U.S. a force for good …
The majority of Americans believe the United States has a moral obligation to be engaged on the international stage.
So says a new survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc. for Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and the United Nations Foundation.
Results from the September 2008 survey were recently released and found that nearly a quarter of Americans (24 percent) say the United States should be very actively engaged in world affairs and 70 percent believe America should be at least moderately involved.
Most believe the nation should be actively involved in world affairs because of an explicit responsibility or moral obligation to take a leadership role in the world.
At the same time, 79 percent of Americans agree that sometimes U.S. involvement in world affairs causes more harm than good.
Allen Hertzke is a University of Oklahoma professor who is now a visiting scholar at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. I’ve spoken to professor Hertzke several times for various stories.
Here’s what he had to say about the study:
“Americans remain very interventionist in their views about America’s role in the world and want the U.S. to take an activist role on the world stage, but they want us to be smart about it,” Hertzke said.
The findings are based on a national survey of 1,400 adults, including an oversample of 400 young evangelicals ages 18-29. The survey was conducted Sept. 14-21, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.
Here are more findings:
– 68 percent of people who attend religious services at least once a week say America has a moral obligation to be involved in world affairs, compared to 54 percent of people who attend less frequently.
– 55 percent of people who attend religious services every week say America’s influence in the world has been positive, compared with 44 percent of people who attend less frequently.
– 61 percent believe that God has uniquely blessed America.
Carla Hinton
Religion Editor
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