POLL: MANY AMERICANS UNEASY WITH MIX OF RELIGION AND POLITICS
Washington, D.C.—August 24, 2006—The relationship between religion and politics is a controversial one. While the public remains more supportive of religion’s role in public life than in the 1960s, Americans are uneasy with the approaches offered by both liberals and conservatives. Fully 69% of Americans say that liberals have gone too far in keeping religion out of schools and government. But the proportion expressing reservations about attempts by Christian conservatives to impose their religious values has edged up in the past year, with about half the public (49%) now expressing wariness about this.

The Democratic Party continues to face a serious "God problem," with just 26% saying the party is friendly to religion. However, the proportion of Americans who say the Republican Party is friendly to religion, while much larger, has fallen from 55% to 47% in the past year, with a particularly sharp decline coming among white evangelical Protestants (14 percentage points).

The latest national survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted July 6-19 among 2,003 adults, finds that:
* Despite tensions in the public’s views of science and religion, there is broad agreement across the religious spectrum that scientific advances will help rather than harm mankind. Overall, 65% of Americans express a positive opinion of scientific advances.
* People’s religious beliefs continue to shape opinions of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Fully 63% of those who believe that Israel was given by God to the Jewish people sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians, compared with 36% of those who do not believe this.
* Overall 63% of the public says the will of the American people – rather than the Bible – should be the more important influence on U.S. laws. But most white evangelical Protestants (60%) say that the Bible should be the guiding principle in making laws when it conflicts with the will of the people.
* Contemporary policy issues are being widely addressed in churches and other houses of worship. Nearly all of those who attend services at least monthly (92%) say their clergy has addressed hunger and poverty. But many also say their clergy have spoken out on such politically charged issues as abortion (59%), the situation in Iraq (53%), laws regarding homosexuals (52%), and the environment (48%).