Showing posts with label Pew Research Center. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pew Research Center. Show all posts

Friday 10 April 2020

According to Pew Most White Evangelicals Don’t Think COVID-19 is a Medical Crisis

In 2011 the International Health Regulations Review Committee already gave a warning that
“The world is ill-prepared to respond to a severe influenza pandemic or to any similarly global, sustained and threatening public-health emergency.
In certain countries or states, we the last few years have seen a grow in evangelical and Pentecostal churches. Several of those evangelical denominations slid or slipped off to become very conservative or sometimes even very fundamental Christian groups.

The nonpartisan American think tank, Pew Research Center, based in the Washington, D.C. area does polling, research into American social issues, politics,  public opinion and demographic trends, If you read any newspaper or watch regular news you see their material, as it is used regularly
  In early March of 2020 Pew did a survey of white evangelicals from March 10 through 16. In the United States CoViD-19 was declared a national emergency on March 13, 2020. Here is what Pew says.

 Around three-quarters of white evangelicals (77%) say they are at least somewhat confident that Trump is doing a good job responding to the outbreak, including roughly half who say they are very confident. Majorities of white evangelicals say Trump has assessed the risks of the situation correctly (64%) and that the crisis has been blown out of proportion by the media (76%), while just a quarter (24%) say Trump hasn’t taken risks tied to the coronavirus seriously enough.
By comparison, about half of Americans overall (52%) say Trump has underplayed the risks, including majorities who say this among the religiously unaffiliated (64%), black Protestants (67%) and Jews (73%)
Close to 1,000 students some from high infection areas were encouraged to come back to campus in central Virginia.

We can notice a blatant disregard to face the facts. Pandemics happen and history is full of them. In the United States they, like in many other places, have pandemics every so often. Influenza, small-pox, measles, scarlet fever, etc… have all happened in the history of the United States from colonial times to current. Many evangelicals do not seem to understand that people should be protected and in many cases also receive vaccinations against such diseases to avoid worse scenarios. 

  It is incredible that today when one has so much coverage of bad cases all over Europe that several American churches are still calling their flock to meet and want to have big Easter gatherings this weekend.

This irresponsible attitude to ignore the rules of good public health indicates a totally irresponsible attitude without a deep love for other people.

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Preceding
Using fears of the deadly coronavirus
Observance of the Lord’s Evening Meal
Catholics facing a totally different Holy Week


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Find also to read
  1. The unseen enemy
  2. Making deeper cuts than some terrorist attacks of the near past
  3. Mel Brooks saying “go home” to Max Brooks
  4. CoViD-19 warnings
  5. President Trump shall have to recognise that Immigrant Workers Are Vital to the U.S.A.
  6. In denial, Donald Trump continues to insist that nothing serious is at hand and everything is in control
  7. Under-reporting the total number of coronavirus cases
  8. José Antonio Vergara talking in Esperanto about the outbreak of the epidemic
  9. Margaret Zaleski-Zamenho from Paris telling in Esperanto about the situation in France
  10. Coronavirus on March 11 declared a global pandemic on March 31 affecting more than 177 countries
  11. Europe in Chaos for a Pandemic
  12. Only a few days left before 14 Nisan
  13. Even in Corona time You are called on to have the seder
  14. Observance of the Lord’s Evening Meal
  15. One Passover tradition asking to provide the less fortunate with foods and help
  16. In a time when we must remain in our place
  17. Hosting a Virtual Seder During a Pandemic
  18. Love in the Time of Corona
  19. Recrafting our World
  20. CoViD-19 warnings
  21. Anxiety Management During Pandemic Days~
  22. Hope on the Horizon: Pandemic Anxiety Management II~

Wednesday 23 October 2019

Main churches losing population share

In the Low Countries it looks more as if the Church is dying. The majority of main churches, the bastions of a few decades ago, are nearly empty and even have no weekly Sunday service any more.

In the United States there are still many mega-churches, but there too we can find that the main churches are loosing attending ship.

Based on telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, Pew Research Center said Thursday that 65% of American adults now describe themselves as Christian, down from 77% in 2009. Meanwhile, the portion that describes their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.

