DAVID MASCI (Senior Fellow, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life): Well, there are a range of different opinions in the American religious community. Jewish denominations and mainline Protestant churches, particularly more liberal mainline Protestant churches, support embryonic stem cell research. They say that embryos have intrinsic value and worth, but the incredible possibilities that stem cell research offer \u201d\u201d cures for cancer and things like that \u201d\u201doutweigh those concerns and considerations. On the other side, you have the Roman Catholic Church and you have more evangelical Protestant churches like the Southern Baptist Convention or the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. These churches oppose embryonic stem cell research. They say an embryo was a person and a person has the right to life and you can\u2019t take that life away, even for the best of reasons.<\/p>\n
[KIM] LAWTON: What about the people in the pews? Do they agree with the leadership of these institutions?<\/p>\n
Mr. MASCI: White evangelical Protestants tend to support their churches\u2019 positions on this, only 31 percent of evangelicals support embryonic stem cell research, so a substantial majority say no, we don\u2019t want embryonic stem cell research. With Catholics it\u2019s the other way around. Fifty-nine percent of American Catholics support embryonic stem cell research, which of course goes exactly against what the Church\u2019s leadership is saying. Now when you ask Catholics who attend Mass regularly, weekly, whether they support embryonic stem cell research, that number drops to 46 percent. So people actually in the pews, people who are attending Roman Catholic services, they do \u201d\u201d they are more likely to support their leadership\u2019s views on this than Catholics as a whole.<\/p>\n