In May of 2022 the Pew Research Center did study to explore how sentiments towards Israel and Palestine were changing in the American population. In this study was some fascinating subsetting of how different faith backgrounds viewed the conflict, the nation’s governments and their people.
With the country currently designated “Israel” being such a large topic in many American Christian circles we thought it would be interesting to ask the deconstruction community what their views were on these issues. In the following infographics you can see how they responded and how they differed from the religous communities they have deconstructed away from.
It might be helpful to consider as you look at this data that the majority of those deconstructing who took part in this poll came from an evangelical background.
Sentiment towards the governments
As you can see from the chart below favor felt towards the Israeli and Palestinian governments was fairly equal among Black Protestants and the Unaffilated.
Those deconstructing were around 0.5x as likely to favor the Palestinian government than the Israeli one. Catholics were around 2x as likely to favor Israel over Palestine and Evangelicals where a staggeringly high 4.5x as likely to favor the Israeli government.
Although the Unaffiliated did very slightly prefer the Palestinian government, the Deconstructing group was the only group with a strong preference towards them.
Breaking down the favor
Below we can see how the favor towards each government was broken down as either very favorable and somewhat favorable.
We can see that Evangelicals stand out strongly with a large majority favoring the Israeli government and a quarter doing so strongly. They were 3x as likely to have a very favorable view of the Israeli government as Black Protestants and 2x as likely as Catholics. Meanwhile very few could say they were very favorable of the Israeli governemnt in the Unaffilated (4%) or Deconstructing (1%) groups.
Again the Evangelicals were the outlier in the group with an overwhlemingly unfavorable view of the Palestinian government. Black Protestants were most likely to support the Palestinian government but not by much compared to Unaffilated or Deconstructing groups.
Sentiment towards the Palestinian government seemed a little more uniform. With no group having more than 4% say they were very favorable.
Sentiment towards the people
In the chart below we see again how much favor each group had towards each people group.
Catholics and Black Protestants were both more likely to favor the Israeli people than the Palestinian people – 0.34x and 0.08x more likely respectively. However Evangelicals were 6.1x more likely to favor the Israeli people.
Both the Unaffiliated and Deconstructing group had equal favor among the Israeli and the Palestinian population, 58% and 71% respectively.
Breaking down the favor
When we drill down and look more closely at the data we find that Evangelicals and Catholics were much more likely than their peers to be very favorable towards the Israeli people. Evangelicals (42%) were 4 times as likely than the lowest scoring group, the Unaffiliated (10%).-
Looking at how the Palestinian people are viewed we can see that very favorable sentiments are again around 10% across the board with the exception of the Evangelicals where only 5% responded very favorable.
What is the solution to the Israel / Palestine conflict?
When asked what they thought the solution to the Israel / Palestine conflict the respondents were given 5 choices:
- The land is split into two countries, one country with an Israeli government and one country with a Palestinian government.
- All of the land is one country, governed jointly by Israelis and Palestinians together
- All of the land is one country, with an Israeli government
- All of the land is one country, with a Palestinian government
- Not sure
The responses were as follows:
As you can see there was a great deal of uncertainty across most groups. “Not sure” being the most common answer ranging between 36-44% for each group apart from Evangelicals where a slightly lower 30% said they were “not sure.”
Two countries, two governments
The second most popular response was that the nation should be split into two countries with two governments, this solution was most favored by the Catholic and Deconstructing groups responding at 42% and 41% respectively. Atheists and Evangelicals had a roughly equal share of their populations in favor of a 2 land solution at 33% and 30% respectively. Meanwhile the least in favor of this solution were Black Protestants with only 25% of their population feeling it was the right choice.
One country, two governments
The 3rd most popular option was 1 country jointly governed by Israel and Palestine with relatively low support from any group, ranging from the lowest support among those Deconstructing (10%) and Evangelicals (11%). The strongest support was from the Black Protestant (19%) and Unaffiliated (18%) groups. Catholics were in the middle around 14%.
One country, one government
A 1 country, 1 government solution is seen politically as the most extreme solution and thus its no surprise that both the options for this were overwhelmingly unsupported by all the groups bar Evangelicals.
Support for a Palestinian led country ranged from 0% (Evangelical) – 4% (Deconstructing).
Meanwhile support for an Israeli led country ranged from 1% (Deconstructing) – 6% (Black Protestant & Catholic) with the exception of the Evangelicals with 28% voting for this option.
Has God given “Israel” to the Jewish people?
In this final question we look at how participants view God’s role in the Israel/Palestine conflict.
It’s no surprise that those who believed that God had gifted the land called “Israel” to the Jewish people were the Christian groups, it’s quite surprising just how diverse the responses were in this regard however. With 70% of evangelicals agreeing with the statement but only 36% of Black Protestants and 25% of Catholics doing so. This trend was reversed when looking at disagreement wieh 6% of Evangelicals believing God did not give the land to the Jewish people, 10% of Black Protestants and 15% of Catholics.
Interestingly enough those Deconstructing were very vocal in their views on God with 24% also saying that God did not give the Jewish people the land.
The most common vote here however was again for uncertainty. With “Not sure” being the largest vote for Black Protestants and Catholics and the second largest vote for Unaffiliated (after “don’t believe in god” and a very close third answer for those Deconstructing, indeed, even 23% of Evangelicals confessed they weren’t sure.
The BDS movement
Finally the participants were asked about the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. They were asked if they had heard of it and then if they had heard of it they were asked if they were in support or opposition to it.
As we can see below the vast majority of people asked had not heard for the BDS movement. Evangelicals were slightly more likely to have heard of it than their Christian peers. And while those deconstructing were only slightly more likely to have heard of the BDS movement, they were more likely to have heard more about it with 26% responding Some or A lot vs. 13%-16% among other groups.
Its VERY important to note that the following percentages are only made up of those who had heard of the movement.
Looking at this we can see that on the whole those who have heard of the BDS tend to support the BDS. With a strong exception of the Evangelical group and to a lesser extent the Catholic group. It is interesting to note that the Black Protestant group are in stark contrast with the predominantly White groups here and perhaps there are some levels of sympathy from a movement rooted in liberation theology and the BDS movement.
Conclusion
So that’s all we have for now. We are hoping to look into this topic further in the future. So watch this space. There were some surprising results here, and some not so surprising but something that stood out to us as highly interesting is that, again, knowing that most of those deconstructing in this poll came from an Evangelical background it’s quite remarkable the shift they have undergone in this area.
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