee said, but there’s “diversity in how people interpret the text and how they should live out the gospel calling. That interpretation is very wide ranging.”

Rachel Held EvansEvans, for one, said she still believes the Bible is the authoritative word of God, faith is both personal and communal, and the gospel is worth sharing. And everything from the way she views Scripture to the things she gets nostalgic about remain rooted in her evangelical past, she said.

But she now goes to an Episcopal church, struggles with doubt and sometimes votes for Democrats. She also supports the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the church, and said she hates that evangelicalism has become synonymous with “anti-gay.”

Earlier this month, both she and Murray tweeted their responses to those questioning the label “evangelical” after Moore’s declaration.

“I suspect that most evangelicals would not identify me as ‘one of them.’ So, after a decade of trying to convince the culture I belong, I just dropped the label,” she said.

“Now I simply identify as a Christian.”

Emily McFarlan Miller is a national reporter for RNS.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—As the civil war in Syria entered its sixth year, Christians across the United States took to prayer.

On March 15, the fifth anniversary of the war, which has killed up to 470,000 people and displaced 7 million, the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and about a dozen other Christian groups raised awareness in American churches through the #PrayForRefugees campaign. 

“I fear that most people in our churches are paying little or no attention to this crisis,” IMB President David Platt said.

The ecumenical coalition includes Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, World Relief, World Vision, Lutheran World Relief, the United Methodist Committee on Relief and Catholic Relief Services, among others.

While there is great emphasis on Syria, the groups also call for fresh attention to the global surge in refugees, totaling 60 million worldwide. The #PrayForRefugees campaign began on Ash Wednesday and will conclude on Easter Sunday.

“While we may not all agree on the best political or logistical solution, any Christian can pray for peace in Syria, for protection and relief for those who are innocently caught in the crossfire, and for those serving the hurting,” said Stephan Bauman, president of World Relief.

In Indianapolis, Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Tobin moved beyond prayer by welcoming a family of four Syrian refugees, despite Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s efforts to block federal funds to resettlement agencies.

On March 1, Federal Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ordered Indiana to fund refugee resettlement efforts, labeling the governor’s ban unconstitutional discrimination. Indiana agencies may resettle another 200 refugees in Indiana this year. The state is expected to appeal the ruling.

Pence and 30 other governors have sought to ban resettlement of Syrian refugees, arguing the United States could be admitting terrorists by taking them in.

“The priests I talk to see the opportunity to lift up the refugee crisis as one of the core issues that Catholics focus on,” said Christopher Hale, executive director of the Catholic Alliance for the Common Good and a former campaign aide to President Obama.

Yet admitting refugees is a hard sell in many pulpits. Last month, LifeWay Research released the findings of a survey of Protestant pastors headlined, “Churches twice as likely to fear refugees than to help them.”

Few pastors had guided their churches to respond to refugees, the survey found. The majority of pastors—63 percent—had not discussed the refugee issue with their congregations.

WASHINGTON—After years battling hundreds of restrictions imposed by conservative state legislatures, proponents of abortion rights could be on the verge of a big victory, a small defeat or a do-over.

Those three options loomed after 85 minutes spent debating tough Texas restrictions inside the Supreme Court, a body still recovering from the sudden death last month of its most animated justice, Antonin Scalia.

Possible do-over

Victory or defeat is what usually gets meted out a few months following these debates, but Scalia’s death has increased the chances for other options. Verdicts tied 4-4 will have only limited effect. Cases can be rescheduled for next term or whenever the court gets a ninth justice. Or, as appeared possible March 2, cases can be sent back to lower courts for more fact-finding.

That could happen in Texas’ case because some facts are disputed, while others won’t be known for some time. The law passed in 2013 requires abortion clinics to meet strict surgical center standards and doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. In its wake, more than 20 clinics have closed, but precisely why is a matter of dispute. And it’s unknown whether the 10 clinics that would remain open if the Supreme Court upholds the law can perform about 70,000 abortions annually.

“Would it be (a) proper and (b) helpful for this court to remand for further findings on clinic capacity?” Justice Anthony Kennedy asked Stephanie Toti, the lawyer representing Whole Woman’s Health and other Texas clinics.

While such a move might be viewed by many as punting on a major issue that’s taken years to work its way through lower courts, justices often are dissatisfied with trial records. Kennedy and Justice Stephen Breyer, perhaps the two most frequent swing votes, are the main advocates of do-overs. Chief Justice John Roberts often seeks the path of least resistance.

