10/6/10
A new Public Religion Research Institute survey of over 3,000 U.S. adults show one in ten of Americans consider themselves members of the Tea Party political movement and are more likely than even white evangelicals to say the United States is a Christian nation. As reported on CNN’s BeliefBlog, the research results show Tea Party members to be largely social conservatives rather than libertarians, as has been speculated. Lead survey researcher Robert Jones said his study shows Tea Party numbers are half those of the Christian conservative movement or the religious right. Other findings show Tea Party members’ religious beliefs are less traditional than white evangelicals but more so than the nation’s general population. For example, almost half of Tea Partiers believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God, while a third of Americans overall and two-thirds of white evangelicals believe this. Albert Mohler, Jr. of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary commented on the survey results, saying he wasn’t surprised by them. “Opposition movements tend to draw very broadly. When it gets to the specifics of governance there’s going to be some big contrast…those areas of natural overlap are understandable but the issues of contrast are going to be unavoidable.”
