More Americans believe the Christmas story is historically accurate than believe in climate change.
According to a new Pew Survey of over 1,500 U.S. adults, 73% say they believe Jesus was born to a virgin, and 74% say they believe Jesus’s birth was announced to the shepherds by an angel (among Protestant respondents, that rate is 91% and 90%, respectively). 78% of women say they believe in the virgin birth, 65% of the respondents said they believe all elements of the Christmas story are factually true.
These findings are remarkably consistent with last year’s Pew study which also found that 73% of respondents believe Jesus was born to a virgin. And a 2007 Gallup poll found that 31% of Americans thought that the Bible was “the actual word of God, to be taken literally.”
In this year’s survey, 44% of Americans say they thought Christian symbols should be allowed on government property, even if other religious symbols arent.
By contrast, a Pew study of from January found that only 61% of Americans think that climate change is happening, and only 40% believe it’s caused by human behavior. Which means that almost twice as many Americans believe in the virgin birth as believe in human-induced global warming.
- Volodymyr Zelensky and the Spirit of Ukraine: TIME's 2022 Person of the Year
- Mickey Guyton Is TIME's 2022 Breakthrough Artist of the Year
- The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2022
- Column: What Elon Musk Gets Wrong About Free Speech
- The Forgotten Story of One of the First U.S. Soldiers Killed Overseas After Pearl Harbor
- Why You're More Likely to Get Sick in the Winter, According to New Research
- Column: What the Protests Tell Us About China's Future
- 18 Last-Minute Gifts for Everyone on Your List
