A new study has revealed just how involved American Protestant Churches are with key issues affecting society and the Church, including politics, personal finances, and evangelism.
Two studies were conducted for Facts & Trends Magazine by US-based Ellison Research, with details about the political involvement of churches to be published in the upcoming September/October edition of the magazine.One study is a representative sample of 802 Protestant church ministers nationwide, and the other is a companion survey of 1,184 adults who attend Protestant churches at least once a month.
Facts & Trends is a publication released bimonthly by LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The studies asked each group how involved their church is in a number of issues.
"Involved" includes the focus placed on each topic through church programmes, sermon topics, funding, financial support, Sunday school or Bible study topics, and prayer groups.
The issues included local, domestic, and overseas evangelism and outreach, study of the Bible, personal morality, social justice, personal finances, social and moral issues, the environment, and local and national politics.
However, out of 11 issues, the only two in which a majority of ministers say their church is very involved are study of the Bible and personal morality (defined as helping individuals live according to God's plan).
Seventy-six per cent of all clergy believe their church is very involved in the study of the Bible, 21 per cent are somewhat involved, and 3 per cent are not very involved. Less than 1 per cent say their church actively avoids involvement in study of the Bible.
For personal morality, 62 per cent of all clergy say their church is very involved, 30 per cent somewhat involved, and 7 per cent not very involved, while 1 per cent actively avoid this issue.Other issues have much lower levels of involvement. Evangelism and outreach are most likely to take place at either the local level or the international level, with less involvement in domestic outreach outside the local area.
41 per cent of all clergy say their church is very involved in overseas evangelism or missions and 37 per cent are very involved in local evangelism or missions, compared to only 23 percent that are very involved with domestic evangelism or missions.
While more than six out of 10 ministers felt their church was very involved in personal morality issues, just 28 per cent are very involved in personal finance issues (such as stewardship, giving, or fostering a biblical view of finances).
