Just heard this morning yet another poll declaring Obama’s popularity rating is declining.  While this is an expected and non-partisan trend that occurs in each presidency, there is a back story to the Pew Research Foundation AND the Gallup Polls businesses that need to be shared.

“Pollster George Gallup, Jr. himself a born-again Episcopalian, proclaimed 1976 the “year of the Evangelical” after his survey figures indicated that 50 million adult Americans had a born-again conversion experience.  Gallup also found that 46% of Protestants and 31% of Catholics believed that the Bible is to be taken literally word for word.” – Sarah Diamond “Spiritual Warfare” ©1989

Diamond’s book, by the way, is an absolute MUST READ! There are numerous articles about Gallup’s evangelical perspectives in his polling.  As a Social Psychology student we were well versed in how any question can be phrased to illicit the desired response – and appear ‘unbiased’.

“Gallup “has been quoted as calling his polling ‘a kind of ministry.’ And a few months ago, he said ‘the most profound purpose of polls is to see how people are responding to God,’” the ad says. “We thought the purpose [of polling] is to faithfully and factually report public opinion.”

Gallup, who is an advisory editor for Christianity Today, does have a religious mission in retirement. In a Religion News Service article (published in The Baptist Standard), Gallup said, “When I ask a question on these subjects, what I’m always trying to find out is: ‘Are we doing the will of God?’” Gallup challenged students at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s commencement.  ”The world knows a lot about Jesus, but do they know him? It is for the churches to seize this moment, to take the vague spirituality of the day and turn it into a faith that is solid and transformative.” – Christianity Today article “Does the Gallup Poll Have an Evangelical Bias?”

Polling is a great way to subtly (almost subliminally) sway public opinion because we are ALL sheep to some degree.  And if we start hearing the poll numbers indicate a decline in someones popularity, we don’t jump up and look into why, we accept it and start questioning that person’s reasoning.  It is a tried and true method of mass persuasion.  Propaganda?  It certainly can be used as a propaganda tool – without question!

Pew Research Foundation was formed in the 1940’s by the Pew family, and numerous members of the Pew family are still a part of the business. Now let’s just look at who Pew’s “friends” are and how they are connected to extreme evangelical conglomerates such as the Heritage Foundation and it’s ‘friends’, some of which have made my list of GOP Criminals.  The adage that you are judged by the company you keep is mired in truth. In a discussion about searching for the intellect of the evangelical mind” an Atlantic Monthly article discusses Pew’s part in attempting to revitalize that intelligence:

Funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts

This conference will focus on the notion of the “autonomous self” that lies at the foundation of modern psychology and the ways in which postmodern culture has eroded or swept away this self. Presentations will discuss the difficulty of defining one’s self. How can one escape the contemporary fragmentation and loss of the self? What is the meaning of a transmodern self? What fundamental nature of the self is found in embodiment and in strong, especially early, relationships? Can the properties of embodiment and relationships be linked to contemporary theology? How do they relate to cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy?

Editor’s Note:

Pew Charitable Trusts/Sun Oil also funds the Council on Foreign Relations/CFR.

Pew also funded Wycliffe Bible Translators/SIL which facilitated Rockefeller’s genocidal policies in Latin America through pacification of native tribes. See: Strategists for Charter School: Pew Charitable Trusts and CNP: Wycliffe Bible Translators

“A more directed effort in the movement to make evangelical scholarship respectable came from the PewCharitable Trusts. J. Howard Pew, of the Sun Oil Company, was a supporter of Fuller Theological Seminary. The Pew trusts were established in 1948, a year after Fuller’s founding, and eventually became a major supporter of evangelical-Christian institutions. Eventually Pew, like many other foundations, moved to the left, but it has never lost its focus on religion. In 1988 Pew commissioned a paper on the status of evangelical scholarship and developed a ten-year plan for overcoming its marginalization. Joel Carpenter, a historian of American fundamentalism, went to Pew from Wheaton College in 1989 to lead the effort. Mark Noll would later identify the scandal of the evangelical mind as the fact that there was not much of one. Carpenter’s efforts were dedicated to changing that situation. By century’s end Pew had allocated some $14 million to the revitalization of evangelical intellectual life.

