Poll on Same-Sex Marriage Skewed by Self-Identified 'Evangelicals'
by Fred Jackson
April 19, 2004
(AgapePress) - Some pro-family leaders are questioning the credibility of a recent poll that indicated many Evangelicals do not support a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage. The problem appears to be the definition of who's an "Evangelical."The poll was conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research in recent weeks for Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and U.S. News & World Report. The results of the poll, which were widely publicized, indicated that by a margin of 52 to 41 percent, Evangelicals prefer to leave the issue of same-sex marriage up to the states rather than amend the U.S. Constitution. (See Related Story)
The fact that a New York Times poll in March said 59 percent of the general population supports a Federal Marriage Amendment caused many to question the polling group's definition of "Evangelical."
Russell Moore, a senior officials at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says the survey is off target because the authors assumed self-professing Evangelicals are true Evangelicals. He tells Baptist Press that incredibly, 45 percent of those so-called Evangelicals in the survey disagreed with the statement that "only born-again Christians go to heaven."
Moore says what this means is that there is a large segment of people who call themselves Evangelicals who do not believe in the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation. And he says that means that if the Church is to reclaim the true meaning of "evangelical," it must reach the next generation with biblical discipleship and biblical preaching.
