Religious Affiliation, Attendance, and Support for "Pro-Family" Issues in the United States

Abstract

Denominational and attendance differences in attitudes toward a broad range of family issues are examined using NORC data for whites (N of about 11,000) for 11 polls conducted between 1972 and 1984. Findings are presented with and without controls for sex, age, income, education, and region. Protestant fundamentalists along with Baptists and Catholics were most conservative; Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians were moderates; and Episcopalians, Jews, and nones were most liberal. Approximate rank orders of the nine groups were consistent across family issues; however, no group was found to be consistently conservative, as the level of conservatism varied with the content of the issues. Attendance was found to be positively related to conservatism for all eight religious bodies (and unrelated for nones) with the degree of relationship varying directly with the degree of relative conservatism of the denominations.