80% of Protestant church members want pastors to address hot topics: survey


Four out of five Protestant church members in the United States believe that pastors should address current affairs, according to a new report.

Along the Way of Life a report released on Tuesday, 80% of Protestants “believe that a pastor must deal with current issues to do his job,” while 16% do not and 4% are unsure.

About 62% of respondents said their pastor addressed current affairs either “every week” or “almost every week,” while 23% said they talked about them “at least once a month,” and 12% said they talked about them “rarely” or “several times a year.”

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Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research, was quoted in the report as saying that, as the “culture increasingly includes less overtly Christian elements and more non-Christian ideas, church members are hungry to know what the Bible says about life's issues.”

“Churches realize that most pastors don't just preach from the Bible as a historical document,” McConnell stated. “Pastors seek to explain the original meaning and context, but then apply those principles to issues and situations today. Such an application of the biblical text helps church members to recognize its importance.”

The report also found that Methodists (96%) and members of Restorationist Movement churches (89%) were among the most likely to believe that pastors should address current issues, while churchgoers age 65 and older were among the most likely to disagree that priests must dealing with current affairs (22%).

The report drew from an online survey of 1,008 American Protestant church members conducted from September 19 to 29, 2023, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2% at the 95% confidence level.

Earlier this month, Lifeway released a a report saying that “the percentage of Americans who see pastors endorsing a candidate in church as appropriate has risen steadily over the past 16 years.”

In the earlier report, Lifeway found that while only 13% of respondents in 2008 found pastors supporting a candidate in church as appropriate, that number grew to 29% this year.

Additionally, regarding whether it was “appropriate for a church to publicly endorse candidates for public office,” support for this increased from 22% in 2008 to 32% this year.

The investigation comes as the United States approaches the presidential election, which pits Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris against Republican challenger and former President Donald Trump.

Both major party candidates made appeals to various churches and Christian groups. Trump also addressed the prominent Catholic charity event, the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, last week, while Harris was the first presidential candidate in 40 years to skip the dinner. However, she spoke at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, on Sunday, and at Koinonia Christian Center Church in Greenville, North Carolina, the previous week.

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