They wouldn't touch the poor and sick with a 10-foot poll

MSNBC has an online poll about religion in America. As of this writing, 52% of the respondents identify as some form of Democrat. 4% identify as "other," so I'm going to assume that half of them are liberal and make the total 54% non-Republican and non-strict independent. Bearing this in mind, consider that 30% believe that human life came about as a result of the biblical account of creation. 12% do not know or are not sure how human life came about. That means that--among respondents, 54% of whom are Democrats or similar, 42% reject evolution as the reason we are here.

That particular statistic is so dramatic, it will probably be talked about a lot. Here is another statistic, however, that I found just as disturbing: When asked "Do you believe churches and other religious groups and organizations should or should not be raising awareness and involved in poverty?" 63% said yes. Hunger? 65%. Homelessness? 62%. AIDS? 43%.

Let's put aside for the moment the idea that 100% of people don't believe that churches should be involved in fighting poverty, hunger, and homelessness. The fact that there is a serious drop in the numbers believing the church should be doing something about AIDS is a sad and shocking commentary on American life in the 21st Century. It also doesn't take a degree in sociology to figure out why the numbers changed. We don't like the poor and homeless very much (I will never forget a church volunteer who worked at the polls on election day and told me that homeless people had the nerve to show up and try to vote), but we really don't like people with AIDS. So many of them are drug users, or gay, or poor.

There has been a terrible problem in black churches with regard to the AIDS issue, though thanks to Cynthia Tucker and Alton Pollard III, that situation may be changing. But judging from the responses to the MSNBC poll (and bear in mind that this poll attracts more progressive respondents than some other online polls), Americans don't see much of a need for churches to be involved in helping the sick.