Democrats and Independents oppose the establishment of Christianity \u2013 \u201cstrongly oppose\u201d is their modal response.\u00a0 But a majority of Republicans favor making their state a Christian state, and of those, most (two-thirds) are in the \u201cstrongly favor\u201d pew.<\/p>\n This is not to say that Republicans are unaware of the Establishment Clause.\u00a0 \u201cBased on what you know, would you think that states are permitted by the constitution to establish official state religions, or not?\u201d<\/p>\n Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to say that the Constitution does not permit state religions.\u00a0 They just think that on this one, the framers of the Constitution got it wrong.<\/p>\n Republicans are only a bit less enthusiastic about establishing Christianity as the official religion of the entire country<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cWould you favor or oppose a Constitutional amendment which would make Christianity the official religion of the United States?\u201d<\/p>\n A plurality, 46% \u2013 almost a majority \u2013 want to correct the Framers\u2019 careless omission by amending the Constitution.\u00a0\u00a0We can\u2019t know specifically what the people who favor this have in mind. Republicans themselves probably differ in their ideas. Maybe only symbolic gestures, like invoking Jesus\u2019s blessing on public events. Maybe public indoctrination \u2013 requiring Christian prayer and Bible reading in the public schools. Or maybe more tangible forms of support \u2013 giving taxpayers\u2019 money directly to Christian organizations for explicitly religious purposes.<\/p>\n In any case, this is an interesting piece of data to keep in mind for next time a representative of the political right argues that the Constitution is unamendable and inflexible.<\/p>\n Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Republicans tend to be Second Amendment absolutists.\u00a0 The NRA and their representatives in Congress haven\u2019t yet weighed in on the specific issue of, say, banning assault rifles in LAX, but they just might argue that such a law would be an unconstitutional infringement of the right to bear arms. The\u00a0 First Amendment begins, \u201cCongress shall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":58116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[85,304,42],"class_list":["post-58111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-politics","tag-the-state","tag-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/11\/Screenshot_13.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62927,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58111\/revisions\/62927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"1\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/11\/11.jpg\")
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