A Books and Culture piece looks at the stats:

During the past four years a growing number of political analysts have connected the emerging "Bush Doctrine" in foreign policy to the influence of evangelical Protestants. For example, one recent review claimed that

The influence of Christian evangelicals now extends to many essential matters of foreign policy, quite apart from the Middle East. Dogmatic, unilateralist, and radically nationalistic, this influence ignores international law and is particularly hostile to international organizations.1

Indeed, it is hard to find a critique of administration foreign policy in publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, the Atlantic, or the New York Times without a similar complaint.

Such assertions arise in part because of perceptions that conservative evangelicals are involved in virtually every aspect of American politics, from campaigning for George W. Bush in the 2004 election to mounting the recent "Justice Sunday" rally backing the president’s judicial nominees. What is missing, however, is any systematic evidence that evangelicals—or other religious communities for that matter—actually support or oppose the Bush Doctrine.

In fact, such assertions fly in the face of much of the existing research. Scholars have found little evidence that religion is a major factor shaping public attitudes toward foreign policy. True, a few researchers (including the authors) have shown that religion is a powerful predictor of attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and once contributed to anti-communist sentiment, probably stiffening America’s posture toward the former USSR.2 But that was about it. Has the situation really changed? Is religion now influencing the public’s understanding of the United States’ role in the world?

And then in other "Let’s look at the numbers instead of the assumptions" news, is the LDS church really the fastest-growing church? Not so. And it has terrible retention rates, too:

Retaining members: Stewart says Mormons need to be aware of such statistics to be more effective missionaries. To that end, he is publishing his research, along with a description of what he calls "tested principles to improve growth and retention," in a forthcoming book, The Law of the Harvest: Practical Principles of Effective Missionary Work.
    "It is a matter of grave concern that the areas with the most rapid numerical membership increase, Latin America and the Philippines, are also the areas with extremely low convert retention," says Stewart, a California physician. "Many other groups, including the Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, have consistently achieved excellent convert retention rates in those cultures and societies. Latter-day Saints lose 70 to 80 percent of their converts, while Adventists retain 70 to 80 percent of theirs."

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