The commonly referenced “God gap” between Republicans and Democrats is disappearing.
Polls released before the 2008 election demonstrated America’s Christian voters are no longer synonymous with the political right: a George Barna survey showed born-again Christians evenly split between John McCain and Barack Obama, and a Public Religion Research study
found that even among white Evangelicals, touchstone issues like abortion and same-sex marriage weren’t in their top five voting considerations.
If Christian voters share common morals and values, how is it that their voting patterns and priorities aren’t more unified?
According to a new study, the answer is that Christians don’t share a common worldview, their morals and values sprayed across the spectrum by differing views in a handful of key areas.
Practically speaking, the differences between the two groups plays out in the causes and the priorities considered important to each.
For example, when asked about the most important issues among a set of eight choices, conservative activists pegged as priorities abortion (83 percent) and same-sex marriage (65 percent). Fewer than 10 percent of their progressive counterparts, however, identified those issues as “most important,” choosing instead to focus on poverty (74 percent), health care (67 percent) and the environment
(56 percent).
The activists not only differed on their priorities, but also on the positions they took, despite their professed common religious beliefs.
For example, 95 percent of the conservative religious activists responded that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, while 80 percent of the progressives answered that abortion should be legal in most or all cases.
Similarly, only 13 percent of conservative activists supported additional environmental protection at the cost of raised prices or lost jobs, while 87 percent of progressive activists would rather suffer the price in exchange for increased environmental protections.
The disparity between the two groups was also reflected on the issues of same-sex marriage (82 percent of conservatives opposed, 59 percent of progressives in favor), government health care, the Iraq war, the use of extreme interrogation techniques and so on.
And despite being divided in their voting patterns (93 percent of progressives voted for Obama in 2008, while 90 percent of conservatives report voting for McCain), the majority of both groups affirmed that faith was “an important factor” in their voting decision.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=111154
The truth is the title and premise of this study is faulty. This study is only partially a reflection of Christian values and world view.
Since most so-called Progressive Christians identified herein do not even believe the Bible is God’s Word and as to faith and morals inerrant, I must seriously question their being Christians at all. They may feel like they believe in God and even feel they have some faith in Christ, but how can they have an intimate relationship with Christ, to know Him personally and deny His Word on any point? Remember, He is the Word, He not only inspired every word of Holy Writ, He is the personification of the Word of God, to deny the all-sufficiency of the Word is to deny Christ.
This study does not in my opinion reflect the values of the true Church, it is a poll mostly of ‘religious” minded people, for the most part not people walking in a close relationship with Jesus, not people born of his Spirit. The true Church cannot be divided in these matters, for if that were true Christ would have to be divided, He would have to have left the Church to twist in the wind, without its Shepherd and be guilty of child neglect which means He cannot be God at all. Lastly, remember the Church, the children of God are NOT citizens of this nation or world, they are citizens of Heaven NOW in spirit! They are not here to change or redeem the world, but to change themselves into disciples of Christ and to be used of the Spirit to win souls to Christ. This world has already been judged, it is set for destruction in the end, while Christians are to have our hearts set upon Christ and eternity and His last words were that we were to moment by moment look up for Him to return as He Left.
It is sad so many people are deceived, thinking if they believe Jesus was a good philosopher and are ‘spiritual” they are Christian, when they do not know Him at all. This is a bad study, poorly designed and offers us no real insight into the thinking of Christians.