Washington – Six in 10 Americans think the U.S. is “uniquely blessed” by God, but a higher percentage — almost eight in 10 — think the country sometimes does more harm than good when it relates to the rest of the world, according to a new study on religion and America’s role in the world.
Overall, the study commissioned by the PBS program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly and the United Nations Foundation found that Americans, including majorities of religiously involved citizens, think the country should be involved on the world scene.
But researchers found that 79 percent of Americans feel that U.S. involvement abroad sometimes does more harm than good, and 44 percent feel that view strongly.
“I think it’s a fascinating look at our combination of idealism and realism,” said Bob Abernethy, host of the weekly television show. “We think our blessings from God require us to be active around the world but we also acknowledge that we sometimes do more harm than good.”
Almost seven in 10 (68 percent) of people who attend services at least weekly said the country has a moral obligation to take part in world affairs, compared with 54 percent of less frequent attenders.
Researchers found that people who strongly believe that America is blessed by God and should set an example as a “Christian nation” are also more likely to see the country’s worldwide involvement as a moral obligation.
Just more than two-thirds (67 percent) of those with strong beliefs about God’s unique blessing on America said the U.S. has a moral obligation to be a leader in world affairs, as did 72 percent of those who thought the U.S. should set a Christian example. In comparison, a smaller percentage — 60 percent — of Americans overall thought the country had such a moral obligation.
Sixty-one percent of respondents said they believed God has uniquely blessed America.
Michael Cromartie, vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said Americans’ simultaneous belief in God’s blessing on the U.S. and criticism of its global engagement reflect the challenges of addressing world problems, such as genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.
“The world is complicated,” he said. “Foreign policy is deeply complex. Foreign countries are deeply complex. Foreign cultures are deeply complex. …. These things are not fixed quickly.”
Despite an overall religious consensus on committing to international affairs, researchers found differences over some foreign policy issues.
For example, Americans divide along religious lines about the so-called Mexico City policy that prohibits federal funding for international organizations that might offer abortions. Slightly more than 50 percent of evangelical Christians, traditional Catholics and weekly churchgoers support that policy. Young evangelical Christians are more strongly supportive, with 69 percent in favor, while 58 percent of those not affiliated with a particular religion oppose it.
Global warming is another example of religious differences on foreign policy. While more than 80 percent of non-Christians, mainline Protestants and liberal Catholics favored an international agreement to reduce global warming, a smaller percentage, 70 percent, of evangelicals favored such an agreement.
Younger evangelicals, those 18-29, were more likely than their elders to support an international agreement to stop global warming, with 79 percent in favor compared to 70 percent of older evangelicals.
The survey was conducted by Washington-based Greenberg Quinlan Rosner with a total of 1,400 adults, including an oversample of 400 evangelical Christians. One thousand adults were interviewed by phone.
One quarter of the evangelical oversample was interviewed by phone and the rest were surveyed through a nationally representative Internet panel. The overall survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
By Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service
Copyright 2008 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
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posted October 24, 2008 at 12:09 am
This is an interesting and thought-provoking article. It seems many of us are developing the ability to think objectively about complex issues. After some recent elections that’s very encouraging.
It’s not surprising people think we are blessed. I expect a lot of Indians and slaves thought our ancestors were real jerks. Then WWII set Europe way back while we developed our industry. And we made a LOT of money polluting the air and water before all but the smartest realized that was bad. China and India are doing so but a lot of people realize how bad it is now.
And we profited governmentally from some very wise people who invented a pretty good governing system and kept religion out of government. And our early citizens mostly came from a sophisticated country.
We’ve been lucky and we’ve seized a lot of opportunities and we’ve done some very good things and a lot more bad things than most people surely realize, such as our history in Latin America. But that’s likely true of most countries to lesser or greater degree. We are still young enough to think we’re real special.
posted October 24, 2008 at 9:53 am
Interesting article in the Huffington Post. Back in 1985 then Congressman John McCain and Cindy traveled to Chile and visited with Chile’s military ruler, General Augusto Pinochet,” one of the world’s most notorious violators of human rights credited with killing more than 3,000 civilians and jailing tens of thousands of others.” While there, unlike various other visiting US congress people, such as Edward Kennedy who spoke out in favor of freedom for Chileans, there’s no record of McCain doing so and he’s not talking about it now. But while there he and Cindy did stay at the farm of a rich friend of Pinochet’s government where they fished and rode horses.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-dinges/mccain-meets-a-bloody-dic_b_137422.html
The Chilean ambassador to the US at the time described McCain as “one of the conservative congressmen who is closest to our embassy.” So McCain is clearly ready for one part of the presidency, talking friendly to bloody dictators.
posted October 24, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Yes, nnmns, that was/is an interesting article. We, as a country, have made mistakes and we are very young as countries go. Visits to other countries (England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland for me) prove that immediately when you’re there, and visit the sites that have been around many, many, many more years than any over here.
The last 8 years there have been many actions by our soon to be former “leader” (joke) that has caused much loss of respect for the USA. Hopefully when the next administration comes in…our immage will start to improve. That would be with Obama, of course. He will walking into a hornet’s nest of problems!
posted October 24, 2008 at 12:51 pm
In the article it says 67% of Americans think that America was uniquely blessed by God. I don’t know what they are expressing, but I do know that my Swedish Lutheran immigrant father did not teach me that the country he chose to come to as a teen-ager was anymore blessed by God than Sweden where he was born. America benefitted by all the different people from the countries they came from. They knew what they didn’t like in them and looked for a better life in a new country starting. God does not favor any one country, if we have lives that appear to be better to people in other countries it is because of our Founders who set up our Constitution, and the hard work of the people who lived here and continue to live here.
posted October 25, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Henrietta, I tend to agree with you, when you said:” God does not favor any country, if we have lives that appear to be better to people in other countries it is because of our Founders who set up our Constitution and the hard work of the people who lived here and continue to live here.”
Now if we an just get the right person in office on Jan.20, and get this country back to it’s original greatness. Will be a hard task.