The so called conservative Christian country sees her religious landscape changing at a rapid clip.

One-in-five adults (20%) are Catholic, down from 23% in 2009.

Self-described atheists now account for 4% of U.S. adults, up modestly but significantly from 2% in 2009; agnostics make up 5% of U.S. adults, up from 3% a decade ago; and 17% of Americans now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” up from 12% in 2009.

As in Europe we can see that members of non-Christian religions also have grown modestly as a share of the adult population.

Over the last decade, the share of Americans who say they attend religious services at least once or twice a month dropped by 7 percentage points, while the share who say they attend religious services less often (if at all) has risen by the same degree.

> In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace

Sunday 3 June 2018

Being Christian in Western Europe at the beginning of the 21st century #1

Today we do find a lot of people, in our regions, who say they are Christian and with that mostly mean Roman Catholic, but nearly never go to worship services like mass.

The majority of Europe’s Christians are non-practicing, but they differ from religiously unaffiliated people in their views on God, attitudes toward Muslims and immigrants, and opinions about religion’s role in society.

Western Europe, where Protestant Christianity originated and Catholicism has been based for most of its history, has become one of the world’s most secular regions. Although the vast majority of adults say they were baptized, today many do not describe themselves as Christians. Some say they gradually drifted away from religion, stopped believing in religious teachings, or were alienated by scandals or church positions on social issues, according to a major new Pew Research Center survey of religious beliefs and practices in Western Europe.
Yet most adults surveyed still do consider themselves Christians, even if they seldom go to church. Indeed, the survey shows that non-practicing Christians (defined, for the purposes of this report, as people who identify as Christians, but attend church services no more than a few times per year) make up the biggest share of the population across the region. In every country except Italy, they are more numerous than church-attending Christians (those who go to religious services at least once a month). In the United Kingdom, for example, there are roughly three times as many non-practicing Christians (55%) as there are church-attending Christians (18%) defined this way.



Non-practicing Christians also outnumber the religiously unaffiliated population (people who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” sometimes called the “nones”) in most of the countries surveyed.1 And, even after a recent surge in immigration from the Middle East and North Africa, there are many more non-practicing Christians in Western Europe than people of all other religions combined (Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.).

The 10% for Belgium is more 8%, where the Roman Catholic Churches are less filled and of the protestant churches the Pentecostals get most people in  their church-services. Where we can find most people going to a religious service is by the Islamic community where the garage mosques and official mosques may count on a very good attendance on Friday night.

Tuesday 7 November 2017

500 Years of Reformation Divisions Have Lost Much of Their Potency

After 500 Years, Reformation-Era Divisions Have Lost Much of Their Potency

Theological differences diminished to a degree that might have shocked Christians in past centuries.

As Protestants prepare to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, new Pew Research Center surveys show that in both Western Europe and the United States, the theological differences that split Western Christianity in the 1500s have diminished to a degree that might have shocked Christians in past centuries.
When we look at the Lutheran, Calvinist, Presbytarian, Pentecostal and Baptist churches we do not notice a lot of free thinking and continued Biblical study in the church.

While the Reformation led to more than a century of devastating wars and persecution in Europe, both Protestants and Catholics across the continent now overwhelmingly express willingness to accept each other as neighbours and even as family members. this would not be bad when they all kept to study of the Bible and would aim to bring their flock closer to God.

The majority of present protestant churches are aiming to please their folks and are looking for ways to make their service as entertaining as possible; That way the Pentecostals are enjoying a growth whilst many other protestant churches are loosing members.

In Western Europe, the Pew Research Center conducted telephone surveys from April 11 to Aug. 2, 2017, among 24,599 people across 15 countries. In the U.S., the survey was conducted online from May 30 to Aug. 9, 2017, among 5,198 panelists on Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (although all of the questions analysed in the survey were asked of only half the sample).

Of the U.S. Protestants 46% say the Bible provides all the religious guidance Christians need, a traditionally Protestant belief known as sola scriptura. But 52% say Christians should look for guidance from church teachings and traditions as well as from the Bible, the position held by the Catholic Church.

