Social Policy & Politics Program | Memo

Quick Facts about the Emerging Evangelical Center

by Dr. Robert P. Jones

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An analysis of the size of the emerging evangelical center and their support for the policies in the Come Let Us Reason Together Governing Agenda.

This memo serves as a guide to understanding the emerging evangelical center using data from the Faith and American Politics Survey, conducted by Public Religion Research and sponsored by Faith in Public Life. It supports Third Way’s recently released initiative to find common ground between evangelicals and progressives on divisive cultural issues (“Come Let Us Reason Together: A Governing Agenda to End the Culture Wars,” http://comeletusreason.org).

We found that 41% of evangelicals are centrists, while 44% are traditionalists (or more conservative) and 15% are modernists (or more progressive). Among younger evangelicals (18-34), the evangelical center is even larger (45%). This means that the coalition of centrist/modernist evangelicals account for a majority of evangelicals. Our research also demonstrates that a majority of centrists/modernist evangelicals support even the most divisive areas of our governing agenda, abortion reduction and employment nondiscrimination for gay and lesbian people.

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