While the number of Americans who identify as Christian has declined in recent years, the recent Pew poll has found another interesting statistic. The number of LGB Americans who identify as Christian is up to forty-eight percent in the latest poll, up from forty-two percent in 2013. That's quite an increase in just that short period of time.
From The New Civil Rights Movement:
One of the top stories this week is the huge drop in the number of Americans who are willing to identify as Christian. From 2007 to 2014, that number dropped from 78.4 percent to just 70.6 percent, according to an extensive new survey just released by the Pew Research Center.
That drop applies across many demographics, including age and geography.
But one hidden portion of the survey reveals a staggering increase in the number of gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans who now say they identify as Christian.
Nearly half of the LGB community, 48 percent, say they are Christian.
That's a dramatic jump from a separate 2013 Pew survey, which placed the number at 42 percent, according to The Advocate.
Matthew Vines, author of God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships, tells The Advocate, "it's the 48 percent of LGBT Americans who are Christians who are best positioned to change both religious attitudes about same-sex marriage and secular attitudes about religion. As LGBT Christians continue to find their voice, they'll be changing both their churches and the LGBT community for the better."
I'm not sure why they did not poll trans persons. It could be that they did not find a large enough number of persons who identify as transgender to make any realistic or accurate conclusions/statistics.
The survey consisted of 35,071 adults, 1,604 of them identifying as LGB. The survey was conducted by telephone, from June 4 to September 30, 2014.
via
The Advocate
Is this good news for the GOP? Not likely. LGBT folks are returning to their faith traditions because they have figured out that it is no longer an either/or situation. Mainline Christian denominations have become far more inclusive and welcoming for LGBT folks.
Meanwhile, another recent poll found that forty-seven percent of religious Americans favor marriage equality, and forty-five percent oppose.
From On Top Magazine:
The poll, called The American Values Atlas and released last month, found that 47 percent of religious Americans favor legalizing same-sex marriage, while 45 percent remain opposed.
Writing at The Atlantic, Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), the group behind the survey, notes that support has increased dramatically over the past dozen years.
“Many religious conservatives continue to insist that the same-sex marriage debate pits religious Americans against non-religious Americans,” Jones wrote. “That was largely true even as recently as 2003, when Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage.”
“Over the last decade, though, the debate has shifted from one between religious and non-religious Americans to one that primarily pits older, conservative Christians against moderate, progressive, or younger Christians, Jews and the religiously unaffiliated.”
Catholic support for marriage equality is at sixty percent in that poll. Mainline Protestant support is up to sixty-two percent now. Evangelical Protestant support is now at twenty-eight percent