TRADITIONALLY, JAMAICANS have been regarded as a religious
people and a recent Gleaner-commissioned poll confirms this.
To the question, "Regardless of whether or not you go to church, do you consider yourself to be a religious person or not?", a whopping 92 per cent said yes. Six per cent said no while one per cent was uncertain.
When asked by the Bill Johnson team "What religious denomination do you consider yourself?", 24 per cent said they belong to the Church of God. Thirteen per cent responded Seventh-day Adventist; nine per cent said Baptist, eight per cent were Pentecostal while Rasta-farians and New Testament accounted for seven per cent.
Interestingly, established church groups such as the Anglican (three per cent), Roman Catholic (two per cent) and Jehovah's Witness (two per cent) all polled low numbers.
With Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller making no secret of her Christian faith, Mr. Johnson said that he found one aspect of the survey interesting.
"Thirty per cent of people who say they went to church regularly, tend to favour the (governing People's National Party) PNP," he said.
OLD-TIME PREACHING
Bishop Clayton Martin, a senior member of the Church of God of Prophecy in St. Andrew, said that since there are several branches of that denomination the Johnson figures may be ambiguous.
However, he told The Gleaner that while Church of God groups differ on some principles, their commitment to old-time preaching has helped to attract new members during the past 10 years.
"The outreach programmes like tent crusades in communities have reached people. Person to person evangelism is very effective," he said.
The Gleaner-Bill Johnson poll, conducted on May 13 and 14, saw 1,008 persons being interviewed in the 14 parishes. Fifty-two per cent of those interviewed were male. The margin of error is plus or minus three per cent.
TOMORROW: What are some of the things you like the least about going to church?
