Sinners, immigrants and climate change aren’t to blame for the coronavirus — it’s governments here and abroad, according to most religious Americans.
In a new study by the University of Chicago Divinity School and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, Americans who said they believe in God were polled about whether COVID-19 is a message from God, if the pandemic has challenged their spirituality and how freedom of religion fits into it all.
They were also asked about “the cause of the current coronavirus situation in the United States.”
“What is striking is that when it comes to blame, people are not pointing fingers at particular groups such as sinners, non-believers, or followers of other faiths. Nor are they looking for natural causes,” David Nirenberg, Dean of the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, said in a news release. “People are pointing fingers at governments.”
To conduct the study, researchers polled 1,002 individuals from April 30 to May 4 using a probability-based panel designed to represent the U.S. household population.
Surveys were conducted online or over the phone in both English and Spanish with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points at a 95% confidence level, according to the study.
The Associated Press reported the questions were asked “without specifying a specific faith” and the sample size was too small to account for “the opinions of religious faiths with smaller numbers of U.S. adherents, including Muslims and Jews.”
Pointing fingers
According to their findings, about one in 10 Americans attribute the situation surrounding COVID-19 in the U.S. to “human sinfulness.”
But they are “most likely to think governments, global trade, and other things in nature are causes,” the study states.
About 43% of those polled said foreign government’s actions and policies were to blame, while 37% pointed at the U.S. government. A little less than a third attributed the current situation to other things in nature and 21% said it’s global trade.
Human sinfulness accounted for 11% of respondents, followed by immigrants at 9%, climate change at 7%, people of non-Christian faiths at 3%, non-religious people at 2% and Christians at 2%.
At least 24% said “none of the these” were responsible.
A message from God
Nearly two-thirds of religious Americans feel the coronavirus pandemic is “God telling humanity to change the way we are living,” according to the study.
That statement held more truth for black and Hispanic Americans — 73% of which and 65% of which said they agreed. About 48% of white Americans concurred.
More than half of the respondents polled also said they believed God would protect them from infection.
Broken down by affiliation, 67% of white Evangelical Christians agreed with that statement, compared to 53% of other Americans who believe in God.
But almost no one said the pandemic has challenged their belief in God.
According to the study, 73% of respondents said their sense of faith and spirituality had remained the same. Less than 1% said they believed in God before the outbreak but no longer do. Black Americans — who have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus — were more likely to say they doubted God’s existence because of the virus, the AP reported.
“27% said that, compared with 13% of Latinos and 11% of white Americans,” according to the AP.
Freedom of religion
Stay-at-home orders and social distancing guidelines have shut down churches nationwide.
While most Americans agree some restrictions are necessary, some have argued it conflicts with their constitutional freedom of religion, the study found.
“The data also reveal that Americans hold nuanced views about balancing public health and safety with the protection of rights such as freedom of religion and freedom of assembly,” researchers said in the report. “Adults with a religious affiliation are more likely to support the protests against stay-at-home orders than those without one.”
About 51% of those polled said in-person services “should be allowed in some form” — but only 9% think they should be entirely unrestricted.
Exactly half of the respondents also said public protests, rallies and marches shouldn’t be permitted.
“Few Americans believe the restrictions on religious activities designed to slow the spread of the virus violate freedom of religion, but they are more likely to think complete prohibition of services to be a violation than services with restrictions,” researchers said.
About 42% said prohibiting drive-thru services violates their freedom of religion, compared with 35% who said the same about barring all-in person services.
While the U.S. Constitution guarantees free exercise of religion under the First Amendment, most legal experts agree it’s not without restrictions, McClatchy News previously reported.
“All constitutional rights are limited in some respect,” Kathleen Hoke, a professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law and director of the Network for Public Health Law, Eastern Region, told McClatchy.
