Analysis: Views on war not based on faith

WASHINGTON, March 20 (UPI) -- Two surveys -- one on faith and the war in Iraq, the other on America's shifting belief patterns -- may be inviting ostensibly contradictory conclusions.

On the one hand, a poll conducted by the Barna Research Group shows that the once self-centered Baby Busters -- the country's second-largest generation ever -- turn increasingly to organized religion and accept the tenets of Christian orthodoxy.

On the other hand, the Pew Research Center reports that most churchgoers, among whom these neo-orthodox "Busters" are doubtless the largest segment, do not allow their views on the war to be shaped by their ministers, denominations, or indeed their own religious convictions.

This strikes one as heartening news to dialectical theologians, who distinguish clearly between the secular and spiritual realms. Seen from their perspective, the Pew results do not conflict with the Barna findings at all.

They simply point to a growing theological sophistication among young adults born between 1965 and 1983, whose most educated specimen are now returning in large numbers to confessional, or orthodox, congregations of the mainline churches, especially in New York City, as United Press International reported Dec. 16.

This sophistication becomes even more evident when one contrasts the Pew results concerning the war with those pertaining to moral issues that have clear biblical connotations, same-sex unions and abortion, for instance.

Consider:

-- Some 57 percent of a representative group of church-going Americans questioned by Pew said their clergy had preached about the prospect of war. However, only 21 percent reported that their minister had taken a position on this issue. Yet a mere 10 percent cited their religious beliefs as the strongest influence on their thinking about the war -- positive or negative. Most influential were the media (41 percent).

-- But when it comes to moral topics, the press matters little, while faith matters a lot. Forty percent of the respondents based their opinions about homosexual unions on their faith, while just 9 percent paid much attention to the media in this matter. On abortion, the ratio between the influence of religious beliefs and journalism is 28:7.

One might wonder why a priest or pastor bothers to preach for or against the war, since nobody seems to be paying any attention. Seven percent of the respondents said they had heard their minister speak in favor of the war; by and large this occurred in white evangelical congregations belonging to denominations towing a similar line.

Fourteen percent heard pastors speak against the war -- chiefly in white Catholic and African-American churches. There may be a connection between these results and the Barna findings that U.S. Catholics are becoming theologically more liberal. This becomes manifest in their views on such issues as God's omniscience or lack thereof, on the nature of Christ (sinless or not?) and Satan (a real person or just a symbol of evil?).

Remarkably, 34 percent of the Americans questioned by Pew said their ministers had mentioned the impending war without taking a position. One assumes they mentioned the conflict in a traditional Christian context, for example by praying for their commander-in-chief and their soldiers in the field, without introducing political convictions into the spiritual realm.

At any rate, whatever they might hear from the pulpit -- 77 percent of the public believe that, in general, war is sometimes justified. And regardless of the ideological differences between mainline Protestant, Catholic and evangelical clerics -- their respective congregants agree with each other on matters of war.

Of the Evangelicals, only 15 percent say it is never morally justified. Among the non-Hispanic Catholics, 16 percent share this view. And of the mainline Protestants, 18 percent agree. In other words, even if most participants of anti-war forums organized by the World or National Councils of Churches sound as if Christianity and pacifism were synonymous terms, the people in the pews tell a different story.

They tell you that, contrary to all appearances, the entire Church has not been Quakerized.