How Important is the President's Faith?

And would we ever elect an atheist?

I can’t imagine I will ever teach a course on Research Methods again, but it’s something that I actually really did enjoy at EIU. I led our incoming graduate students on a tour of how political science tries to answer questions every fall for at least eight years. It was a difficult course, no doubt. But I think that many of my students left with a lot of really practical skills and a much better understanding of research design.

We usually spend an hour or two on a concept called operationalization, which is how we take our ideas about things and actually make them measurable. It may sound simple, but in my estimation, it is the most difficult aspect of social science. You want to study the responsiveness of local government—then what metric are you going to use? I remember sitting through a paper presentation where the author tracked how long it took for the city to fill in potholes after they were called in to the public works department. I thought that was pretty great.

When it comes to religion, operationalization is especially tricky. It’s an incredibly amorphous concept to try to pin down in a series of survey questions. In recent years, the most widely discussed theory in my neck of the woods is Christian Nationalism. I get asked about it on a regular basis. I think that everyone who works in and around the CN literature acknowledges—we could also use some different (and potentially better) questions.

To that end, Tony Jones and I tried to take another angle on Christian Nationalism by asking our respondents to the Making Meaning survey to respond to a number of statements about the personal faith of elected officials. We like this set of questions because it comes at the concept of CN more directly. Instead of posing the statement, “The United States is a Christian nation,” we asked our respondents to engage with this one: “I prefer if the President is a person of faith.”

You notice what we didn’t say there? The word Christian. We operationalized it that way on purpose. We wanted to see if the American public—religious or non-religious—was deeply concerned with electing a person of faith to the highest office in the land.

In the entire sample, we found that 43% said it was important to them that the president be a person of faith. But then another huge chunk (39%) didn’t really care either way. That means just 19% of the country doesn’t prefer POTUS to be a religious person. I think that’s pretty suggestive that the country is not super open to the idea of electing someone to the White House who is actively speaking out against religion and religious beliefs.

For Protestants in the sample, almost two in three would prefer a president who mentions their own personal faith. For Roman Catholics, it was a bit lower at 54%. Unfortunately, the sample didn’t include enough LDS, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists, so I had to throw them together in the ‘Other Faith’ category, but their answers looked a whole lot like the public as a whole.

What about the nones? This one may come as a bit of a surprise, but for those who claim no religion in particular, a clear majority just didn’t care one way or the other (56%). About 20% of them clearly did prefer a religious president. For agnostics, nearly half were ambivalent, but nearly the same share (42%) did not want a person of faith in the White House. In this survey, 56% of atheists disagreed with the statement, “I prefer if the President is a person of faith.”

But we weren’t done with that question—we probed a bit more. We had folks taking the survey respond to this statement: “I believe that a politician is more trustworthy if they are a person of faith.”

For the religious readers of this newsletter, the top row of this graph should sound some serious alarm bells. Only 35% of the public believes that religious politicians are more trustworthy. The exact same share disagrees with that statement. In other words, a religious politician is not any more trusted because of their faith declaration. The only group I could find where a majority agrees with that statement were Protestants, at 54%. For Catholics, it was only 43%.

Of course, the nones don’t put a lot of credence in elected officials discussing their faith background. Half of “nothing in particulars” disagreed with the idea that religious politicians are more trustworthy. For agnostics, it was about seven in ten, and for atheists, it was nearly three in four. You can see pretty clearly here how the nones feel particularly burned by politicians who claim religious credentials but often don’t act in accordance with those values.

Then we tried to flip this whole concept on its head and included a statement that went the other way: “I am concerned about atheists holding public office.”

Okay, I’m going to think about this result for a very long time. One-third of the public is worried about atheists holding public office. And almost exactly the same share is not concerned. And the remaining third are ambivalent about the whole thing. This is why I’ve said a few times that being an atheist is certainly not going to be a net positive for a politician running in most districts. It’s going to turn off a sizable slice of the electorate.

But then look at the results for Christians. Among Protestants, only 46% don’t want an atheist running for office, and it’s 38% of Roman Catholics. That’s certainly evidence of some religious discrimination, but these results just don’t support statements like, “Christians would never vote for an atheist for Congress.” Yes, there are clearly some who would not, but the results here aren’t overwhelming.

I do find it amusing that 17% of “nothing in particulars” don’t like the idea of an atheist politician. The more you poke around that group, the more you find that they really aren’t secular. They aren’t huge fans of religion, but they aren’t adopting the atheist or agnostic label either. And before someone points it out—yes, 7% of self-described atheists are concerned with atheists holding public office. Welcome to the wild world of survey research.

For what it’s worth, a recent paper was published entitled, “Will Americans Vote for an Atheist?” The authors (Campbell, Layman, and Marsh) used four survey experiments to answer the question. They found that Democrats were more supportive of an atheist, while Republicans were just the opposite. In the aggregate, it was a wash.

Let me end this by showing the responses to one last statement: “I am concerned about religious extremists holding public office.” Again, note how vague we were here. We didn’t mention fundamentalist Christians or devout Muslims—just religious extremists.

This is a statement that seems to somewhat unify all Americans. Nearly 60% of the general public is worried about religious extremism, and only 16% are unbothered. That’s pretty good evidence of the general moderation of the typical American on these matters.

Large majorities of atheists and agnostics are worried about religious extremism in the halls of power (about 80% each), but notice who scores the next highest—Jews. Two-thirds of them agreed with this statement. That was higher than “nothing in particulars.” Fascinating.

But even huge chunks of Christians don’t want religious fanatics in office. It was a majority of both Protestants (55%) and Catholics (52%). Now, do we know who they conjured in their head when they answered this question? No, we don’t. It could have been an image of a Muslim cleric. Or it could have been a fire-and-brimstone evangelical preacher. That would be a fun follow-up question, by the way: “When you hear the term ‘religious extremist,’ what person comes to mind?”

But when I look over the full sweep of this data, I come to a couple of conclusions that I think are helpful in this discourse:

1. A presidential candidate being a person of faith is appealing to a slight majority of Americans, but a significant minority just don’t seem to care either way.

2. The public doesn’t think that a politician being a person of faith makes them more trustworthy. I will let that statement just linger there for a minute.

3. Being an atheist is certainly not going to be a net positive on election day, but it’s also not a dealbreaker for most Americans.

4. In general, it seems that the public wants their elected officials to espouse a ‘polite’ version of their faith. They don’t want extremists, but they don’t want atheists either.

I’m not sure if this question battery provides more clarity or more obfuscation to the debate about Christian Nationalism, but I do think it’s always helpful to study a concept from a variety of angles. The impression that I get from this data is that the average voter is just looking for a sensible, thoughtful, generally religious person to vote for on election day. Now, if either party can manage to find someone like that.

Code for this post can be found here.

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Ryan P. Burge is a professor of practice at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University.