The Pew poll shows that 45% of Americans say the U.S. should be a Christian nation.

The report, which came out on the 27th of October, 2022, asserts that nearly half of Americans believe the nation should be a Christian nation since it was founded by Christian men and on the Christian faith.

The findings, which were made public on October 27th, come at a time when Christian nationalism is a hot topic in the midterm election campaigns, with some extremists and even members of Congress, like Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, identifying with the term while others, like Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert and Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, openly opposing the separation of church and state.

The Pew Research Centre further says, “Overall, six in 10 US adults – including nearly seven in 10 Christians – say they believe the founders ‘originally intended’ for the US to be a Christian nation,” the Pew survey adds that, “And 45 per cent of US adults – including about six in 10 Christians – say they think the country should be a Christian nation. A third say the US ‘is now’ a Christian nation.”

Last year in March 2021, a report was submitted about a similar survey that was conducted which shows 28% of Americans desired that the nation be declared as a Christian nation while 52% said the federal government “should never declare any particular religion as the official religion of the United States.”

The Pew research centre further gathered that “The new survey finds that nearly eight-in-ten people who say the U.S should be a Christian nation also say the Bible should have at least some influence on U.S laws, including slightly more than half (54%) who say that when the Bible conflicts with the will of the people, the Bible should prevail.”

The Religion News Service (RNS) gave the breakdown of responses from different groups and denominations on this poll.

“The outsized presence of white evangelicals in the GOP may play a role. In Pew’s survey, white evangelicals were the faith group most likely to say America should be a Christian nation (81%). But they were followed by Black Protestants (65%), a heavily Democratic group. White nonevangelical Protestants were more split, with 54% agreeing the U.S. should be a Christian nation.”

RNS further states that “Catholics were the only major Christian group where a majority did not express support of the idea (47%) of a Christian nation, though they were split along racial lines: Most white Catholics (56%) agreed America should be a Christian nation, while Hispanic Catholics were the least likely of any Christian group to say the same (36%).

Few Jewish (16%) or religiously unaffiliated Americans (17%) thought the U.S should be a Christian nation, followed by an even smaller subset of atheists and agnostics (7%).”

Christian nationalism has been on the rise in recent times. In other nations as well, such as Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro declared his nation to be a “Christian country.”

We don’t know what the future holds for America, but we shall keep our fingers crossed.

Maxwell Orah

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