In the wake of Scalia’s death, those inclinations could win out more often. The justices may feel inclined to kick the can down the road, particularly on major issues such as abortion, rather than issue landmark decisions with one seat on the bench empty.

Limited alternatives

The alternatives are not attractive. They can deadlock 4-4 on cases ranging from immigration to labor union fees to voting rights, but that merely would uphold a lower court’s ruling and would set no national precedent. They can reschedule those cases for the 2016 term beginning in October, but with Senate Republicans thus far refusing to consider President Obama’s prospective nominee to replace Scalia, the vacancy may exist well into 2017.

With many other challenges to state abortion restrictions heading toward the Supreme Court from Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Wisconsin and elsewhere, the option of sending the Texas case back may seem the most attractive. That is, unless Kennedy can be persuaded to join the court’s four liberals in a major ruling striking down the Texas restrictions and, by inference, those in other states.

Questions raised

Such a big victory loomed large during the second half of the March 2 oral argument, when the court’s four liberal justices challenged the purpose of the law, its impact on women forced to drive hundreds of miles or cross state lines for abortions, and the state’s capacity to meet the demand with a dwindling number of licensed clinics and doctors.

As those arguments were heaped on Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller, Kennedy occasionally joined the chorus. He noted the potential “capacity problem.” He noted fewer Texas women are using medications to induce abortions, while more are getting surgical procedures. “This may not be medically wise,” Kennedy said.

And when Justice Samuel Alito said states should be able to set extremely high standards for abortion care as long as they don’t pose an undue burden, Kennedy said that test needed to be “weighed against what the state’s interest is.”

To hear the liberal justices tell it, the state has no legitimate interest in making it more difficult to get an abortion than a colonoscopy or liposuction, two procedures with far greater risk than first-term abortions.

Breyer likened the risk to dental surgery. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted abortion is much less risky than childbirth. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said aspirin can kill, but “we don’t require that people take aspirins in (ambulatory surgical centers) or in hospitals.”

“Legislatures react to topics that are of public concern,” Keller answered. “The legislature can still act to make abortion safer, which is precisely what Texas did here.”

The Supreme Court’s liberal justices seemed united in March 2 arguments that Texas’ abortion regulations are an unconstitutional burden on a woman’s right to an abortion, but Justice Anthony Kennedy, who holds the key vote, questioned whether there was enough evidence to make such a finding.
Read it in The Washington Post.

BOONE, N.C. (RNS)—Franklin Graham picks up a toy stuffed animal, tattered by time and a child’s love, from a shelf in his office.

Franklin Graham picks up a toy stuffed animal, tattered by time and a child’s love, from a shelf in his office. (Religion News Service photo by Paul Sherar)It’s a little black sheep with a music box in its belly, a gift from his mother when he was a tot. When the son of Billy Graham winds a little key, it plays “Jesus loves me.”

At 63, fiery evangelist and social conservative Franklin Graham still is a “black sheep” who doesn’t travel with the speak-nice flock.

• His sharp-voiced Facebook posts have 3.4 million followers.
• He’s a popular to-the-punch guest on Christian broadcasting and Fox News who calls Islam a dead religion.
• He mocks gay rights and raises funds for “persecuted Christians” in the United States, like bakers who won’t sell cakes to same-sex couples.
• He condemns 21st-century secularism as the godless successor to Cold War communism.
• And in this election year, he has scheduled Decision America rallies in all 50 U.S. state capitols.

Preaching from statehouse steps

Week after week, Graham stands on statehouse steps and exhorts crowds like a biblical Nehemiah, warning people to repent to rebuild Jerusalem—with a gospel twist. He urges them to pray first and then vote for Bible-believing evangelical candidates. But don’t even think about voting for him.

“No, no!” he is “absolutely not” running for office, said Graham, who tends to rat-a-tat-tat his points.

Instead, he exhorts his listeners to run themselves, starting with local city and county offices. Imagine, he says at every tour stop, the impact on society if “the majority of the school boards were controlled by evangelical Christians.”

Graham—who publicly quit the GOP last year—insists he is not endorsing any person or political party. The Decision tour, a $10 million road show underwritten by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, often is routed through states just ahead of a primary or caucus, but Graham tells every audience only prayer can save the nation.

