Robert P. Jones Quotes & Sayings

He concluded that while the Constitution protected freedom of religious belief, the same privilege did not necessarily extend to freedom of religious action. — Robert P. Jones

These stark divides prompt a simple but fundamental question: why can't White Christian America understand how African Americans feel about the black men who have died at the hands of white police officers? To — Robert P. Jones

the U.S. Census Bureau has not asked about religious affiliation since 1946 — Robert P. Jones

Today, former Catholics - most of them white and relatively young - make up 15 percent of the total adult population.45 — Robert P. Jones

Obama's election had challenged many whites' central cultural assumption - that the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) was the only authentic model of citizenship. — Robert P. Jones

Two thousand eight was the last year on record in which Protestants as a whole - not just white Protestants - represented a majority of the country.10 — Robert P. Jones

Like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, resurrection by human power rather than divine spirit always produces a monstrosity. If — Robert P. Jones

Christians began to slip in the late 1990s, expanding the tent to include white Catholics helped perpetuate the illusion that White Christian America was still the country's dominant religious culture. But — Robert P. Jones

Defining a mono-racial church as one that has more than 80 percent of its membership consisting of a single racial group, nearly nine in ten (86 percent) congregations, which account for 80 percent of churchgoers, remain essentially mono-racial.46 — Robert P. Jones

White Christian America had its golden age in the 1950s, after the hardships and victories of World War Ii and before the cultural upheavals of the 1960s. June Cleaver was its mother, Andy Griffith was its sheriff, Norman Rockwell was its artist. and Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale were its ministers. — Robert P. Jones

America's still-segregated modern life is marked by three realities. First, geographic segregation has meant that - although places like Ferguson and Baltimore may seem like extreme examples - most white Americans continue to live in locales that insulate them from the obstacles facing many majority-black communities.21 Second, this legacy, compounded by social self-segregation, has led to a stark result: the overwhelming majority of white Americans don't have a single close relationship with a person who isn't white. Third, there are virtually no American institutions positioned to resolve these persistent problems of systemic and social segregation. — Robert P. Jones

blunt conclusion was that "Christianity has an image problem" among American youth.48 Similarly, — Robert P. Jones

When Franklin Graham recently called for a boycott of gay-friendly companies on his Facebook page, it quickly became apparent that to follow through on his own initiative, he'd need to delete his Facebook account (he didn't), stop using any Microsoft software, and shut down all Apple devices. When he publicly moved the bank accounts of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to BB&T Bank in protest of a Wells Fargo ad featuring a lesbian couple and their daughter, it generated this Miami Herald headline: "Billy Graham Group Moving Money to BB&T, Sponsor of Miami Beach Gay Pride Fundraiser."110 — Robert P. Jones

Protestant-Catholic disputes have been more easily eradicated, while racial prejudice has the stubborn resilience of a weed that breaks off at the ground level, leaving the taproot intact. — Robert P. Jones

For 2015, the Equality Index found that blacks had on average only 56 percent of the economic well-being and 61 percent of social justice benefits that whites enjoy. — Robert P. Jones

A recent example of the racial reconciliation paradigm at work is the #AllLivesMatter retort. In an interview in The New York Times, philosopher Judith Butler unpacked the problem: If we jump too quickly to the universal formulation, "all lives matter," then we miss the fact that black people have not yet been included in the idea of "all lives." That said, it is true that all lives matter (we can then debate about when life begins or ends). But to make that universal formulation concrete, to make that into a living formulation, one that truly extends to all people, we have to foreground those lives that are not mattering now, to mark that exclusion, and militate against it.113 — Robert P. Jones

it's no longer possible to believe that White Christian America sets the tone for the country's culture as a whole. — Robert P. Jones

1845, when the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society declared that any slave owner would be disqualified from consideration for missionary service, Baptist churches in the South seceded and formed the Southern Baptist Convention so that members would not have to choose between their slaves and their calling to be missionaries. — Robert P. Jones

The racial perception gap highlights one of the most powerful - but also least discussed - divisions between Americans on the topic of race: the rift between the descendants of White Christian America and the rest of the country. — Robert P. Jones