In the United States we can find mega churches where the preachers just shout with quotes from the bible but not really look into biblical texts to teach about the Word of God. How more entertaining a pastor can be how bigger his church can be.
Among self-identified white evangelicals, 44% express both convictions of sola fide and sola scriptura, and this figure rises to 59% among white evangelicals who say they attend church at least once a week. 19% say neither religious tradition espouses sola fide, and one-in-ten U.S. adults (11%) say only Catholicism traditionally teaches that salvation comes through faith alone.
Among Protestants who know that only Protestantism (trinitarian) traditionally teaches that salvation comes through faith alone, about three-quarters (77%) embrace the concept of sola fide. But among the much larger share of Protestants who are not aware that sola fide is solely a Protestant teaching, far fewer (35%) believe that faith is all that is needed to get into heaven. The survey does not take into account the non-trinitarian protestant churches which for the majority teach that people are not just saved by their baptism or by their reborn status. Most of non-trinitarian protestant churches teach one has to become like Christ and one has to follow the commandments of Christ and the commandments of God. According those churches one has to live according the faith and have to do good works. Without repenting for the wrong being done, they do not believe one can enter the Kingdom of God.



  • In nearly all of the European countries surveyed, majorities or pluralities of both Catholics and Protestants adhere to the traditionally Catholic view that both faith and good works are necessary to attain salvation. In fact, in every country except Norway (where 51% of Protestants say salvation comes through faith alone), belief in sola fide is a minority view even among Protestants.
  • Catholics and Protestants in Western Europe generally report low levels of religious observance: Medians of just 8% of Protestants and 14% of Catholics say they attend religious services weekly or more. But Europeans who say religion is important in their lives are especially likely to hold their respective church’s traditional position regarding the means of salvation. For example, 31% of Protestants in Sweden who say religion is “very” or “somewhat” important in their lives believe in sola fide, compared with 10% of other Swedish Protestants.
  • The impact of secularization is apparent, but so are pockets of religiosity. For instance, the Netherlands has a relatively high level of disaffiliation, with about half of Dutch adults (48%) describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” religiously. Yet Dutch Protestants also stand out for some of Europe’s highest reported levels of church attendance, with 43% saying they go to church at least once a week.
  • In every European country surveyed, roughly nine-in-ten or more Protestants and Catholics say they are willing to accept members of the other tradition as neighbours. And large majorities of both groups say they would be willing to accept members of the other group into their families. For example, 98% of German Protestants say they would accept Catholics as members of their family, and a similar share of German Catholics (97%) say the same about Protestants.


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Find also to read
  1. Followers, protestors and reformers
  2. 500 years of a provision of the Word in the language of the peoples
  3. Religions and Mainliners
  4. Divisive pastors and Strange Fire conference
  5. The Catholic synod on the family and abortion
  6. The Anti-Reformation in Todays Evangelical Church 
  7. A New Reformation
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Wednesday 20 April 2016

Heaven and hell still high on the believers list showing a religion gender gap

Typological groups according to the Pew Resear...
Typological groups according to the Pew Research Center. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A new Pew Research Center analysis of international census and survey data finds that there is a religion gender gap: Women generally are more religious than men by several key measures of religious commitment, although this pattern is not universal and can vary by religious tradition.

In some countries and faiths, men are more religious than women, at least by some measures. For instance, among Muslims and Orthodox Jews, men are more likely than women to attend worship services at least weekly, the new study finds.

Religiousness also can be measured by asking people how important religion is to them personally. In more than half of the 84 countries surveyed (46), roughly equal shares of men and women say that religion is “very important” to them. However, in 36 other countries, more women than men say religion is important in their lives – and usually by wide margins. As a result, across all 84 countries, women surpass men in this aspect of religious commitment by an average of 5 percentage points (65% vs. 60%). Only in Mozambique and Israel do men say that religion is very important to them more often than women do.

