{"id":669,"date":"2014-05-23T08:33:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T08:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/05\/the-myth-of-a-war-on-religion.html"},"modified":"2014-05-23T08:33:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T08:33:00","slug":"the-myth-of-a-war-on-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/05\/the-myth-of-a-war-on-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"The Myth of a ‘War on Religion’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Last week, the Public Religion Research Institute\u00a0published a study<\/a>\u00a0showing that Americans want their fellow citizens to think they are more religiously observant than they really are. When asked by a live human being on the telephone how often they attend religious services, respondents were more likely to say they attend frequently. When filling out a self-administered online survey, by contrast, they were more likely to admit that they do not.<\/span><\/div>\n
Surprising? Not terribly. But this may be: Liberals were more likely to exaggerate their religious attendance than conservatives. Liberals attend services less frequently than conservatives do. Yet their desire to be thought more religiously observant than they actually are is greater.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Why does this matter? Because it\u2019s more evidence that the claim that liberals are waging a \u201cwar on religion\u201d is absurd. You can hardly listen to a GOP presidential hopeful or flip on Fox News without hearing the charge. In 2012, Rick Perry\u00a0promised that if elected<\/a>\u00a0he\u2019d \u201cend Obama\u2019s war on religion.\u201d Bobby Jindal\u00a0recently warned<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cthe American people, whether they know it or not, are mired in a silent war\u201d against \u201ca group of like-minded [liberal] elites, determined to transform the country from a land sustained by faith into a land where faith is silenced, privatized, and circumscribed.\u201d Ann Coulter\u00a0explains<\/a>, \u201cLiberals hate religion because politics is a religion substitute for liberals and they can\u2019t stand the competition.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Notice the claim. It\u2019s not merely that liberals are not religious themselves. It\u2019s that they disdain people who are, and this disdain creates a cultural stigma (and a legal barrier) to religious observance. \u201cBigotry against evangelical Christians is the last acceptable form of bigotry in the country,\u201d Ralph Reed\u00a0said recently<\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
The truth is almost exactly the reverse.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, the Public Religion Research Institute\u00a0published a study\u00a0showing that Americans want their fellow citizens to think they are more religiously observant than they really are. When asked by a live human being on the telephone how often they attend religious services, respondents were more likely to say they attend frequently. When filling out a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Myth of a 'War on Religion'<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last week, the Public Religion Research Institute published a study showing that Americans want their fellow citizens to think they are more\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/05\/the-myth-of-a-war-on-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Myth of a 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