Do 90% of Americans Really Belive in God?

I read this article and just sat there in stunned silence. I couldn’t help but wonder what was the point or motivation behind this article? And who is the Pew Forum on Religion?

On their About the Forum section of their site (http://www.pewforum.org/), they state “The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, launched in 2001, seeks to promote a deeper understanding of issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs”. This statement confirmed my suspicions; it is another website trying to push religious agendas into politics.

While I am not going to get into a history lesson here, I would like to point out that while there has always been a debate surrounding religion and politics, the addition of religion to the Republican platform is a relatively new addition and has not always been part of their ideas. The bottom line is that our founding fathers pulled religion out of the equation for a reason; government must be representative of the people. I am going to say this again because I think it is important. Government must be representative of the people. Would a Christian influenced government be representative of the people? No. It would not.

Let’s assume this poll of 36K people (the number polled by Pew) is a good sample size and representative of the US population, and let’s also assume that 90% of the population believes in God. That does not mean that everyone is Christian. This poll does not talk about the fact that Christianity is just barely the majority religion in the US. Only 52% of the religious population is Christian, and that is not 52% of the population but only of the people who say they are affiliated with a religion and this number is dropping year after year.

When you think about these things, the motivation behind their survey becomes clear. They are trying to push their agenda and convince everyone that the vast majority of the population is religious and therefore religion has a place in politics. That’s not really what their survey says, but that is what they would like you to believe. I will say again, a government in bed with any religion would not be a government that was representative of it’s people.