Published in the edited volume Faith, Politics and Sexual Diversity in Canada and the United States, PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones and PRRI Research Director Daniel Cox explore the complexity of both elite and mass public opinion on gay and lesbian rights within the black church with the chapter “Liberal with Conservative Vibrations: African-American Protestants and the Struggle over Legal Rights for Gay and Lesbian Couples.” Incorporating qualitative data culled from black pastors focus groups with public opinion surveys of African American Protestants, they find that two distinct theological strands—the prophetic tradition and pietism—provide competing lenses for evaluating gay and lesbian rights claims and sexual morality. Black pastors responded to the same-sex marriage debate by combining one of three rhetorical strategies: minimizing the issue in favor of focusing on issues of economic and racial justice, framing it in terms of universal human rights rather than particularistic gay rights, or focusing on their obligation to create a “whosoever church” ministering to all people.

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