Interesting PRRI survey numbers on religious left/religious right

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I posted another survey dealing with this, yes.  This one is just more detailed and has some interesting factoids.  I personally didn't expect that there would be so many American Catholics self-identifying as 'progressive.'

Why not? At least according to most surveys that I've seen in the recent past, Catholics have been roughly on par with or slightly to the left of America as a whole for a while now. (In the more distant past they were obviously a strongly partisan Democratic group but not really a strongly ideological 'progressive' or 'liberal' one in the sense that more recent surveys usually purport to measure.)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I posted another survey dealing with this, yes.  This one is just more detailed and has some interesting factoids.  I personally didn't expect that there would be so many American Catholics self-identifying as 'progressive.'

Why not? At least according to most surveys that I've seen in the recent past, Catholics have been roughly on par with or slightly to the left of America as a whole for a while now. (In the more distant past they were obviously a strongly partisan Democratic group but not really a strongly ideological 'progressive' or 'liberal' one in the sense that more recent surveys usually purport to measure.)

I don't deny that a significant number of American Catholics differ with official church teachings, I'm just a tad surprised that mainline Protestants don't outnumber them, what with the increasing number of Protestant churches adopting moderate-to-liberal political stances.

To be fair, though, this article isn't specific about what churches these mainline Protestants are affiliated with, so I suppose that has to be considered as well.

Remember that something like two-fifths of American Catholics are Hispanic.

Also it's not necessarily a question of differing from official Church teachings. It's certainly not impossible to walk the line on Catholic social theory pretty much entirely and still align oneself with the left rather than the right.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Neither are mainline Protestants for that matter (and I think people tend to forget that mainline Protestants are not uncommon in the South).

Yeah. Like Ernest was saying above, the largest mainline denomination is also the least liberal, and is geographically distributed fairly broadly over the country, being pretty thick on the ground in parts of Appalachia, the Lower Midwest, and the Great Plains. The mainlines are also, traditionally, really overwhelmingly white.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Aside from the Sermon on the Mount and the Crucifixion and Resurrection the rest of the New Testament is either banality or nonsense.

Entirely leaving asides the Acts, the Epistles, and Revelation and limiting ourselves to the Gospels for now, you find the parables banal or nonsensical? The Nativity? The Transfiguration? (I can see nonsensical more easily than I can see banal, for what it's worth. In particular I would expect somebody who finds material of interest in the Sermon on the Mount to find at least some in the parables as well.)