Evangelicals and Tea Party Overlap in Congress, Public

from Christianity Today

The tea party movement is a conservative grassroots movement that is more known for its views on taxes than social issues. There is, however, increasing evidence that the tea party movement's message resonates with evangelicals.

…This [Tea Party] caucus is more evangelical than the rest of the House. About 45 percent of the caucus attend an evangelical church, compared to 13 percent of others in the House. Another 30 percent are mainline Protestants, mostly of a largely Southern variety. Several Mormons are also part of the caucus.

…But among those evangelicals that have an opinion on the Tea Party, 84 percent said that they agree with the movement. No other religious tradition comes close to this level of support for the movement…

Pew found that 73 percent of those who agree with the “conservative Christian movement” had heard of the tea party. Of these, 95 percent agreed with the tea party movement.

The real question, however, is whether the new tea party activists—those who have not been part of politics previously—see themselves as part of the Christian right. So far, the evidence points to Christian conservatives wanting to align themselves with the tea party even though many tea party activists have no interest in joining social conservatives.

Read the rest here…