On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 2:59 PM, Cameron Wybrow <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>wrote:
> John:
>
> I hesitate to contest your generalization about Americans, not being one,
> but I do know quite a few Americans (including friends and family), and I do
> read a lot of things written by Americans, and I wonder if your account
> doesn't skew things a bit, based on your Southern location and your original
> denomination. I wonder if you would characterize American religion in the
> way that you do if you had grown up in Chicago, Boston, New York, Vermont,
> Massachusetts, Ohio, or California, or among the Eastern European settlers
> of some of the prairie states. And I wonder how much contact you had
> growing up with Episcopalians and Roman Catholics, who exist in the USA,
> even in parts of the South, in fairly large numbers.
>
> I wonder if it wouldn't be more accurate if you had written that YEC is the
> default *Protestant* belief in the USA. (The tendency of people on this
> list to implicitly leave Catholicism out of the picture never ceases to
> amaze me -- it's something a Canadian Protestant writing about religious
> matters would never do.) And even within Protestantism, I suspect that your
> statement would not be true for the urban parts of the north-east and parts
> of California and for large mid-western urban areas such as Chicago.
>
**
YEC is the plurality opinion amongst all Americans. Note this 2008 Gallup
poll. A 2009 Gallup poll found belief in evolution increases with amount of
education (21% for HS grads, 74% for postgraduates). Support for evolution
is only 24% amongst weekly church goers where the amount of education
doesn't matter for that subgroup. 52% of Americans self-identify as
Protestants and 25% as Catholic. Barna group which applies a theological
test for the label states that 7% of Americans are Evangelicals.
*
Gallup Poll. May 8-11, 2008. N=1,017 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.
.
"Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin
and development of human beings? (1) Human beings have developed over
millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this
process. (2) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less
advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process. (3) God created
human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last
10,000 years or so." Options rotated 1-3, 3-1
.
Guided
By God God Had
No Part God Created in
Present Form Other/
Unsure % % % % 5/8-11/08 36 14 44 5 5/10-13/07 38 14 43 4
5/8-11/06 36 13 46 5 11/04 38 13 45 4 2/01 37 12 45 5 8/99 40 9
47 4 11/97 39 10 44 7 6/93 35 11 47 7 1982 38 9 44 9 *
>
>
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Received on Wed Nov 18 18:46:08 2009
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