CHURCH EXTERIOR ART.jpg

If you've been in church recently, the chances are pretty good that politics has come up during the Sunday sermon.

A new study by the Pew Research Center shows that nearly two-thirds of churchgoers have heard their pastors hold forth on matters political -- in addition to matters spiritual.

Religious liberty and homosexuality topped the list of issues churchgoers said they heard discussed from pulpit, with four in 10 respondents saying they heard from clergy on each of these issues in the late spring and early summer.

Nearly three in 10 said abortion and immigration were topics discussion, while one in five said they heard about the environment and economic inequality.

The survey of 4,602 adults nationwide was conducted online and by mail from June 5 to July 7. Four in 10 respondents told Pew that they had attended religious services at least once or twice in the few months before the poll was conducted.

Within that group, 64 percent said they heard clergy at their church or other place of worship speak about at least one of the six social and political issues mentioned in the survey, with nearly half (46 percent) "indicating that religious leaders had spoken out on multiple issues," the poll found.

And even though nearly everyone you know has an opinion about the presidential candidates, the clergy steered mostly clear of taking a position on their relative virtues and vices, the Pew survey found.

Just 14 percent of recent churchgoers told Pew that they'd heard discussion of the presidential candidates from the pulpit.

And, as you might expect, the tone the clergy took in these discussions varied by issue:

"About three-in-ten people who recently attended religious services say they heard clergy speak out in defense of religious liberty - a position mainly associated with political conservatives in the U.S. in recent years - while just 2 percent say their clergy contended that religious liberty is not really under attack (although 6 percent say they heard both messages)," the survey found.

The clergy struck a similarly conservative tone on abortion, but heard more liberal messages about immigration and the environment:

"Roughly one-in-five of those who have attended religious services recently say their clergy have spoken out about the need to be welcoming and supportive toward immigrants, compared with just 4 percent whose clergy have expressed a desire mainly for stricter immigration enforcement. And while 16 percent say religious leaders have spoken out in favor of protecting the environment, just 1 percent say they have heard their clergy speak out only against environmental regulations."

The tone on other issues, such as homosexuality, was less easy to pigeonhole. For instance, one in five adults who recently attended services say their clergy spoke out against homosexuality, but 12 percent preached messages of acceptance and tolerance.

And in case you're thinking that pulplits nationwide have suddenly become hotbeds for political discourse, think again. More than three-quarters of respondents said they heard about such issues "rarely" or "never" during services, Pew found.

That churches can jeopardize their tax-exempt status by getting too explicitly political probably plays a large role in that reticence.

We'd also like to think it's because churches have far larger philosophical fish to fry than mere earthly politics.

Have your say in the comments.