{"id":13259,"date":"2025-06-12T11:58:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T15:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=13259"},"modified":"2025-06-12T11:58:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T15:58:20","slug":"only-a-quarter-of-catholic-priests-and-mainline-pastors-believe-in-an-historical-adam-and-eve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2025\/06\/only-a-quarter-of-catholic-priests-and-mainline-pastors-believe-in-an-historical-adam-and-eve.html","title":{"rendered":"Only a Quarter of Catholic Priests and Mainline Pastors Believe in an Historical Adam and Eve"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A recent analysis by Ryan Burge on his Substack Graphs About Religion<\/a> reveals that only one in four mainline Protestant and Catholic priests believe that Adam and Eve actually existed. Mainline Protestant refers to the more liberal branch of Protestantism. Burge ran an analysis of what types of things pastors and priests believe in, such as Adam and Eve were real people, Hell, Astrology, Jesus\u2019s bodily resurrection, reincarnation, and physical healing. Astrology got the least amount of belief, with only 2% of Catholic and mainline Protestant pastors putting any real weight behind it. Jesus\u2019s bodily resurrection had the greatest number of believers, with 99% of evangelical pastors believing in it and 92% of Catholic priests. 75% of mainline Protestant pastors believed in the actual physical resurrection of Jesus\u2019s body. Only 45% of mainline Protestants believed in Hell while 93% of evangelicals did.<\/p>\n

Burge also ran an analysis of several beliefs about the Bible such as: \u201cThe Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word,\u201d \u201cthe Bible is the inspired word of God, without errors. Some parts are meant to be symbolic, but all of it applies today,\u201d and lastly, \u201cthe Bible is the inspired word of God that still speaks to us today, but not all of it is historically accurate, and some parts reflect the culture in which it was written and do not apply today.\u201d 70% believed it is the inspired, inerrant word of God while only 26% of mainline Protestants believed so. The majority of mainline Protestants (69%) believed the third option.<\/p>\n

Regarding how strongly the clergy felt about their faith, Burge analyzed the response to the question \u201cMy religion would be the best one for all people no matter their background or current religion.\u201d 93% of evangelicals agreed with the statement while only 58% Catholic, and 51% mainline. In another analysis, Burge looked at the statement \u201cIt is important for me to try to persuade people in other religions to accept my religion instead of their own.\u201d 82% of evangelicals agreed while only 32% of Catholics and mainline did. Burge stated such differences pointed to the higher certainty evangelical faith leaders had in their faith. \u201cI think this graph and the prior one does an excellent job of illustrating how distinct evangelicalism is even inside American Christianity. It\u2019s certainly a faith tradition that seems much more certain of its beliefs than leaders in other faith groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent analysis by Ryan Burge on his Substack Graphs About Religion reveals that only one in four mainline Protestant and Catholic priests believe that Adam and Eve actually existed. Mainline Protestant refers to the more liberal branch of Protestantism. Burge ran an analysis of what types of things pastors and priests believe in, such…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":13262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nOnly a Quarter of Catholic Priests and Mainline Pastors Believe in an Historical Adam and Eve<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Only 1 in 4 mainline Protestant & Catholic clergy believe Adam and Eve were real, new analysis reveals deep divides across traditions.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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