Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons devotes an entire chapter in his timely new book – Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity (Broadleaf Books, 2020) – to explaining that consistently progressive or liberal Christian adults in the United States outnumber consistently conservative Christian adults by a margin of almost two to one.
Graves-Fitzsimmons relies on research conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2018 for his exploration.
Consistently Progressive Christians
PRRI deemed individuals to be consistently liberal if they answered three key questions affirmatively:
- support same-sex marriage
- say immigrants brought illegally to the US as children should be able to gain legal status
- believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases
Graves-Fitzsimmons, however, prefers the term progressive. By taking the percentages of Christians PRRI found to be consistently progressive and applying this to the population at large, he estimates that 35 million American adults are consistently progressive Christians (p.91).
Consistently Conservative Christians
PRRI deemed individuals to be consistently conservative if they answered three key questions affirmatively:
- oppose same-sex marriage
- say immigrants brought illegally to the US as children should not be able to gain legal status
- believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases
Graves-Fitzsimmons estimates that that there are around 18 million American adults are consistently conservative Christians. This number includes 10.75 million White Evangelical Protestants, 3.36 million Catholics, 3.29 million White Mainline Protestants, and 1 million Black Protestants (p.100).
So What?
1 in 3 Americans (32%) is consistently liberal (p.91).
White Evangelical Protestants are the religious group with the lowest percentage of adherents who are consistently liberal or progressive (9%).
Several religious groups have percentages of adherents that are near, at, or above the nationwide average for holding consistently progressive or liberal perspectives (p.91)
- Catholic – 30%
- White Mainline Protestant – 31%
- Non-Christian religions – 33%
- Black Protestant – 34%
- Religiously unaffiliated – 51%
Note: I highly recommend Just Faith. My five star rating will be included in So What Faith’s October list of great new books (scheduled to be published on October 1, 2020).