The evangelical wild card

[nancylebov]

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/229/story_22903_1.html

Generally speaking, however, evangelicals ranked traditionally progressive or Democratic causes as more important than traditionally conservative or Republican ones. Twenty three percent said their views had become less positive about Republicans, twice the number who said they’d soured on Democrats, though half of respondents said they had become less positive about both parties. Almost 60-percent said they favored a more progressive evangelical agenda focused more on protecting the environment, tackling HIV/AIDs, and alleviating poverty and less on abortion and homosexuality.

Combining those who labeled an issue "most important" or “very important,” the results were:

The economy (85%)
Cleaning up government (85%)
Reducing poverty (80%)
Improving public education/access to health care (78%)
Protecting the environment (70%)
Ending torture (68%)
Ending Iraq war (67%)
Ending abortion (61%)
Combating sex and violence in the media and entertainment (59%)
Illegal immigration (59%)
Stopping gay marriage (49%)
Helping Africa (48%)
Winning Iraq war (46%)
Fighting Islamic radicalism (58%)

Anyone have any idea approximately how many evangelical Christians there are in the US?

Comments

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

Lots of us? :)

[avram]

Somewhere between 25% and 30% of the population.

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

Gallup says that 45% of all Americans self-identify as evangelical. Other surveys I've seen come up with lower numbers; I often hear 40% bandied about as a consensus figure.

If you just count actual members of churches from denominations that are identified as evangelical, you come up with a much smaller number, about 40,000,000, or under 15%. You could use that as a measure of how many people take it at all seriously.

[gildedacorn.livejournal.com]

In order to answer that question meaningfully, you'd have to define "evangelical Christian." And you'd probably get a quite different definition depending on who you asked.