Showing posts with label Public Religion Research Institute. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Public Religion Research Institute. Show all posts

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.

Wednesday, 24 July 2013

Capitalism and economic policy and Christian survey

Thursday last week the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution released a new survey on the intersections of religion, values, and attitudes toward capitalism, government, and economic policy.

On July 18, the religion, policy and politics project at Brookings co-hosted an event with the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) to release the new survey and accompanying report co-authored by Brookings Senior Fellows E.J. Dionne and William Galston and PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones, PRRI Research Director Daniel Cox, and PRRI Research Associate Juhem Navarro-Rivera.
The 2013 Economic Values Survey tackles a range of topics, including perceptions of economic wellbeing and upward mobility, the role of government, how well capitalism is working, the importance and availability of equal opportunity, values that should guide government policy on economic issues, and specific economic policies.  With its large sample size, the survey explores a range of fault lines on these issues, including racial and ethnic or generational divides.  Additionally, the survey takes up the question of the existence and vitality of religious progressives, compared to religious conservatives, and examines the relationship between theological beliefs and the views of both groups on capitalism and economic policy.
Nearly six out of 10 Americans (59 percent) say that being a religious person “is primarily about living a good life and doing the right thing,” as opposed to the more than one-third (36 percent) who hold that being religious “is primarily about having faith and the right beliefs.”
Religious conservatives are far more likely than religious progressives  to say religion is the most important thing in their lives.
“Among people of faith in general there is a strong consensus on the need for compassion and fairness for those in need,” Dionne said, even among conservatives. He said that more than 60 percent of both theological conservatives and social conservatives “support increasing the minimum wage to $10 an hour.”
Both groups also by large margins see the gap between the rich and poor as growing, and see a role for government in taking care of people who can’t take care of themselves.
While Dionne said that this pattern is not consistent — three in five Americans, for example, think that government has “gotten bigger because it has gotten involved in things that people should do for themselves” — he suggested there was at least an opening to use religion as a bridge across the ideological divide.



Graphic courtesy Public Religion Research Institute
Robert P. Jones, CEO of PRRI, said that Americans’ two views of what makes a person religious harken back to the Protestant Reformation and to the Bible itself.
“This has been a perennial debate through the ages in Christianity,” said Jones. “The Pauline literature, especially in the Book of Romans, makes the case for religious justification by faith alone, while the Book of James seems to state the very opposite — ‘faith without works is dead.’
The religious conservatives are holding an advantage over religious progressives in terms of size and homogeneity. “However, the percentage of religious conservatives shrinks in each successive generation, with religious progressives outnumbering religious conservatives in the millennial generation. “Religious progressives are significantly younger and more diverse than their conservative counterparts,” Jones said.
Forty-seven percent of the Silent Generation (ages 66 to 88) are religious conservatives, compared with 34 percent of Baby Boomers, 23 percent of Gen Xers and 17 percent of Millennials.
While the Christian right makes up 28 percent of the population and garners more cultural attention — Jones found that there are 27,000 global monthly Google searches for “Christian Right” compared with just over 8,000 searches for “Christian left” – religious progressives are only 9 percentage points behind, with 19 percent of the population.
“What we see is not a one-to-one replacement of religious conservatives with religious progressives,” Jones explained. Instead, the ranks of religious conservatives over time are declining, while religious progressives maintain their share of the population. “But there’s also this growing number of non-religious Americans.” If the trends continue, religious progressives eventually will outnumber religious conservatives.
The report, dubbed the “Economic Values Survey,” uses respondents’ views on everything — from God to the Bible to the role of government in the economy — to create a new scale of religiosity that divides Americans into four groups: religious conservatives (28 percent), religious moderates (38 percent), religious progressives (19 percent) and the nonreligious (15 percent.)
According to the survey, white evangelicals are more likely to say the  free market and Christian values are at odds than black Protestants,mainline Protestants, Catholics, and religiously unaffiliated Americans.  Strangely enough lots of white Americans give a lot of attention to the attachment to objects and like to have many gadgets from the first hours.

 Graphic courtesy Public Religion Research Institute


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Materialism, would be life, and aspirations

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