He’s not bothered that Donald Trump has reached front-runner status in the GOP nominating contest, or that Trump drew a sizable chunk of evangelical voters just days after Graham’s rallies in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Indeed, Graham often quotes the ambitious, uncompromising billionaire. It’s one outspoken man’s appreciation for the other, minus Trump’s crude language and multiple marriages.

“I’m doing this for my grandchildren,” Graham said, explaining his rationale for the Decision tour. He doesn’t want them to inherit a secular nation where “all people care about is what they can get” from the government.

Leading one of the nation’s largest charities

Franklin Graham Graham long ago opened the book on his restless years before Bob Pierce, founder of a small medical mission, brought him aboard and later asked him to take it over. After Pierce’s death in 1978, Graham built it into an internationally acclaimed disaster relief and development agency, Samaritan’s Purse, one of the 50 largest charities in the United States.

And wherever any of his staff and 70,000 volunteers land, they share their faith. Hearing the gospel never is a condition for aid, Graham said emphatically. “But I am not going to work anywhere in the world and keep my mouth shut,” he added. “I am going to tell people who we are and why we are there and what we believe.”

Never keeping his mouth shut about Christ could be the refrain of his ministry, amplified now by social media.

By 2002, he was president, CEO and director of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, as well as heading Samaritan’s Purse. After June 2005, his father retreated to his mountain cabin, a senior statesman of American Christianity who claimed he learned his lessons decades ago to stay out of public politics.

Taking after his mother

William Franklin Graham III may look like his father—square-jawed, tall and rangy—but his bravado in the public square “is my mother coming out in me,” he insists. The late Ruth Bell Graham “didn’t run away from anybody,” he said. “She just was never afraid. If she thought something was right, that’s where she stood.”

Her son doesn’t shy away from the “fundamentalist” tag. Reared as a Presbyterian, he worships some Sundays at “a little country Baptist Church” and a Christian and Missionary Alliance church he has attended for many years.

Labels mean little to him, however. He prefers to spell things out: Every employee of both nonprofits—1,403 workers at Samaritan’s Purse and 469 at the BGEA—signs an 11-point statement of faith annotated with 60 scriptural citations.

If one of these people echoed a controversial Wheaton College professor who said Muslims and Christians worship “the same God,” he’d tell that employee, “It’s been nice having you.” Professor Larycia Hawkins, whose comment was condemned by Graham, has since left Wheaton.

No time to worry about tone

When critics charge him with taking an offensive tone in his hard-line condemnations of liberal society, he responds: “Tone? What was it Donald Trump said in his first debate? ‘We don’t have time for tone!’”

Graham doesn’t say much about Trump’s politics, beyond noting the candidate’s much-touted call for investigating all, particularly Muslims, who seek to enter the United States, is “copying me.”

Where Graham sees himself standing by biblical truth, others see his words turned into ammunition for discrimination, particularly toward Muslims and toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Wants to lead Muslims to truth

“I have been very careful to say that I love Muslim people, and I care for them,” he said. “Islam isn’t going to save anybody. It can’t keep you from the doors of hell. It won’t open the doors to paradise. I want people to know the truth.”

At camps in northern Iran and welcome stations for refugees on the move across Europe, run by Samaritan’s Purse, “many are on the run because of Islam,” Graham noted. They have seen indescribable death and destruction in the name of that religion and “they need to know someone loves them—that God loves them and he hasn’t forgotten them,” Graham said. Accepting the gospel is never a condition of aid, he said emphatically. “But I’m going to tell them (the gospel), whether they want to hear it or not.”

‘Sick, sick, sick, sick’

The same is true for LGBT people.

“I don’t wish (them) ill,” he said. But he will tell them their lifestyle is sinful and “if they don’t repent, God will one day judge them, and they will spend eternity in hell. Is that hate speech because you love somebody enough to warn them that they are getting ready to fall off a cliff?”

Graham opposes the social normalization of same-sex marriage and efforts to pass nondiscrimination laws to protect the rights of gays and lesbians in housing and employment and public accommodations.

“If you try to exercise your faith in a public setting (LGBT activists) come after you to sue you,” he said, citing the bakery owners who were fined $135,000 in 2015 for refusing to produce a wedding cake for a gay couple. Samaritan Purse’s “fund for persecuted Christians” provides the owners financial assistance.

Transgender people who say their gender identity doesn’t match their biology are defying biblical concepts of manhood and womanhood, Graham asserted. Allowing them to use a bathroom suitable to their self-definition would be “putting our children in danger and opening doors to sexual predators,” he said.

