Bryan's Lofty Flock

Bryan Fischer recently lauded the results of a PEW poll revealing that ‘just 34% of white evangelical Protestants believe that there is solid evidence the earth is warming.’ He then chastises the ‘religiously unaffiliated’ for being ‘the most easily duped.’

[Editors’ Note: Notice that Bryan singles out the ‘religiously unaffiliated’ while failing to mention that every other Christian group reported in the poll is more likely to be well-informed about global warming than his.]

We read the poll data differently, and if Bryan wants to play the comparison game, we’re happy to oblige. The editors offer some other facts about evangelical Christians. We think they shed some light on the subtext of this PEW poll.

For example, evangelical Christians are:

• the least likely of any religious group to attend university, and when they do
• they attend lower quality universities than their peers,
• have smaller vocabularies than their peers,
• are the least likely to be able to engage in ‘critical argumentation about issues in politics, history, ethics [and] sociology,’ and
• are more likely to eschew courses in literature, biology, chemistry and calculus.
  

In addition to having the lowest rates of university attendance, evangelical Christians:

• are more likely to have anti-Mormon attitudes than other religious sects,
• are more likely to avoid habitually ‘African Americans and other minorities,’
• are more likely to ‘hold substantial prejudices toward against ethnic, religious, and especially sexual minorities,’ and
• are the least likely to interact with people outside their churches.

Not only are they a touch provincial, but evangelical Christian teens:

• are more sexually active than their religious peers,
• experience higher rates of unplanned and premarital pregnancy,
• are more likely to engage in sexual risk behaviors when they begin their sexual careers, and
• are, rather sadly, the least likely group of Christians to anticipate that sex will be pleasurable.*
  

We’re not trying to bring down Bryan’s lofty flock, and we know there are always exceptions to statistics, but he initiated the comparison. And Bryan, while you may be proud that your evangelical peers don’t believe in global warming, we’ll maintain some skepticism about who’s more easily duped.

*Which simply begs the question of why they start having sex so early and often? Have modern evangelicals embraced some new form of self-flagellation?