During an election season that has made Christians more aware of racial divisions in the church, a new report from the Pew Forum underscores those divisions, identifying “Historically Black Churches” as one of the three main subsets of Protestant believers.  The rest of Protestant Christianity is separated into “Evangelical” and “Mainline,” an identification driven by theological differences.

The report represents the second half of a massive telephone survey conducted in the summer of 2007, among a representative group of 35,556 adults living in the continental US.  Previous studies absorbed the “Historically Black Church” sect, which constitutes about 7% of the 2007 survey respondents, into the division between Evangelical (26% of the whole) and Mainline (18%).  This report splits the Baptist, Methodist, Nondenominational and Pentecostal traditions by racial identity.

 Observing a comparison between the Historically Black and Evangelical churches, however, yields only the smallest of differences on the eight major issues identified by the Pew Forum.  On the item “Belief in God or Universal Spirit,” 90% of respondents in both churches responded that they “Believe in God: absolutely certain.”  The item “Literal Interpretation of Scripture” yielded another minimal difference: 59% of Evangelical Church respondents answered that Scripture is the “Word of literally true word for word,” compared to 62% of Historically Black Church respondents. 

However, this dogmatic similarity disappears in the political field.  Party affiliation begins the split, with Evangelical Churches showing 50% Republican, and Historically Black Churches showing 78% Democratic.  The only issue the two groups agree on is their “Views about government’s role in protecting morality,” for which both groups show about 50% answering “Government should do more to protect morality,” and just over 40% answering “Government is too involved in morality.”

The survey’s main finding focuses on the “non-dogmatic approach to faith” espoused by most Americans: “A strong majority of those who are affiliated with a religion, including majorities of nearly every religious tradition, do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation,” the Pew Forum noted.  The only groups showing a majority of respondents who declare their religion to be the only way to salvation are the Mormons (57%) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (80%). 

The report also “confirms the close link” between Americans’ religious beliefs and their social and political attitudes.  The report concludes that religion in America is “non-dogmatic, diverse and politically relevant.”  Apparently, it’s split not only by theological ideology, but by racial identification as well.

Pat Robertson has endorsed Rudy Giuliani, and the Pew Forum reports that he is not the only white evangelical Protestant to do so.

The Pew Forum conducted a survey to find out which candidates certain religious groups prefer. They surveyed Republicans and Democrats separately, dividing the data by the parties’ key religious constituents.

Giuliani garnered more support from white Catholics and white mainline Protestants than from white evangelicals, but 23% of white evangelicals still named him their top choice. Thanks to Catholics, who preferred him over the other candidates two-to-one, 32% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters supported Giuliani.

Fred Thompson got almost equal support from white evangelicals (24%), and John McCain got slightly less (19%). Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney (rated the most religious candidate in another Pew survey) divided the bulk of the remaining evangelical vote, with Huckabee scoring 10% and Romney pulling in 9%.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton won a plurality of the vote in all religious groups, making her the frontrunner with 44% of the vote. Religion and race divided Barack Obama and John Edwards voters, with Obama getting twice as many votes from black Protestants as white Catholics. Edwards got only 5% of the black Protestant vote and among white Catholics, did just a little better than Obama.

In another survey, the Pew Forum found that religion isn’t proving to be a “clear-cut positive” in the presidential election. Voters still give lip service to the American civil religion, with 69% saying it’s important for a president to have strong religious beliefs and 61% saying they’d be less likely to vote for an atheist. But voters view both frontrunners – Hillary Clinton and Giuliani – as the least religious of the candidates. They aren’t voting for the candidate they see as most religious – Mitt Romney, a Mormon.