Graham is not even sure there are enough transgender people to merit attention. So why, he demanded, “would we change all of our bathrooms so that some weirdo can say, ‘I feel like a woman today, and I’m going to go into a girls’ locker room.’

“That’s sick,” he said. “It’s just sick. Sick, sick, sick, sick. I think I said that four times. So make sure you got all four times.”

The Billy Graham the public didn’t see

That’s no Billy Graham quote. The renowned evangelist turned away from fundamentalism in the 1950s and “went to great lengths to make the gospel as appealing to as many people as possible. He avoided deal-breakers,” said Grant Wacker, Duke University professor of Christian history and author of America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation.

However, Wacker also observed, “Billy Graham believed a lot of things he didn’t emphasize because he knew they would offend or divide people.”

Franklin Graham knows these things, and he insists he’s following in the footsteps of the Billy Graham people didn’t see.

“My father has not changed his views. He’s 97. You can go back and read his first book, and it says the same thing: No one comes to the Father except through Jesus,” his son said.

He also insists he did not write his father’s 2015 book, Where I Am, which is full of hellfire warnings. If it seems different than many earlier of the elder Graham texts, his son has an explanation: “There are some books he wrote where he wished he’d been more clear.”

Mission to save lives

Clarity is not Franklin Graham’s weakness. He has one mission—to save lives, spiritually and materially. He flew missionary physician Kent Brantly back from Liberia when he was near death with Ebola. He worked for the release of Pastor Saeed Abedini, imprisoned in Iran for three years, and brought him to recover at The Cove, the mountain retreat run by the BGEA. Samaritan’s Purse planes and truck convoys often are first on the scene of earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters.

If those moments are overlooked when he’s calling forth the Christian civic soldiers to battle at the ballot box, it’s irrelevant to Graham’s goal—to make America Christian again, as he understands it.

“He doesn’t have to run for office to be ‘political,’” said Susan Harding, an anthropologist of religion at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She’s the author of a book on the late Jerry Falwell, who ran a 50-state-capitals tour in the 1970s.

“Franklin is vying for leader of the hard-right evangelicals,” succeeding Falwell (whose son endorsed Trump). They long for “an old-fashioned triumphalist Christian world where Christianity is Truth with a capital T,” she said.

So far, he’s pulled in around 50,000 Decision America pledges to “take a stand.”

Rile people up? “That’s my mother in me,” said the man with the little black sheep on his shelf.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Most Americans oppose religious exemptions to homosexual nondiscrimination laws, according to a new survey.

The report comes as a raft of bills before state legislatures would allow people to refuse service or accommodations to gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people based on their religious beliefs.

The Public Religion Research Institute, drawing on 42,000 interviews conducted in 2015, issued a new analysis of the American Values Atlas with a look at LGBT issues.

Key findings include: 

• 71 percent, including majorities in all 50 states and 30 major metropolitan areas, support laws that would protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public accommodations.
• 59 percent oppose allowing small-business owners in their state to refuse service to gay and lesbian people if doing so conflicts with their religious beliefs.
• 53 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage, compared with 37 percent—including most evangelical Protestants and Mormons—who oppose it.

Even among groups that oppose same-sex marriage, support for protection from discrimination crosses all “partisan, religious, geographic, and demographic lines,” said Robert P. Jones, the institute’s chief executive officer.

This includes 57 percent of white evangelical Protestants, 72 percent of Mormons and 65 percent of African-Americans.

But support for anti-discrimination laws breaks down by party lines over religious exemptions, Jones said. The survey found 74 percent of Democrats but only 40 percent of Republicans oppose allowing small-business owners to refuse to provide products or services to gay or lesbian people if doing so violates their religious beliefs.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Republicans and Democrats divide sharply over views on Islam, Muslims and how a U.S. president should label violent extremists.

But Americans overall agree there’s a “a lot” of discrimination against Muslims living in the United States—and it’s rising—a new Pew Research survey finds.

Researchers surveyed 2,009 U.S. adults in January, a month after 14 people were killed in a San Bernardino terrorism attack and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called for banning Muslims’ entry to the United States.

“I’m struck by the finding that 25 percent of the public thinks at least half the Muslims in the U.S. are anti-American,” said Besheer Mohamed, a senior researcher at Pew and a co-author of the survey analysis.

The overall finding was the same for this question when it was asked in 2002, a year after the 9/11 terrorist attack.