The biggest exception to the general pattern of women being more religious than men occurs in weekly attendance at worship services. Across the 81 countries where Pew Research Center data are available for this measure, more men than women attend worship at least once a week (48% vs. 42%).

This attendance gap is largely driven by 27 countries in the survey with large Muslim populations. In many Islamic societies, men are expected to attend communal Friday worship services in the mosque, while women can fulfill this obligation either inside or outside the mosque. There are similar religious norms regarding worship attendance among Orthodox Jews in Israel. As a result, men in these 28 countries report far greater rates of attendance than women, often by margins of at least 20 percentage points.

By contrast, in countries that have large Christian populations (30 of the 81 studied on this measure), women are more likely to report attending services weekly. And in 23 other countries, men and women report attending about equally.


According to an other Pew Research Center published last month, surveys in 63 countries have asked Muslims and Christians about belief in heaven, hell and angels and showed that lots of people are still convinced that they might be tortured for ever after they die or that they go to heaven when they are finished here on earth.

In 47 of the 63 countries (75%), men and women are about equally likely to profess a belief in heaven. Women are more likely to believe in heaven in 15 countries, often by margins of 5 percentage points or more. 

Men and women in 52 of 63 countries (83%) are about equally likely to say they believe in hell. Women hold this belief more than men in 10 countries, while men surpass women in this belief in Lebanon. Overall, when the 63 countries are taken together, an average of 81% of women and 80% of men believe in hell.

Across all 63 countries, a greater share of women than men believe in angels by an average gap of 3 percentage points.

Looking at Christians only, there are just a handful of countries where the genders differ significantly in their beliefs in these concepts. A larger share of Christian men believe in heaven in only one country (Lebanon); Christian men are more likely than Christian women to believe in hell in two countries (the United States and Lebanon) and to believe in angels in one country (Zambia). On the other hand, more Christian women than Christian men profess belief in heaven in five countries (Russia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chile, Botswana and the United States), in hell in four countries (Kazakhstan, Russia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Chile) and in angels in nine countries (Kazakhstan, Russia, Uruguay, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Uganda and Guatemala).

Saturday 2 January 2016

How importance on religion is placed

In the past India has always been a special place concerning the spiritual. Today still close to 80 per cent Indians think religion is an important part of their lives, according to a recent Pew Research Center report, where they ask if the American public is becoming less religious.

The most populous landlocked country in the world, as well as the second-most populous nation on the African continent after Nigeria, Ethiopia, which has a close historical ties with all three of the world's major Abrahamic religions, tops the chart with 98 per cent nationals saying that faith plays a crucial role in their lives.

In the November survey of more than 35,000 U.S. adults it was found that the percentages who say they believe in God, pray daily and regularly go to church or other religious services all have declined modestly in recent years, from 56 per cent in 2007 to 53 per cent in 2015.

The share of U.S. adults who say they believe in God, while still remarkably high by comparison with other advanced industrial countries, has declined modestly, from approximately 92% to 89%, since Pew Research Center conducted its first Landscape Study in 2007.
The share of Americans who say they are “absolutely certain” God exists has dropped more sharply, from 71% in 2007 to 63% in 2014. And the percentages who say they pray every day, attend religious services regularly and consider religion to be very important in their lives also have ticked down by small but statistically significant margins.
The figures suggest Americans place less importance on religion than those from African and Asian countries.
U.S. is in the middle of pack when it comes to importance of religion in people's lives
Pakistan with 93 per cent and Indonesia with 95 per cent, come ahead of India in believing that religion is very important in their lives. On the other hand, France (14 per cent), Japan (11 per cent) and China (three per cent) rank the the lowest.
Generally, poorer nations tend to be religious; wealthy less so, except for U.S.

Friday 6 November 2015

Mega church country loosing religous people

English: This map shows the percentage of the ...
English: This map shows the percentage of the U.S. adult population that affiliates themselves as Mormon in a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in 2007.http://religions.pewforum.org/ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is the general trend that more and more people are very secular. Certainly in the economically thriving capitalist countries we see that most people are not relating to religion or to a religious body.

