{"id":947,"date":"2008-09-19T17:39:38","date_gmt":"2008-09-19T17:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/09\/survey-four-in-10-americans-th.php"},"modified":"2008-09-19T17:39:38","modified_gmt":"2008-09-19T17:39:38","slug":"survey-four-in-10-americans-th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/survey-four-in-10-americans-th","title":{"rendered":"Survey: Four in 10 Americans Think Clergy Should Endorse Candidates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Adelle M. Banks<br \/>\nReligion News Service<\/strong><br \/>\n(RNS) Four in 10 Americans believe that religious leaders should be permitted to endorse political candidates from the pulpit without risking their organization&#8217;s tax-exempt status, a new survey by the First Amendment Center shows.<br \/>\nTwenty-two percent of respondents &#8220;strongly&#8221; agreed and 18 percent &#8220;mildly&#8221; agreed that religious leaders should be able to make such endorsements, which are currently prohibited by IRS regulations.<br \/>\nIn comparison, 39 percent strongly disagreed, 15 percent mildly disagreed and 6 percent didn&#8217;t know or refused to answer.<br \/>\nThe finding was based on a new question in the Washington-based center&#8217;s annual &#8220;State of the First Amendment&#8221; national survey.<br \/>\nWhen asked to name specific rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, just 15 percent mentioned religion, the lowest percentage to recall that topic since 2000.<br \/>\nAsked if Americans have too much or too little religious freedom, 6 percent said they had too much, 28 percent said they had too little and 62 percent said they had about the right amount.<br \/>\nFifty-five percent strongly or mildly agreed that people should be permitted to say things in public that could be offensive to religious groups. Forty-two percent mildly or strongly disagreed.<br \/>\nAsked about freedom of worship, 54 percent said the concept applies to all religious groups regardless of how extreme their beliefs may be.<br \/>\nIn comparison, 29 percent said it was never meant to apply to religious groups that the majority of people consider to be extreme.<br \/>\nThe national telephone survey of 1,005 respondents was conducted this summer has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2008 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service (RNS) Four in 10 Americans believe that religious leaders should be permitted to endorse political candidates from the pulpit without risking their organization&#8217;s tax-exempt status, a new survey by the First Amendment Center shows. Twenty-two percent of respondents &#8220;strongly&#8221; agreed and 18 percent &#8220;mildly&#8221; agreed that religious leaders&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Survey: Four in 10 Americans Think Clergy Should Endorse Candidates<\/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\/2008\/09\/survey-four-in-10-americans-th\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Survey: Four in 10 Americans Think Clergy Should Endorse Candidates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service (RNS) Four in 10 Americans believe that religious leaders should be permitted to endorse political candidates from the pulpit without risking their organization&#8217;s tax-exempt status, a new survey by the First Amendment Center shows. Twenty-two percent of respondents &#8220;strongly&#8221; agreed and 18 percent &#8220;mildly&#8221; agreed that religious leaders&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/survey-four-in-10-americans-th\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-09-19T17:39:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Survey: Four in 10 Americans Think Clergy Should Endorse Candidates","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\/2008\/09\/survey-four-in-10-americans-th","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Survey: Four in 10 Americans Think Clergy Should Endorse Candidates","og_description":"By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service (RNS) Four in 10 Americans believe that religious leaders should be permitted to endorse political candidates from the pulpit without risking their organization&#8217;s tax-exempt status, a new survey by the First Amendment Center shows. Twenty-two percent of respondents &#8220;strongly&#8221; agreed and 18 percent &#8220;mildly&#8221; agreed that religious leaders&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/survey-four-in-10-americans-th","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-09-19T17:39:38+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/survey-four-in-10-americans-th","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/survey-four-in-10-americans-th","name":"Survey: Four in 10 Americans Think Clergy Should Endorse Candidates","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-09-19T17:39:38+00:00","dateModified":"2008-09-19T17:39:38+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/survey-four-in-10-americans-th#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/survey-four-in-10-americans-th"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/survey-four-in-10-americans-th#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Survey: Four in 10 Americans Think Clergy Should Endorse Candidates"}]},{"@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":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","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\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}