Faith leaders unite, but are their followers behind them on gun control?

[cbayer]

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865571042/Faith-leaders-unite-but-are-their-followers-behind-them-on-gun-control.html

Summary
Faith leaders began a concerted push for gun control in advance of President Barack Obama's news conference this week. But gun control remains a divisive issue among their followers.

Compiled by Matthew Brown, Deseret News
Published: Saturday, Jan. 19 2013 5:00 a.m. MST

Earlier this week, a number of faith leaders began a concerted push for gun control in advance of President Barack Obama's news conference on Wednesday calling for legislation that would address gun violence in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings.

But an informative package of stories in the Washington Post's On Faith section examined whether the religious rank and file are necessarily behind those leaders calling for tighter gun laws.

"The gun-control campaign is a visible effort for progressive faith leaders in particular, who many religious progressives feel haven’t been confrontational enough in recent years and have ceded the public debate square to religious conservatives," wrote Michelle Boorstein in her report on the clergy's effort. "The question is how effective they can be at a time when Americans are moving away from institutional religion, thus lessening the clout of even major groups like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops or the Islamic Society of North America or the National Association of Evangelicals."

Robert P. Jones, head of the Public Religion Research Institute, explored the rifts between various faith traditions in his Post column, Figuring Faith.

"On one hand, the religiously unaffiliated (60 percent), minority Protestants such as African Americans (69 percent), and Catholics (62 percent) all favor stricter gun-control laws," he wrote, referring to a PRRI poll taken last summer after the Aurora, Colo., mass shootings. "On the other hand, a majority of white mainline Protestants (53 percent) and more than 6 in 10 (61 percent) white evangelical Protestants oppose stricter gun-control laws."

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