Plurality American support for gay marriage

A clear plurality of American public support for gay marriage is evident in polling by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in a survey of 2,973 adults conducted from June 28-July 9. This is a dramatic change from 2004, when 60% of those polled opposed gay marriage. The long-term trend has been inexorable, in part because "Younger generations express higher levels of support for same-sex marriage." Both the magnitude and strength of opposition have declined.

Among religious groups, majority opposition is sustained only by evangelical protestants. That leaves the Catholic bishops out of touch with self-described Catholics, 52% of whom Pew found to be in support of gay marriage. More specifically:

Nearly six-in-ten white non- Hispanic Catholics (59%) favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry, as do 57% of Hispanic Catholics.

Politically, support has risen among Democrats and independents. Some two thirds of Democrats support gay marriage.

For years, the trend for men and women has been an increase in support for gay marriage.

There was then every public opinion reason for the Biblical Recorder to expect a strong response to its Chick-fil-A story.

The argument by Louisiana Baptist Message Editor Kelly Boggs for majority support of Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy's anti-gay views, willfully confuses various ballot box results with overarching public opinion. Nor does Mike Huckabee's Chick-fil-A appreciation day alter either the data or its direction.

The challenge for evangelicals is better addressed by Southern Baptist Pastor Wade Burleson of Enid, Oklahoma, who is concerned about who will best witness to "the next generation." For among the young, the there is clear majority (and growing) acceptance of gay marriage. The polling data suggests that the view most likely to prevail was expressed by Rev. Dr. Angela M. Yarber, of is Wake Forest Baptist Church at Wake Forest University, in an open letter to Chick-fil-A's Cathy:

We are the only Baptist church in the country with two lesbians as head pastors. I serve a diverse congregation; many of our members are LGBT families raising children. And I refuse to look into their eyes and tell them that their families do not deserve the same rights as your family. For me, that is unethical. It is un-American. And it is unchristian.

Fire in the streets, quiet in the pews

Public conflict between those who view homosexuality as a path to hell and civil liberties activists who reject that view has apparently not built a fire in the pews of U.S. churches.

The 2006-07 National Congregations Study (Wave 2), a major survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,506 congregations from all over the United States, found:

Even though conflicts within American religion over ordaining homosexuals have received a lot of attention in recent years, and seem to be tearing some denominations apart, the overall level of conflict within congregations is about what it was in 1998, with 26 percent of congregations experiencing a conflict in the last 2 years that led some people to leave. (Interestingly, only 2 percent of congregations in the NCS-II reported a conflict over homosexuality.)

That does not mean little is happening in the average church.

Congregations have changed a great deal since the initial, 1998 snapshot (Wave I), as Mark Chaves of Duke University explained:

A second snapshot of U.S. religious congregations reveals four trends in American worship: a growing informality in worship practices, a graying of congregations and clergy (on average), churches becoming less white and more ethnically diverse, and an ever-increasing use of technology.

Change proceeds at a rapid pace -- just not the kind and direction of change implied by the pitched political battles of the past two decades.

Clerical zealots who seek to bar gay church membership, forbid homosexual marriages, keep women out of the pulpits and so on down the culture warriors' list of imponderables may be doomed by a lack of the broad, underlying support required to keep those barriers in place.