And what happens when the future vision is different?

No, this is not JUST an ad for our good friend Pat Hynes from AnkleBitingPundits (and co-host of Meet The New Press).  But it works (read it, fact filled, and points out the importance of a rather large group that the Left both ridicules and is trying to court at the same time – a Skip recommendation!)

Rather, it is to point out that this group, like it or not, is going to play a major role in the upcoming election.  And over at CSNSNews, they are reporting that part of the Religious Right, the Evangelicals (and yes, as a born again Christian, I count myself within that group), as a group  do view things differently from the American population at large. 

This has major ramifications for the upcoming elections. 

Evangelical Christians’ priorities for change in government and society deviate from average Americans’ priorities more than any other subgroup, according to a study released this week by the Barna Group, a Christian research firm.

The study asked respondents to rank the importance of 11 different issues, including overall care and resources devoted to children, the quality of public school education, national security, poverty, the state of marriage and families, the spiritual state of the country and the environment.

Interest piqued, I decided  to look at the report at the report author, The Barna Group (which I highly suggest going over and reading it – it isn’t all that long).  What it shows is that to attract Evangelicals (and like minded people), politicians and leaders are going to have to do a better job of figuring out what this group actually believes in, in order to attract their support.

And those issues are not ones we now see playing in the popular political culture.

The survey Question:

Think about how you would like the United States to change within the next 10 years. If you had the ability to make the decisions, tell me how important each of the changes I describe would be to you: absolutely necessary, somewhat important, not too important, or a waste of resources. 

The Results: after the jump 

[snip]

How Evangelicals View the Future

Evangelicals prioritized the eleven issues studied somewhat differently than did other people. The three highest priorities among evangelicals were enhancing the health of Christian churches, upgrading the state of marriage and families, and improving the spiritual condition of the U.S. In each case, evangelicals were more than 30 percentage points more likely than other adults to identify each of those issues as an absolutely necessary focus for the immediate future. They were also 29 points above the national norm in listing improvements in the moral content of mass entertainment as a priority.

In a different way, evangelicals stood out regarding their views on the environment. Only 35% said that protecting the environment should be a top priority – the lowest score recorded among any of the 80 subgroups studied. The national average was 60%. Oddly, evangelicals were also 20 percentage points below the national norm in saying that improving the overall care and resources devoted to children is an absolute necessity. Again, that placed evangelicals at the lowest end of the continuum in terms of support for that idea. Evangelicals were also 12 percentage points below the national average regarding the necessity of improving the quality of public school education and enhancing the lives of the poor and disadvantaged. That outcome also positioned evangelicals as the group least likely to portray those two issues as top priorities for the nation.

Overall, evangelical Christians stood out as the segment that holds views that are most dissimilar from the typical perspectives of Americans. They were at least 10 percentage points different from the national average in relation to eight of the eleven issues tested. In comparison, that same level of differentiation was discovered among atheists and agnostics regarding seven of the eleven issues; and conservatives, liberals, and upscale adults all veered substantially from the norm on six of the 11 issues.

Currently, evangelicals represent 8% of the national adult population. That projects to approximately 20 million adults.

People Want a Different Future

"The challenge for today’s leaders is to find the intersection of doing what is right and best with doing that which is popular and achievable," Barna continued [George Barna, noted the California-based author of forty books on faith, leadership and social conditions].

"The lack of a common vision for the future is making the identification of such common ground increasingly difficult, if not impossible. The presidential candidates seem to delve rather quickly into promoting programs rather than establishing a consensus around the ideal of what America represents and where it needs to go in the years to come. Gaining widespread ownership of such a broad-based vision of the character and goals of the United States must be the starting point for rebuilding unity and strength within the nation. Providing a compelling and comprehensive notion of who we are as a people and what we stand for as a nation would be the most valuable contribution our leaders could offer."