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September 1, 2004

Survey: most Protestant ministers not very familiar with other faiths

by Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service

WASHINGTON — Most Protestant ministers expressed little familiarity with the key beliefs of a number of non-Protestant religious groups, a survey has found.

      The faith perspectives most likely to be “extremely familiar” to Protestant clergy were Roman Catholicism (41 percent), Judaism (33 percent), Mormonism (21 percent), Jehovah’s Witnesses (21 percent) and Islam (21 percent).

      The findings by Ellison Research, a marketing research company in Phoenix, were first reported in the September/October edition of Facts & Trends, a magazine published by LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.

   When researchers combined the top two levels of familiarity stated by Protestant clergy, 85 percent said they were relatively familiar with the core tenets of the Roman Catholic Church and 80 percent expressed similar knowledge of Judaism. That level of familiarity was 61 percent for Mormonism and 60 percent for Jehovah’s Witnesses.

      Otherwise, a minority of Protestant ministers expressed relative familiarity with non-Protestant groups: 47 percent with Islam, 43 percent with New Age beliefs, 31 percent with Satanism, 28 percent with Buddhism, 27 percent with Hinduism, 15 percent with Scientology, 13 percent with Wicca, 13 percent with Baha’ism and 5 percent with Sikhism.

   The survey is based on a sample of 700 Protestant ministers in 50 states and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.