Should pastors use church services to endorse their preferred political candidates? A large majority of people in the United States think this is unacceptable behavior.
Recently published results of a survey conducted by Nashville-based LifeWay Research showed that almost 8 in 10 Americans or 79 percent think it is inappropriate for their pastors to use the pulpit to recommend a politician.
While this is still a big number, this represents a drop in the number of U.S. residents who do not want to hear their pastors talk about politics in Church from a similar conducted in 2008, when 86 percent said political endorsements from pastors were inappropriate.
LifeWay Research Executive Director Scott McConnell gave a simple reason for this adverse reception towards political recommendations from pastors: Christians go to church to pray, not to talk about politics.
"Americans already argue about politics enough outside the church. They don't want pastors bringing those arguments into worship," McConnell said, as quoted by Religion News.
This negative attitude towards political endorsements done in church cuts across all Christian denominations, according to the LifeWay Research survey. Very few Roman Catholics (13 percent) and Protestants (20 percent) welcome pastors recommending certain politicians to the faithful.
Even for political endorsements from pastors outside church, Christians are also lukewarm. Less than half or 43 percent of those who participated in the survey think pastors should recommend politicians even while not performing their church duties.
In fact, Americans in general want their churches to be insulated from politics. Three-quarters of the survey respondents disagreed with the statement: "I believe it is appropriate for churches to publicly endorse candidates for public office."
Despite these figures, Americans do not think that pastors and churches who recommend politicians should be penalised. Only 42 percent of the respondents think churches that publicly endorse politicians should lose their tax exemption.