Evangelical scholars see all this activity as an indication that they have finally made it in American academic life. One of Joel Carpenter’s objectives in going to work for Pew, he told me recently, was “to help the religious community to which Pew is closest — Christianity generally and evangelical Protestantism specifically — make a difference.” Looking back on its initiatives, the staff of the Pew religion program, in a paper published last October, concluded that Carpenter (who is now the provost at Calvin College) and his successors had made “a major contribution” toward rectifying the lack of serious intellectual work that Mark Noll had identified in the fundamentalist and evangelical traditions.” – The Atlantic Monthly “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind” 2000

The Pew Charitable Trusts funds the following (and more not listed here) - Pew Charitable Trusts/Sun Oil also funds the Council on Foreign Relations/CFR; AND Pew also funded Wycliffe Bible Translators/SIL which facilitated Rockefeller’s genocidal policies in Latin America through pacification of native tribes. See: Strategists for Charter School: Pew Charitable Trusts and Council for National Policy/CNP: Wycliffe Bible Translators)

Both of these organizations that perform these national polls which we all hear about have some notably high profile linkages to born-again evangelical groups and individuals who are also in the Political Dominionism Movement.  Please click on the links I have provided, and scroll these sites.  I am certain you will find them as informative as I have.  National Political Dominionism is truly an incestuous group of related players from a generational line.

Here’s the thing…anyone whose biblical faith is as devout as both the founders of these two organizations simply cannot – and clearly ARE not – able to remain impartial.  So what does that tell us?  Always educate ourselves and take poll results with a grain of salt.

UPDATE:  Clarifying my point on the influence by George Gallup, Jr. and his evangelical skewed perspective

I have received a couple of defensive comments regarding Gallup, Jr and his evangelical ties.  The claim is that he has not had anything to do with the Gallup poll in “decades” and that it was not he that started the Gallup Poll Organization.  That fact is true, it was his father George Gallup, Sr. in 1936.  But my point was – and is – that the Gallup Poll was influenced by Jr. to advance his evangelical ideals.  Here is an article snippet from “Christianity Today”, that further bolsters my assertion:

Christianity Today

September 1, 2004  Weblog: Does the Gallup Poll Have an Evangelical Bias?

A full-page ad in Tuesday’s New York Times questions the truth of a Gallup poll that showed George W. Bush in the lead by 14 points. The ad, by MoveOn.org, accused Gallup of being way off-base, compared to other polls, which averaged only a three-point Bush lead.

“This isn’t the first time the prestigious Gallup survey has been out on a limb with pro-Bush findings,” according to the ad. Gallup predicts that more Republicans will vote in November than Democrats. Exit polls show more Democrats will vote, says MoveOn, and George Gallup Jr., son of the poll’s founder, refuses to fix his faulty methodology. “What’s going on here?” asks MoveOn.

Well, you see, Gallup knows the influence its polls wield, MoveOn says. If the public perceives one candidate to be winning, more voters will side with the winning candidate. Journalists cover the polls, pundits comment on them, and the public is fooled into thinking Bush will win. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But why does Gallup want Bush to win?

MoveOn suggests it’s all because Gallup Jr. “is a devout evangelical Christian.”

Gallup “has been quoted as calling his polling ‘a kind of ministry.’ And a few months ago, he said “the most profound purpose of polls is to see how people are responding to God.”

“We thought the purpose [of polling] is to faithfully and factually report public opinion,” states the ad.

Soooo…I stand by my point of concern…that an organization that weilds as much influence on public opinion as does the Gallup Poll, whether Jr is off focusing on his books about evangelizing or not, has the power to persuade.

It was for this very reason that post-Reagan landslide election, that there was considerable discussion about the influence of announcing election results occurring on the east coast and the effects that had on voter decision on the west coast.  Whereas, if they felt that Reagan was ahead, then the theory was that more people would simply vote for the ‘winner’ and therefore become a ’self-fulfilling prophecy.  I think the results speak for themselves.

The other by-product of this type of exaggerated reporting is that those on the ‘losing’ (in this case democrats) would simply not bother to vote at all.

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