Partisan split evident

What’s new is the partisan split in 2016 that was not evident in 2002, Mohamed said.

Among Democrats and those who lean Democratic, 54 percent say “just a few or no” Muslims here are anti-American. Thirty-four percent say this is so for about half or some Muslims in the U.S., and 7 percent say it’s true for almost all Muslims living here.

But for Republicans and those who lean toward the GOP, 29 percent say few or no Muslims are anti-American. Forty-seven percent say this is so for half or some, and 16 percent say almost all of them harbor anti-American views.

Talk about Islamic extremists

It’s hard to know the reason behind the partisan realignment since 2002. But there are clues in responses to the survey question on how the public wants the next president to talk about “Islamic extremists,” the phrase Pew used in its questionnaire, Mohamed said.

“We see a sharp partisan split on this,” he said.

Overall, 50 percent of U.S adults say the next president should “be careful not to criticize Islam as a whole when speaking about Islamic extremists,” while 40 percent say the next president should “speak bluntly about Islamic extremists, even if the statements are critical of Islam as a whole.”

But Democrats and Republicans are almost mirror opposites.

“For Republicans, 65 percent want a blunt-talking president, even if that means the president is critical of Islam. Whereas, for Democrats, 70 percent say the next president should be careful not to criticize Islam as a whole,” said Mohamed.

Among Republican voters, most who favor blunt talk say Trump or his rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, would make “good” or “great” presidents.

According to the report, “Republicans are twice as likely as Democrats to say the main problem with violence committed in the name of religion is that some religions espouse violent teachings, although this is the minority view within both parties at 32 percent and 15 percent respectively.”

That finding echoes a December 2015 survey that found 46 percent of Americans think Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence.

Violence and religion

In the latest survey, Pew found most Americans believe religion doesn’t cause violence, but rather violent people use religion to justify their actions. More than two in three (68 percent) say some violent people use religion to justify their actions. But 22 percent say the teachings of some religions promote violence, including 14 percent who point the finger at Islam.

Partisanship also shows up on whether Muslims living in the United States face “a lot” of discrimination: 74 percent of Democrats but only 42 percent of Republicans say this is so.

Even so, the parties unite on one point: 76 percent—including majorities in both parties—say, “Discrimination against Muslims is on the rise.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The number of Muslim Americans involved in terrorism cases “rose dramatically” in 2015, but the overall threat they posed to public safety has been exaggerated, says the author of a new terrorism study.

“The demonization of Muslim Americans in some American social and political spheres has created a hostile climate far out of scale with the actual number of Muslim Americans involved in violence,” said University of North Carolina sociologist Charles Kurzman, author of the report.

Even so, attacks and disrupted plots by Muslim Americans in 2015 more than doubled over 2014, according to the report, published by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security.

Highest number involved in violent extremist plots since 9/11

Kurzman’s seventh annual look at the numbers found 81 Muslim Americans were associated with violent extremist plots in 2015, the highest annual total since 9/11. 

This brought the total number of Muslim Americans involved in violent extremism since 2011 to 344, an average of 26 per year. The total number of U.S. terrorism-related fatalities that resulted in the same period was 69.

Put it into perspective

To put that in perspective, Kurzman said, more than 220,000 Americans have been murdered since 9/11—including 134 in mass shootings.

“Each year since 2010 when I began doing this report, I try to remind readers … that among the threats to public safety that Americans face year-in and year-out, Islamic terrorism has played a very small role,” Kurzman said.

“Even the numbers of disrupted plots remain much lower than the public debate would lead us to believe. And yet it remains the focus of so much of the security discourse in American politics.”

Fatalities attributed to three people

All 19 of last year’s fatalities occurred in attacks carried out by three people.

A Muslim American gunman killed five military personnel in a shooting attack in Chattanooga, Tenn., in July, and a Muslim American man and his immigrant wife killed 14 people at an office Christmas party in San Bernardino, Calif., in December.

“A handful of individuals can affect perceptions and hide overall trends,” said Kurzman, a specialist on Islamic movements and author of The Missing Martyrs: Why There Are So Few Muslim Terrorists.

In his detailed look at perpetrators and suspects in 2015, Kurzman found 28 were associated with plots against targets in the United States. Most of the plans involved travel (22 individuals) or attempted travel (23 individuals) to join militant groups based in Syria.

