All this data about religions, and yet no data about their financial operations. Since it is obvious we cannot control or prevent their personal political viewpoints being passed on to their congregation, maybe it is time to review the tax exemption.
Let's make it simple and fair. Anyone who is expected to receive a tax break of over $1 million (whether charity exemption, religious exemption, or tax write-offs) needs to provide financial filings like those of publicly traded companies or forego the tax write-off.
A local priest in the Scranton Diocese brought a baby onto the altar to reinforce the vote for the thrice married Republican candidate. A second priest was reprimanded for a vulgar anti Clinton rant on his public Facebook page. I'm pretty sure of the party affiliation of priests in Northeast PA.
2
This study is seriously deficient in not identifying the most significant party affiliation correlation among Christians - race. I can see only one predominantly African-American denomination listed, the AME. The Baptist denominations identified are those that are mostly white, leaving out a significant segment of Baptists who are overwhelmingly Democrats. Bizarre that this research is so skewed and myopic.
"All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry."
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
7
While this data may well be accurate, there is one major component missing.
It is well-known (via Pew and other polls) that it is exactly these (for the most part) "mainstream" denominations that are (mostly) hemorrhaging members. What is growing, however, are "old style" churches, like those in community centers, homes, etc. - most of which avoid the entire "denomination" game.
It would be interesting to find out where THESE churches fall on this left-right scale. My guess is that the majority - even those that would normally fall under the small-e evangelical label (and this may represent as much as 50% of this group) - would be center-left if not left, as it is (often) the regressive social justice and "human" policies of faith/religion (e.g., GLBT, abortion, contraception, outreach, etc.) that so many are trying to escape from vis-à-vis "mainstream" churches.
It is well-known (via Pew and other polls) that it is exactly these (for the most part) "mainstream" denominations that are (mostly) hemorrhaging members. What is growing, however, are "old style" churches, like those in community centers, homes, etc. - most of which avoid the entire "denomination" game.
It would be interesting to find out where THESE churches fall on this left-right scale. My guess is that the majority - even those that would normally fall under the small-e evangelical label (and this may represent as much as 50% of this group) - would be center-left if not left, as it is (often) the regressive social justice and "human" policies of faith/religion (e.g., GLBT, abortion, contraception, outreach, etc.) that so many are trying to escape from vis-à-vis "mainstream" churches.
I can speak for the PCA, Presbyterian Church In America.
We have grown every year and have since 1973 when we left the Presbyterian church in the south. We believed that they would merge with the northern church (PCUSA and the UPCUSA) at any time especially since the northern church was planting churches in the south. They did merge in 1983.
Looking at the statistics provided by the Presbyteries you see that we have 3 times the number of permanent missionaries of the denominations we left. Sunday School attendance is 3 times higher as well as tithes.
The northern denomination merged with the southerners in 1983. At the time they numbered 4.2 million members. Today they have less than two million members. We left in 1973 with about 70,000 members. Today we've over 300,000. I would note that four other Presbyterian denominations have formed since 1983. There are two other denominations that had split off the northern church in the 1930s.
I anticipate that the dying denominations will have to merge in order to survive and many have been in conference over it for decades. One group consisting of the PCUSA, UMC, AME, AMEZ, ELCA and the ECUSA are calling themselves CUIC, Churches Uniting In Christ). I anticipate that once it starts others like the UCC, the Disciples of Christ, the Christian Reformed and the RCA and the American Baptists will join in. All they need do is destroy whatever doctrinal beliefs necessary like the United Church Of Canada did.
We have grown every year and have since 1973 when we left the Presbyterian church in the south. We believed that they would merge with the northern church (PCUSA and the UPCUSA) at any time especially since the northern church was planting churches in the south. They did merge in 1983.
Looking at the statistics provided by the Presbyteries you see that we have 3 times the number of permanent missionaries of the denominations we left. Sunday School attendance is 3 times higher as well as tithes.
The northern denomination merged with the southerners in 1983. At the time they numbered 4.2 million members. Today they have less than two million members. We left in 1973 with about 70,000 members. Today we've over 300,000. I would note that four other Presbyterian denominations have formed since 1983. There are two other denominations that had split off the northern church in the 1930s.
I anticipate that the dying denominations will have to merge in order to survive and many have been in conference over it for decades. One group consisting of the PCUSA, UMC, AME, AMEZ, ELCA and the ECUSA are calling themselves CUIC, Churches Uniting In Christ). I anticipate that once it starts others like the UCC, the Disciples of Christ, the Christian Reformed and the RCA and the American Baptists will join in. All they need do is destroy whatever doctrinal beliefs necessary like the United Church Of Canada did.
