Clergy Poll: Getting What You Pay For?

I read the news today, oh boy! It was an article about clergy opinions on gay issues.

A poll by Public Religion Research has some startling and disheartening results about an apparent slide of Presbyterian clergy belief—basically a rush away from God’s will as revealed in Scripture toward the views of a godless society on its way to destruction. Sad.

However, I find it important, when reading news, to consider the source of the news as well as the content. Thus, it is interesting to note how clearly the poll represents the viewpoints of both the research organization and the foundation funding the poll. Neither party could be considered a disinterested bystander in the issue of homosexual advocacy.

• Public Religion Research appears to be a boldly progressive group, advocating for gay causes in particular. Its website and blog leave no doubt about its politically and theologically liberal/progressive stance and advocacy. The president and founder, Robert P. Jones, is also a fellow in a progressive think tank. Unless Public Religion Research found a way to be totally scrupulous in its polling research procedure, it would not be difficult for testing bias to seep through in its research results.
• The Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, which bankrolled the poll, makes grants for millions of dollars to gay-advocacy groups each year, including approximately $6.5 million in 2008! This is the foundation that flooded $1.2 million into political activist groups such as More Light Presbyterians, allowing it to add staff to lobby the PCUSA to lower its sexual standards. (Note that MLP is now advertising to add two staff members—staffing probably made possible in part by the Haas Fund windfall.)

How coincidental that the results the poll obtained would be so useful for the known advocacy of the pollsters, the funders, and the sexual revisionists they support!

For possibly less biased polling, I would suggest the Presbyterian Panel’s 2008 snapshot of Presbyterians. The final page shows gay-ordination opinions. The 2005 snapshot also lists opinions on gay unions and marriages.

If the Haas-PRR poll is indeed accurate, it documents a disgraceful clergy abandonment of biblical morality, a selling out to the Baal of our times. If, on the other hand, the poll turns out to be tainted by testing bias, it will amount to nothing more than a propaganda tool to be used to sway popular opinion away from biblical truth. Either reality is less than propitious.