Why evangelicals are less political than you think

Photo from Sxc.hu by Terri Heisele

Everybody knows that Evangelicals are hyper-political whose church services are little more than Republican rallies, except that's not true -- at all. According to a recent polling data, Evangelicals were one of the religious groups least likely to have heard a political sermon in the past month.

They were behind Jews, Black Protestants, Catholics, and Mainline Protestants in terms of the percentage of who heard a sermon that was specifically political in nature or dealt with social issues. The only group that heard political sermons less - Mormons. Here are the exact numbers.

• Jewish: 41.4%
• Non-affiliated: 30.5%
• Black Protestant: 29.6%
• Catholic: 20.7%
• Mainline Protestant: 16%
• Evangelical: 13.7%
• Mormons: 2%

Goes against the conventional wisdom doesn't it?

Often the media portrays Evangelicals, and recently Mormons, as concerned almost entirely with politics and social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. This ignores the actual data that tells a different story and seems to indicate that the concern of many in the media is not that Evangelicals are political per se, but that Evangelicals are politically different from the media. While Jewish voters, Black and Mainline Protestants are often in more agreement with the political leanings of the media.

The next time you hear someone complaining about the political nature of Evangelicals, ask them if they do the same for the other groups that hear political sermons much more often.