Half of Americans See Decreased Evangelical Influence under Biden: Pew Research
According to a new Pew Research Center survey, half of American adults believe that evangelical Christians will lose influence in Washington D.C. under President Joe Biden.
The survey, which was conducted Jan. 8-12, 2021, featured a representative sample of 5,360 adults who took an online survey.
While 50 percent say that evangelicals, in general, will lose influence, only nine percent think evangelical Christians will gain influence under the Biden administration. Meanwhile, 39 say that they will remain unaffected.
The findings display a reversal from what Americans said four years ago at the start of Donald’s Trump presidency, with 52 percent saying that conservative Christians were likely to gain influence.
The 2021 survey also found that nearly three-quarters (72 percent) believe that specifically White evangelicals will have decreased influence in Washington. Further, 61 percent say non-evangelical White Protestants will lose influence. In both instances, a mere 5 percent see evangelicals gaining influence.
Amongst Black Protestants and Black Americans, however, they elicit a mixed reaction as to the influence of evangelical Christians at the nation’s capital with 27 percent saying Black Protestants would gain influence and 27 percent saying they would lose influence.
Another question in the survey asked Americans whether they believe “people like yourself” will gain or lose influence under Biden.
For instance, more than half of Black Protestants (55 percent) say people like them will increase in influence during Biden’s presidency while four percent see a diminished influence. Fifty-five percent of Black evangelicals also see increased influence, while 5 percent see it declining.
On the other hand, Nearly two-thirds of White evangelical Protestants see people like them losing influence in DC (63 percent) while nine percent see an increased influence.
White Protestants not identified as evangelicals also see people like them having less of an impact (47 percent) whereas 14 percent anticipate more influence in Washington.
Regarding U.S Catholics, they are more likely to say they people like them will lose influence (34 percent) instead of gaining it (25 percent), under Biden who is the second president after John F. Kennedy to be a professing Catholic.
Pew Research also found differing results from Catholics of different ethnicities with 46 percent of White Catholics seeing a loss of influence for people like them, while 38 percent of Hispanic Catholics expect to see people like them garner influence.
Photo courtesy: Vlad Tchompalov/Unsplash
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer. Visit his blog Blessed Are The Forgiven.
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