Of the 41 Muslim Americans known to have joined the Islamic State group since 2011, nearly half (20) have died, 16 men and women are alive in ISIS territory, and five were arrested on return to the United States, including one accused of planning an attack here.

The actual numbers could be higher, Kurzman said. He cites research by J.M. Berger that “suggests that the ‘Islamic State’ may be keeping some of its American fighters ‘on the down-low,’ in order to ‘conserve their Americans for when they need to make a big splash.’”

The report also found Muslim Americans involved in terrorism in 2015 were:

• Younger than before—two in three were ages 15-24, compared to half in previous years.
• Most likely born in the United States—two in three in 2015, compared to half before that.
• Diverse in ethnic background, although, as in years before, nearly 25 percent were Arab-Americans and one in three was a convert to Islam.

NASHVILLE, Tenn—“Undecided” is by far the most popular presidential choice of America’s Protestant pastors, according to a new telephone survey of 1,000 senior pastors from LifeWay Research.

The survey found nearly half of those planning to vote—48 percent—don’t know whom they would pick if the presidential election were held today.

“One of the most surprising findings of our survey was the poor showing of Donald Trump,” said Ed Stetzer, executive director of LifeWay Research. “When it comes to Mr. Trump, there seems to be a huge gap between the pulpit and the pew.”

Among other findings:

• Half (54 percent) of Protestant pastors indicate they are Republicans. One in four is independent (23 percent), while one in seven (14 percent) is a Democrat.
• Among pastors who are Republicans, Cruz (29 percent) is in the lead, followed by Ben Carson (10 percent), Marco Rubio (8 percent) and Trump (5 percent). Thirty-nine percent are undecided.
• Among pastors who are Democrats, a third favor Clinton (38 percent), one in four (23 percent) favors Bernie Sanders and 31 percent are undecided.
• Among pastors who are independents, 57 percent are undecided. Leading among independents are Cruz and Rubio (8 percent each), Carson and Sanders (6 percent each), Clinton (5 percent) and Trump (4 percent).
• Older pastors over 64 are more likely to be undecided (54 percent) than those 18 to 44 (44 percent). They also are more likely to favor Trump (8 percent). Cruz does well with pastors 45 to 54 (21 percent). 
• Cruz does better with white pastors (19 percent) than with those of other ethnicities (5 percent).  Clinton does the opposite: 5 percent of white pastors favor her, along with 18 percent of pastors of other ethnicities.
• Evangelical pastors prefer Cruz (18 percent), Carson (8 percent) and Rubio (8 percent). Mainline pastors choose Cruz (13 percent), Clinton (10 percent), Sanders (8 percent) and Carson (7 percent).
• Baptist pastors (43 percent) are less likely to be undecided than Lutheran (60 percent) and Pentecostal (61 percent) pastors.

Previous surveys have found pastors in general are wary about being publicly identified with political candidates. A 2012 LifeWay Research study found almost nine out of 10 (87 percent) Protestant pastors disapprove of endorsements from the pulpit.

The IRS also bars pastors and leaders of other nonprofit groups from taking active roles in campaigns, at least in their official capacity. And pastors often have congregation members who disagree about whom to vote for.

This new poll shows pastors have a distinct view of the current election cycle—one different from people in the pews, Stetzer said.

“One of the few religious groups that national polls track are evangelical Christians, and it is hard not to notice a surprising gap between them and their pastors,” he said. 

“Based on most other polls, rank-and-file evangelicals and church attendees are most likely supporting Trump. Yet pastors are undecided or more likely to support Cruz. The absence of support for Trump is similar to unscientific surveys of evangelical leaders from the National Association of Evangelicals and World magazine that consistently pointed to Rubio.

“Simply put, it’s a bizarre election season,” Stetzer said.

Researchers conducted the phone survey of Protestant pastors Jan. 8 to 22. The calling list was a random sample stratified by church size drawn from a list of all Protestant churches. Each interview was conducted with the senior pastor, minister or priest of the church called. Analysts weighted responses by region to reflect the population more accurately. The completed sample is 1,000 surveys, providing 95 percent confidence the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 3.1 percent. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—On the growing list of ways the “outsiders” election of 2016 is upsetting conventional political wisdom, here’s a new entry: A contender’s lack of strong faith is not the deal breaker it once was for voters, according to a new survey.

The Religion and Politics survey by Pew Research even finds Americans have a kinder view of atheists as potential presidential timber than before. The share of Americans who said they’d be less likely to vote for an atheist is down from 61 percent in August 2007 to 51 percent in the new survey.

