{"id":5203,"date":"2011-08-02T12:18:49","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T16:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=5203"},"modified":"2011-08-01T20:52:25","modified_gmt":"2011-08-02T00:52:25","slug":"most-americans-believe-churches-valuable-to-their-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/most-americans-believe-churches-valuable-to-their-community","title":{"rendered":"Most Americans believe churches valuable to their community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0Most Americans believe churches play a positive role in communities, and even atheists and agnostics don&#8217;t view churches harshly.<\/p>\n<p>A Barna Group study released July 13 revealed a generally upbeat attitude among the public regarding how churches influence their areas. The study revealed that 78 percent of Americans believe the presence of a church has a &#8220;very&#8221; (53 percent) or &#8220;somewhat&#8221; positive (25 percent) effect on their communities, according to the <em>Christian Examiner.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Those with the most favorable views of churches are elders (ages 66-plus), married adults, residents of the South, women, Protestants, churchgoers, African-Americans and political conservatives,&#8221; the study said.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <em>Examiner<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Among the approximately one-fifth of Americans who disagree, 17 percent profess indifference toward the influence of churches, while one in 20 believe churches play an either very (2 percent) or somewhat (3 percent) negative role in communities, the study revealed. It noted those least likely to view churches positively include Mosaics (ages 18-27), men, never-married adults, atheists and agnostics, the unchurched, political liberals, those living in the West and Northwest, and those not registered to vote.<\/p>\n<p>While atheists and agnostics were the only key demographic group not to hold a mostly positive view of churches, Barna Group President David Kinnaman noted that only 14 percent of them viewed churches negatively.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianexaminer.com\/Articles\/Articles%20Aug11\/Art_Aug11_12.html\" target=\"_blank\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0Most Americans believe churches play a positive role in communities, and even atheists and agnostics don&#8217;t view churches harshly. A Barna Group study released July 13 revealed a generally upbeat attitude among the public regarding how churches influence their areas. The study revealed that 78 percent of Americans believe the presence of a church has&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,8],"tags":[987,1284,2204,2201],"class_list":["post-5203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","category-news","tag-atheists","tag-barna","tag-christian","tag-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Most Americans believe churches valuable to their community<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/most-americans-believe-churches-valuable-to-their-community\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Most Americans believe churches valuable to their community\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0Most Americans believe churches play a positive role in communities, and even atheists and agnostics don&#8217;t view churches harshly. A Barna Group study released July 13 revealed a generally upbeat attitude among the public regarding how churches influence their areas. The study revealed that 78 percent of Americans believe the presence of a church has&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/most-americans-believe-churches-valuable-to-their-community\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-08-02T16:18:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-08-02T00:52:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Most Americans believe churches valuable to their community","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/most-americans-believe-churches-valuable-to-their-community","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Most Americans believe churches valuable to their community","og_description":"\u00a0Most Americans believe churches play a positive role in communities, and even atheists and agnostics don&#8217;t view churches harshly. A Barna Group study released July 13 revealed a generally upbeat attitude among the public regarding how churches influence their areas. The study revealed that 78 percent of Americans believe the presence of a church has&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/most-americans-believe-churches-valuable-to-their-community","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-08-02T16:18:49+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-08-02T00:52:25+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/most-americans-believe-churches-valuable-to-their-community","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/most-americans-believe-churches-valuable-to-their-community","name":"Most Americans believe churches valuable to their community","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-08-02T16:18:49+00:00","dateModified":"2011-08-02T00:52:25+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/most-americans-believe-churches-valuable-to-their-community#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/most-americans-believe-churches-valuable-to-their-community"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/most-americans-believe-churches-valuable-to-their-community#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Most Americans believe churches valuable to their community"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5203"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5290,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5203\/revisions\/5290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}