For the United States it still looks bright, though the share of U.S. adults who say they believe in God, while still high compared with other advanced industrial countries, slipped to 89 percent in 2014 from 92 percent in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study. 

In that country where we can find lots of big churches and have places with mega churches more people have come to doubt the existence of a god or the God.
The proportion of Americans who say they are "absolutely certain" God exists fell even more, to 63 percent in 2014 from 71 percent in 2007.

On television we may still get the picture of regularly praying Americans but that seems to become part of history. Also the attendance of religious services regularly have gone down by small, but statistically significant measures, the survey found.
The trend is most pronounced among young adults, with only half of those born from 1990 to 1996 absolutely certain of their belief in God, compared to 71 percent of the "silent generation," or those born from 1928 to 1945.

On the other hand, 77 percent of Americans continue to identify with some religious faith, and those who do are just as committed now as they were in 2007, according to the survey. Two-thirds of religiously affiliated adults say they pray every day and that religion is very important to them, the survey found

The survey also found religious divides among the political parties, with those who are not religiously affiliated more likely to be Democrats, at 28 percent, compared to 14 percent of Republicans.
About 38 percent of Republicans identify as evangelical Protestants - the largest religious group in the party, the survey found. Catholics make up 21 percent of each major political party.

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Find also about the dwindling numbers in church:
  1. a little church
  2. Is your church small?
  3. The Big Conversation
  4. The Big Conversation follow up
  5. The Big conversation – Antagonists
  6. The Big conversation – Recognition and refocus
  7. Having a small church mentality
  8. Reasons why you may not miss the opportunity to go to a Small Church
  9. Follower of Jesus part of a cult or a Christian
  10. To remove the whitewash of the Jehovah Witnesses as being the only true Bible Students and Bible Researchers
  11. Vision blurred by cumulative burden of divisions
  12. Not words of any organisation should bind you, but the Word of God
  13. Why we do not have our worship-services in a church building
  14. Four Pressing Needs in Rural Communities, and How the Church Should Respond
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Monday 13 July 2015

Believing in God part of being American for Discriminating Americans who feel discrimiated

"And don't ye forget it" Sign in Jac...
"And don't ye forget it" Sign in Jackson, Mississippi for "Trinity Gospel Fellowship" has lettering "AMERICA IS STILL A CHRISTIAN NATION" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute released new data on American perspectives on what makes someone truly American and what makes the U.S. unique in the world.
 The survey found that a majority (63 percent) of Americans believe that protests challenging unfair treatment by the government make the country a better place. However, perspectives among white Americans on protests change dramatically when the protesters are identified as black. Two-thirds (67 percent) of white Americans believe that public protests against mistreatment by the government improve the country, but fewer than half (48 percent) of whites say the same when asked specifically about black Americans speaking out against mistreatment.

The nationwide survey of 1,007 adults was conducted from June 10 to June 14, 2015. The survey measures public views on patriotism, the role that protest plays in improving our country, what makes someone “truly American,” America’s moral standing, discrimination against Christians in the U.S. and immigration.

the idea that Americans believe they are a preferred nation by God is confirmed by the ciphers of the review. More than six in ten (62 percent) Americans believe that God has granted the country a special role in human history.

We also know the Americans to be a proud race, finding their country the best in the world. They often also carry strange ideas about other countries which do not coincide with reality. but even when some things may be better in other countries 63 percent of U.S. adults say there has never been a time when they were not proud to be an American. At the same time, only 43 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. sets a good moral example for the world, while 53 percent disagree.

About those morals and ethics is a lot of discussion going on in the Christian American community. Several Christians there do believe they are the higher race and the better people of the world. They also consider that those who want to come to live in America should all take on their own belief, which they consider the only true faith.

Though there they seem to be in conflict with themselves and their nation, because most Americans do not believe the U.S. is a Christian nation any more. Often they want to refer to their founding fathers being real Christians having founded their Christian Nation. But with the years they do find the government went astray from the ruling of the pilgrims and founding fathers.
Only about one-third (35 percent) say that the U.S. is a Christian nation today, while 14 percent say that the U.S. has never been a Christian nation. Nearly half (45 percent) of the public believes that it once was a Christian nation but is not any-more. However, among Americans who believe the U.S. is no longer a Christian nation, most (61 percent) say this change is a bad thing.

