Americans are critical of both the political left and the Christian right when it comes to their approaches to religion in the public square, according to a new national poll.
Liberals have gone "too far to keep religion out" of public life while conservatives have gone "too far in imposing their religious values," said the study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
These findings from the two Pew organizations -- nonpartisan, Washington, D.C.-based research groups -- were just two of many indicators of public opinion contained in polls and reports released in August on religious life in the United States. The surveys varied widely. Gays, politics and even attendance at Jewish summer camps were among the topics covered.
The Pew poll found that 69% of respondents said liberals have gone "too far to keep religion out of school and government" and 49% contended that conservatives have gone "too far in imposing their religious values."
The poll, released last week, was based on telephone interviews with 2,003 adults July 6-19. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
"People are sick of two extreme points of view," said the Rev. Kurt Fredrickson, director of the doctor of ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and an expert on the relationship between religion and American life. "There is this middle group of people that recognizes that religion does still have a very strong influence in our culture."
The results show that Americans -- the most religious people in the world, according to many studies -- are "particularly irritated" by the idea of removing religion from the public square, said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life who worked on the study.
"On the other hand, while they might agree that there should be more religion in the public square, they don't agree with the religious right," Green said. "That particular solution is not the one they had in mind."
Concern over the left's efforts to restrict religion's influence on what the poll called "American life" crossed party lines.
Large majorities of Republicans (87%), independents (65%) and Democrats (60%) denounced efforts by liberals to minimize religious influence in the public square, including 70% of conservative and moderate Democrats. Just 38% of liberal Democrats expressed this view.
