More than 60 percent of Republicans want the United States of America declared a Christian nation: report

21 September 2022

A majority of Republican voters favor establishing a national religion in the United States of America, according to the results of a survey conducted by Politico and the University of Maryland that was published on Wednesday.

The poll contained two key questions.

The first asked respondents if they believed that the Constitution allows for an official state religion.

Forty-three percent of Republicans said yes and fifty-seven percent said no.

The second question was if those polled would "favor or oppose the United States officially declaring the United States to be a Christian nation?"

Sixty-one percent of Republicans said they would, while only thirty-nine percent said that they would not.

The First Amendment to the Constitution explicitly forbids such an action:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Politico nonetheless noted in its report that "appeals to Christian nationalism have a long tradition in American history, though they have usually operated on the fringes. But the increasingly mainstream appearance of this belief in GOP circles makes sense if you look at new public opinion surveys. Our new University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll suggests that declaring the United States a Christian nation is a message that could be broadly embraced by Republicans in the midterms and 2024 presidential race. But our findings also see limits to its appeal — and over the long-term, Christian nationalism could be a political loser."

It added that "much of the support for declaring the U.S. a Christian nation comes from Republicans who identify themselves as Evangelical or born-again Christians: Seventy-eight percent of this group support the move compared to 48 percent of other Republicans. Among Democrats, a slight majority of those identifying themselves as Evangelical or born-again Christians also backed such a declaration (52 percent), compared to just 8 percent of other Democrats."

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