“Religion, by and large, remains an asset for potential political candidates,” said Greg Smith, associate director of research and an author of the Pew report. “Far more people say they’d be less likely to vote for a hypothetical candidate who doesn’t believe in God than would vote for one that does.”

Yet they’re much less concerned that candidates mirror their own personal religious convictions.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump—a nominal Presbyterian who stumbles over Scriptural references—holds up a copy of the Bible he said his mother gave him as a youth during a campaign rally in Iowa in December. (Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Lane Hickenbottom)And that can make a difference for candidates such as Democratic contender Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is proudly irreligious, or Republican Donald Trump, who is nominally Presbyterian.

Past Pew surveys found seven in 10 Americans said it was important that a president have strong religious beliefs. However, the new survey of 2,009 U.S. adults, conducted Jan. 7-14, asked a different, related question instead.

“We asked, ‘How important is it to you to have a president who shares your religious beliefs?’ And that turned up much smaller numbers,” Smith said. It was very or somewhat important for 64 percent of Republicans but for only 41 percent of Democrats.

Considering multiple factors

How much a candidate’s religion or religiosity matters is only one consideration people take with them into the caucus room or the voting booth, Smith said.

“There are other things they care about more,” he said. Hot topics in the 2016 campaign include the economy, foreign policy, taxes, terrorism and climate change.

Signs that voters respond to a matrix of issues, not only one, already were evident in 2012, said Smith. Evangelicals, who fretted during the primaries about Gov. Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, set that concern aside to vote for him in the race against Barack Obama, a mainline Protestant.

Neither do voters care deeply about a candidate’s theological sophistication—whether Trump says “Two Corinthians” instead of Second Corinthians or his rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, admits he failed to tithe, or give 10 percent to charity, like a proper Southern Baptist.

Trump, as one might expect of the high-profile business magnate with “huge” self-regard, breaks new ground in this survey, Smith said.

He is viewed as a potentially good, even a great, president by many Republicans overall (56 percent), the survey found—despite a high share of GOP voters who don’t see him as religious.

“Among those Republicans and those who lean toward the GOP who think that Trump is religious, most (73 percent) said he would be a good president. But we can also see lots of Republicans (41 percent) who think Trump would be a good, even a great, president even through they don’t think he’s particularly religious,” Smith said. “That’s a different pattern than you see for any other candidate.”

Virtually all Republicans who said Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio or retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson would be successful presidents view these candidates as at least somewhat religious.

For white evangelicals, the largest single bloc of GOP voters, it’s a statistical three-way tie. Roughly six in 10 see Trump, Cruz and Carson as religious. Only 44 percent say so for Rubio, a Catholic who recently released an ad touting his Christian faith and promoting salvation through Christ.

However, the report also points out considerable wariness about Trump among evangelicals: 29 percent said he would be a “poor” or “terrible” president, roughly twice the share of those who say this about Cruz or Carson.

Among Democratic front-runners in the 2016 race, the survey came up with some curious findings.

• Nearly half—48 percent—overall say former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a lifelong active Methodist, is not a religious person. Divided by parties: 65 percent of Democrats think she is at least somewhat religious. But the exact same 65 percent of Republicans say she’s not.
• About two-thirds of Democrats and those who lean toward the Democratic Party say Clinton is very or somewhat religious. Roughly half of Democrats (47 percent) say Sanders is at least somewhat religious.
• Evangelicals are skeptical of both Clinton and Sanders. Only 16 percent think Sanders would be a good president and 15 percent say so about Clinton. But 74 percent say she’d be “poor or terrible” and 50 percent say Sanders would be equally bad.
• Both Democrats find their greatest support among “nones”—people with no religious identity—and among black Protestants. Sanders scored a good-or-great rating from 51 percent of nones and 36 percent of black Protestants. By contrast, Clinton drew high praise from 42 percent of nones and 62 percent of black Protestants.

The Republican National Committee disinvited the National Review from moderating an upcoming pre-Super Tuesday debate after the conservative magazine carried an online symposium with messages denouncing Donald Trump, including one by a Southern Baptist Convention official.

Read it at Baptist News Global.

The government has no right to force religious groups—including an order of Catholic nuns and the Southern Baptist Convention’s insurance provider—to alter their own health care plans to achieve an Obamacare goal to provide women with contraceptives free of charge, according to a 79-page brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court Jan. 4.

Read it at Baptist News Global.