Among the findings, surprising and not so surprising, from the 35,000 respondents:
24% of respondents classified themselves as Catholic. Mainline Protestants were at 18.1%, while evangelical Protestants composed 26.3%, mostly Baptist. So that explains something about why evangelicals have been so influential in the past few elections.
In Catholic politics: 33% describe themselves as Republican or leaning Republican; 48% describe themselves as Democratic or leaning Democratic. Most describe themselves as "conservative" or "moderate". The other social and political views info is unsurprising perhaps, showing significant splits within the Catholic population on the issues of abortion laws and homosexuality.
Abortion remains a contentious issue in this population with 48% stating it should be legal in all or most cases; 27% legal in some cases; 18% illegal in all cases. I wish this stat had been around when I was still taking women's studies courses, as a few of my professors insisted that all Catholics and all Christians wanted to make all abortions illegal. I'd have loved to be able to prove their sweeping generalization wrong because it hides an important conflict within a population they'd like to overlook. Also, in self-defined conservative evangelical churches, only 25% of respondents believe abortion should be illegal in all cases. This reinforces other studies I've seen which indicate the vast majority of Americans would like to see strict regulations on abortion but not outlaw it completely. Not that this is an issue where simple majority-rule democracy should necessarily be the guiding moral standard, but I did find the data interesting because of the obvious distance between church leaders and believers on this issue.
Another interesting data point was the apparent Catholic commitment to environmental causes--60% of Catholics are in favor of stricter environmental regulations. Perhaps this shows we're taking our responsibilities as stewards of the earth more seriously these days.
Anyway, the site is easy to navigate and the stats aren't lost in pages and pages of prose, so if you're curious about religion in America, I can wholeheartedly recommend taking a look at the data.
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