https://www.jns.org/why-are-increasing-numbers-of-young-evangelicals-moving-aw
“We have a serious education problem in the evangelical church. Too many people just don’t know a lot about any given subject. They’re smart, but they’re starved for information because their pastor is hawking his latest book from the pulpit on Sunday morning, instead of explaining serious issues,” says researcher and writer Jim Fletcher.
Over the past few decades, evangelical Christians have emerged as one of Israel’s core bases of support both in the United States and many other countries as well. However, growing trends of secularization and liberal ideology, as well as the erosion of a pro-Israel theology, are threatening to undermine this support, particularly among young evangelicals.
A recent poll commissioned by two University of North Carolina at Pembroke professors—Mordechai Inbari and Kirill Bumin—showing a sharp drop in support for Israel among the younger set has raised some eyebrows.
It found that young evangelical support for Israel had plunged to 33.6 percent from 69 percent in a 2018 poll. Those supporting the Palestinian side rose to 24.3 percent, up from 6 percent in 2018. Those supporting neither side stood at 42.2 percent.
The poll focused on evangelicals ages 18 to 29, and was conducted between March 22 and April 2 by the Barna Group, a polling and research firm focusing on issues of faith and culture.
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It appears to be backed by earlier polls. Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor at the University of Maryland and director of the university’s Critical Issues Poll, tells JNS that two polls he conducted in 2015 and 2018 also exhibited a widening gap in support for Israel between younger and older evangelicals. In 2015, 40 percent of young evangelicals said the United States should lean towards Israel, a number that dropped to 21 percent in 2018.
Inbari and Bumin remain cautious in explaining the reasons, saying they’re in the “preliminary stages” of their analysis.
Still, they have their hypotheses, one of which is related to the racial makeup of evangelicals.
“We discovered that race matters,” says Bumin. “What we find is that African-Americans are about 34 or 36 percent less likely to support Israel than people from other ethnic groups.”