{"id":2426,"date":"2011-01-20T14:45:58","date_gmt":"2011-01-20T14:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2011\/01\/americans-give-poor-marks-to-t.php"},"modified":"2011-01-20T14:45:58","modified_gmt":"2011-01-20T14:45:58","slug":"americans-give-poor-marks-to-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/americans-give-poor-marks-to-t","title":{"rendered":"Americans Give Poor Marks to the State of Our Moral Union"},"content":{"rendered":"

By NICOLE NEROULIAS<\/strong>
\nc. 2011 Religion News Service<\/em>
\n(RNS) As President Obama prepares to assess the state of the union, three out of four Americans grade the country’s moral climate at a “C” or below, according to a new poll released on Thursday (Jan. 20).
\nThe PRRI\/RNS Religion News Poll found that Americans cite partisan noise from cable, talk radio, blogs and the Tea Party as the main stumbling blocks to working across partisan lines.
\nAt the same time, two-thirds of Americans say the nation’s harsh political rhetoric bears little or no responsibility for the shooting spree in Tucson, Ariz., that killed six and left a Democratic congresswoman gravely injured.
\nAnd despite popular assumptions that faith can fuel bitter polarization between Americans, just one in seven respondents say religious leaders from the left or right are major obstacle to changing the tone in Washington.
\n“People are distinguishing between the political extremes and religious extremes, and they see the problem with politics, not necessarily with religion,” said James Calvin Davis, religion professor at Middlebury College and author of In Defense of Civility: How Religion Can Unite America on Seven Moral Issues that Divide Us<\/em>.
\nThe poll was conducted by Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service.
\nAccording to the poll, white evangelicals (who generally identify with the GOP) fault liberal bloggers and cable commentators, while minority Christians (who tend to favor Democrats) blame the Tea Party and conservative talk radio.
\nPeople tend to see themselves and others like them — politically, religiously or otherwise — as part of the solution, not part of the problem, Davis said.
\nIn contrast, white mainline Protestants rate both liberal bloggers and the Tea Party as equally obstructive to bipartisanship and “changing the tone in Washington.”
\nOther findings include:<\/p>\n