TruthBook Religious News Blog

Sifting through the transcript of last week's Republican presidential debate, we came across this exchange between former Govs. Mitt Romney (Mass.) and Mike Huckabee (Ark.) about the role of religion in the public square.

Romney: "We have a separation of church and state. It's served us well in this country. This is a nation, after all, that wants a leader that's a person of faith, but we don't choose our leader based on which church they go to."

Huckabee: "I said, in general -- and I would say this tonight to any of us -- when a person says, 'My faith doesn't affect my decision- making,' I would say that the person is saying their faith is not significant to impact their decision process. I tell people up front, 'My faith does affect my decision process.' It explains me. No apology for that."

The candidates' comments got us thinking about how much or little the American public wants to hear about religion from their elected officials. Conventional wisdom says that most voters want a person of faith in the White House but are simultaneously wary of religion encroaching upon affairs of state.

Is that conventional wisdom right? Let's Parse the Polls!

First of all, it's important to set the backdrop on which the debate over how much religion we want in our public policy takes place. According to exit polling in 2004 and 2005, roughly nine in ten voters say they have a religious beleif system of some sort ("Protestant/other Christian" is by far the largest group), while 85 percent said they went to church at least a few times a year.

Looking at those numbers it's clear that the vast majority of Americans not only see themselves as religious but also seek out the communal setting of a church, synagogue, mosque, etc. at least a few times a year.

But, when it comes to whether religion should play a larger role in public life, people are far more divided.

In a January 2007 survey, Gallup asked people whether they would like to see "organized religion have more influence in this nation, less influence, or keep its influence as it is now." Twenty seven percent said they would like to see religion play a larger role, 32 percent said they'd prefer a smaller role and 39 percent said they would like to keep the status quo.

Those numbers are remarkably consistent with an April 2005 Washington Post/ABC News poll. In that survey, 27 percent said they preferred religion have "greater" influence in public life, 35 percent said "less" while 36 percent chose "the same."

Compare those numbers to a Gallup poll conducted in January 2001 -- at the start of the Bush Administration. In that poll 22 percent said they wanted less religion in the public sphere. In 2007, 32 percent said the same thing, a jump of ten percent in six years. Some have speculated that President Bush's willingness to talk publicly about his faith -- combined with his growing disapproval ratings -- may be responsible for the rise in the percentage of people who are put off by politics influenced by religion.

A May 2004 CBS News poll asked what worried people more: "Public officials who don't pay enough attention to religion and religious leaders or public officials who are too close to religion and religious leaders?"

Overalll 35 percent said they worried more about politicians not paying enough attention to religion, while 51 percent said they fretted about politicians paying too much attention. Isolate Republicans, however, and the numbers were nearly reversed with 53 percent saying politicians don't pay enough attention and 30 percent choosing the "too close" option. Compare that with just 25 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of Independents who wanted public officials to pay more attention to religion and religious leaders. The partisan gap is obvious.

While the American public is closely divided over the role religion should play in public life, there is a less of a chasm when it comes to several religion-related policy fights like prayer in school or displaying the Ten Commandments on government property.

An August 2005 Gallup poll showed 76 percent of the sample favored a constitutional amendment to allow voluntary prayer in schools, while just 23 percent opposed it. In that same survey 60 percent said that religion had "too little of a presence" in public schools while 27 percent said the amount of religion in schools was about right and 11 percent said it was too much.

The American public also tends to favor the display of the Ten Commandments on government property with 75 percent of a CNN/USA Today/Gallup sample in June 2005 saying the Supreme Court should allow that sort of display and just 23 percent saying it should not.

What to make of this raft of numbers? That we are a country divided -- sometimes even within ourselves -- when it comes to the proper role of religion in public life. On the one hand most Americans see themselves as a religious people; on the other, they remain generally wary about religion seeping into politics.

Because no obvious consensus exists, it's likely that the politicians running for president in 2008 will seek to find a balance between making clear to voters that they believe in a higher power while also making clear they won't be taking their marching orders from the church they attend.

It's a complicated position but reflects the divided mind most Americans have when it comes to religion's role in everday life.

The Fix owes a big debt of gratitude to The Washington Post polling team of Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta. As they so often do, the two provided essential help in making sense of all these numbers.

Labels: Americans, faith, Gallup, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, politics, religion, separation of church and state, Ten Commandments, voters