The feelings of the American public have grown warmer towards nearly all religious groups in the past 12 months – except for one. There has no warming up in the feelings that Americans have for evangelicals.
But nor is their any 'cooling' of feelings towards evangelicals.
Jews and Catholics continue to receive warmest ratings, People also feel more warmly about atheists and Muslims, who have moved up from 'cool' to 'neutral'.
Evangelical Protestants, already rated relatively warmly at 61 degrees, are the only group for which the mean rating has not changed since the question was last asked in 2014.
The study comes after an election campaign when conservative evangelicals were controversially divided between supporters and opponents of Donald Trump.
Asked to rate a variety of groups on a 'feeling thermometer' ranging from 0 to 100, nearly all groups were rated more warmly than in a similar survey two years ago.
While Americans still feel coolest toward Muslims and atheists, mean ratings for these two groups increased from chilly 40 and 41 degrees to more neutral ratings of 48 and 50.
Jews and Catholics continue to be among the groups that receive the warmest ratings – at 67 degrees even warmer than in 2014.
Americans' feelings toward Mormons and Hindus shifted from relatively neutral places on the thermometer to somewhat warmer ratings of 54 and 58.
Ratings of Buddhists rose from 53 to 60.
And mainline Protestants, whom respondents were not asked to rate in 2014, receive a warm rating of 65 in the new survey.
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