Close to seven in ten (69 percent) say that believing in God is essential to a truly American identity.  those who do not belief in God the Christian way of trinitarianism, can not be real believers nor real Americans. Not accepting the trinity seems blasphemy for most Americans, who do not seem to know there are many sorts of non-trinitarian religious groups.
“Young adults are roughly half as likely as seniors to say that being Christian is an important part of the American identity. Young adults are also much less likely to believe the U.S. is a Christian nation, an idea largely embraced by older Americans.”
says Dan Cox, Research Director at Public Religion Research Institute.

Younger and older Americans disagree sharply over what they believe is central to being American. While roughly two-thirds (66 percent) of seniors (age 65 and older) say that being a Christian is an important part of being American, only about one-third (35 percent) of young adults (age 18 to 29) agree. More than three-quarters (77 percent) of seniors say believing in God is an important part of the American identity, while young people are closely divided: 52 percent say that believing in God is an important part of being American, while 45 percent say that it is not. A significant divide also exists when it comes to place of birth. While 67 percent of seniors say that being born in the U.S. is important, fewer than half (45 percent) of young Americans agree.

When we do hear Americans protesting about the ways going on in their country and how they do not like it how the government handles religious issues we can find under the forty-nine percent of the Americans surveyed, who believe that discrimination against Christians is becoming as big of a problem as discrimination against other groups, we see that most of them can not stand it that others have different ideas about faith than they. Lots of American Christians would like to see all Christians all over the world to think like they. Those who only believe in the One True God Jehovah, can not be real Christians according lots of them, because Jesus is God and was the first Christian killed by the Jews, which are trying to conquer the world again.


Out of all the white evangelical Protestants surveyed, 70 percent said Christian discrimination has become a serious issue, while just 28 percent disagreed. Several evangelical protestants do not like to argue and consider each discussion about their faith as an attack on their faith but also as an attack on the American freedom of speech, though they do not want others to give their right of speech.

We also see that after 9/11 the stand against Muslims has not yet improved much. Many consider the Islam a great danger and even think their president has Muslim connections which he hides to bring in the Muslim warriors and give them more power.
 
The Polling Company for the Center for Security Policy (CSP), suggests that a substantial number of Muslims living in the United States see the country very differently than does the population overall.  The sentiments of the latter were sampled in late May in another CSP-commissioned Polling Company nationwide survey.
 
According to the just-released survey of Muslims, a majority (51%) agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah.”  This is naturally a matter which would bring lots of Americans and Europeans to have their ears and eyes wide open questioning the liberty of men and women. When that question was put to the broader U.S. population, the overwhelming majority held that shariah should not displace the U.S. Constitution (86% to 2%).

We do think Americans are probably too much worried because more than half (51%) of U.S. Muslims polled also believe either that they should have the choice of American or shariah courts. Though they could have reason when there are also may who think they should have their own tribunals to apply shariah, because only 39% of those polled said that Muslims in the U.S. should be subject to American courts.

These notions were powerfully rejected by the broader population according to the Center’s earlier national survey.  It found by a margin of 92%-2% that Muslims should be subject to the same courts as other citizens, rather than have their own courts and tribunals in the U.S.

Several Christians want to ring the alarm bell because according to them it is estimated that the number of Muslims in the United States was 2.75 million in 2011, and growing at a rate of 80-90 thousand a year.
If those estimates are accurate, the United States would have approximately 3 million Muslims today.  That would translate into roughly 300,000 Muslims living in the United States who believe that shariah is “The Muslim God Allah’s law that Muslims must follow and impose worldwide by Jihad.” {Poll of U.S. Muslims Reveals Ominous Levels Of Support For Islamic Supremacists’ Doctrine of Shariah, Jihad}
People unaffiliated with Christianity leaned more toward discrimination not being as big of a problem as discrimination against other groups, as 59 percent disagreed with the statement with only 34 percent agreeing.