Who cares what religion voters may have ? really ...
The United States has a secular government guaranteed within the Constitution and further promotion or attempts at mixing politics and religion is a misnomer. (especially since you don't include Atheists or Humanists or...)
Furthermore, there is an end around of the law being performed with the tax exemption status for religious entities that are all suddenly getting religion and crusading for one political entity or another.
Prey on your own dime.
The United States has a secular government guaranteed within the Constitution and further promotion or attempts at mixing politics and religion is a misnomer. (especially since you don't include Atheists or Humanists or...)
Furthermore, there is an end around of the law being performed with the tax exemption status for religious entities that are all suddenly getting religion and crusading for one political entity or another.
Prey on your own dime.
9
I care! Because for so many years now, we've been plagued/harangued and harassed by Evangelical Christians who want to/have imposed their social, moral, political, RELIGIOUS values on the rest of us... And, try to be an Atheist in America!
1
Only in ultra Orthodox Judaism do the congregants follow their Rabbis, lockstep! Otherwise for the overwhelming majority of Jews, that old adage of whenever there are two Jews in a room, there are three different opinions, continues to hold true!!!
3
Proof that God cannot make up his mind?
Thus the union has been consummated. Funny, I didn't see ALCU on the left side of the graph.
1
The methodology of this post is highly suspect. Between the post and the footnotes, there are major discrepancies in how they guesstimated this information for the pretty charts.
The post claims they took 130,000 names from public church directories. However, the Hartfort Institute for Religious Studies estimates that there are 350,000 individual Christian congregations in America (314,000 Protestant, 24,000 Catholic and 12,000 other Christian.)
If all 130,000 pastors were Christians (and the post includes Rabbis), that would be .37 pastors per church in America.
Hmm...
Secondly, the footnotes explain that only 63,000 or 48% of the clergy and rabbis were "matched" to party registration data in 29 states. From that extremely small sample, they extrapolated the likelihood of the political affiliation of your pastor/priest/rabbi.
To make matters worse, data matching has horribly low levels of accuracy. According to Project Vote, when matched with a Social Security Number, there are error rates up to 29%. Given that these researchers were only likely using first and last names and perhaps employment information, the error rate is going to be much higher.
Badly done, NYT! It's an interesting idea, but there's not enough available data to make these conclusions.
The post claims they took 130,000 names from public church directories. However, the Hartfort Institute for Religious Studies estimates that there are 350,000 individual Christian congregations in America (314,000 Protestant, 24,000 Catholic and 12,000 other Christian.)
If all 130,000 pastors were Christians (and the post includes Rabbis), that would be .37 pastors per church in America.
Hmm...
Secondly, the footnotes explain that only 63,000 or 48% of the clergy and rabbis were "matched" to party registration data in 29 states. From that extremely small sample, they extrapolated the likelihood of the political affiliation of your pastor/priest/rabbi.
To make matters worse, data matching has horribly low levels of accuracy. According to Project Vote, when matched with a Social Security Number, there are error rates up to 29%. Given that these researchers were only likely using first and last names and perhaps employment information, the error rate is going to be much higher.
Badly done, NYT! It's an interesting idea, but there's not enough available data to make these conclusions.
2
I think the report is pretty accurate. Unitarians are extremely liberal, the UCC< Episcopal and ELCA churches are center left, and the most other congregations are quite conservative. The data may have a decent margin of error, but it seems theoretically and qualitatively accurate.
4
The database is not exhaustive, and the researchers don't claim it is. It is a subset of publicly available records that researchers were able to verify and match with public voter registrations.
In the paper they note: 240,053 congregations, out of which they identified 179,827 clergy and linked 125,868 of them to voter registration records.
The graphs represent the specific dataset.
In the paper they note: 240,053 congregations, out of which they identified 179,827 clergy and linked 125,868 of them to voter registration records.
The graphs represent the specific dataset.
6
"Foursquare" church? Is this an Easter egg of some sort?
Nope. It's an actual church. To quote wikipedia, it's an evangelical Pentecostal Christian denomination founded in 1923 by Aimee Semple McPherson.
3
Another reason to admire Reform Judaism.
3
An old saying is that the Reform Jews are now so reformed that they are Protestant.