By Michael Lipka, Pew Research Center.
Mormons are the most heavily Republican-leaning religious group in the U.S., while a pair of major historically black Protestant denominations – the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and the National Baptist Convention – are two of the most reliably Democratic groups, according to data from Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study.
Seven-in-ten U.S. Mormons identify with the Republican Party or say they lean toward the GOP, compared with 19% who identify as or lean Democratic – a difference of 51 percentage points. That’s the biggest gap in favor of the GOP out of 30 religious groups we analyzed, which include Protestant denominations, other religious groups and three categories of people who are religiously unaffiliated.
At the other end of the spectrum, an overwhelming majority of members of the AME Church (92%) identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while just 4% say they favor the Republican Party (an 88-point gap). Similarly, 87% of members of the National Baptist Convention and 75% of members of the Church of God in Christ (another historically black denomination) identify as Democrats.
2 Comments. Leave new
Interesting that PCUSA is almost evenly split between the two parties. The engagement of leadership at the political level is always in support of the Democrat Party or to its left. I cannot help but believe that the denomination has been co-opted by those who seek to use its name and resources to further a partisan political agenda. If leadership cared about diversity, it would ensure that all political viewpoints were considered and respected. This is what happens, however, when leadership is accountable to no one.
Consider it a reality check against all the negative propaganda you have been hearing. For all the bad press it gets in the Layman, and with all the “conservative” churches taking themselves out of its genetic pool, the cold hard fact is, the PCUSA is still more to the right than the average American household, and the Mormons are more representative of the Layman in their Politics than Nazarenes. What a reality check!