You would never know that on social media though. A 2022 Pew Research survey of U.S. adults found that self-identified “born-again” or Evangelical Protestants held favorable views of Catholics at 37% versus unfavorable views at 14%. A large share were neutral or said they did not know enough to rate the group.
This has been my personal experience exactly. About 14% (a tiny minority) are virulently anti-Catholic and extremely loud. They’re very active on the Internet, and some even do it as a full-time job, giving lectures on church circuits around the nation. If one is willing to travel, and able to find churches willing to pay, one can make good money off attacking the Catholic Church for a professional living.
More than a third of Evangelicals actually have positive views of Catholics. While about half (49%) of all Evangelicals don’t care, and have no particular opinion one way or another. Now let’s put this into real numbers. In the United States there are about 60 million Evangelical Protestants. So….
- About 14% are anti-Catholic, that’s 8.4 million Evangelicals
- About 37% are pro-Catholic, that’s 22.2 million Evangelicals
- About 49% don’t care, that’s about 29.4 million Evangelicals
Mainstream Protestantism is overwhelmingly liberal, and it’s dying out fast. So their institutionalized anti-Catholicism is somewhat irrelevant now, and most of them don’t take it that seriously anymore. It’s important to keep this perspective. So, let’s move on.,,
There are about 123 million non-Christians in the United States. Among them, about 25 million hold unfavorable views of Catholics, concentrated among atheists and non-religious people. Let that sink in. In the United States, most anti-Catholics are non-Christians (about 25 million people), while Evangelical anti-Catholics are only 8.4 million. In the U.S., Anti-Catholicism is far more pervasive in the non-Christian community than it is in Protestantism. It’s about three times higher among non-Christians than it is among Evangelical Protestants.
It wasn’t always this way. Just 50 years ago the numbers were very different, and most anti-Catholicism came from Protestantism in general (both Mainline and Evangelical). That’s just not the case anymore. Anti-Catholicism is dying among Protestants, and that includes Evangelicals. It appears to be rising, however, among non-Christians (particularly atheists and non-religious), and this should be far more concerning. Most of these people vote Democrat in elections, and the Democratic Party is clearly being taken over by Marxists in the DSA. Marxists have over a century-long history of physically persecuting Catholics whenever they get into power.
Let that sink in when you go to the polls in November. If the Democrats win in the Midterms, they’ll take that as an American endorsement of the DSA and go even more Marxist in the future. There is a way to overcome this. I wrote about it in my book Pine Tree Politics. The book is a short manifesto for Christian patriotism: the Pine Tree Flag’s “Appeal to Heaven” still stands, politics runs downstream from the Gospel, and Catholics and Evangelicals together must take the Great Commission into the public square. It rejects two-kingdoms quietism, dispensationalist Zionism, and the myth of a naked public square. Christ is King! The common good is not optional. Family, parish, and local government come first under subsidiarity — not Washington D.C., not a theocracy, and not a private faith that leaves the republic to a secular administrative state. MAGA energy is useful only if it is baptized. We must recover the Christian character of the American order, or watch it collapse.
Shane Schaetzel is an author of Catholic books and he is an Evangelical convert to the Catholic Church. His articles have been featured on LifeSiteNews, The Remnant Newspaper, Forward in Christ, and Catholic Online. You can read Shane’s books at ShaneSchaetzel.Com
