President Barack Obama famously said he was "evolving" in the years leading up to his eventual support for marriage equality. New numbers from the Pew Research Center show that several groups of Christians are, like the president, evolving.
Bringing up the rear, though, in absolute level of support and speed of evolution are white evangelicals, a group with just 23 percent support for equality, a number that held steady over the past year. By contrast:
The sharpest change has occurred among black Protestants, only 32% of whom favored same-sex marriage in our aggregated 2013 polling. A survey we conducted last month found that figure has now risen to 43%.
There also has been an uptick in support for same-sex marriage among white mainline Protestants (from 55% in 2013 to 62% this year). [...]
Although the changes among Catholics in the past year have not been statistically significant, support for same-sex marriage has increased among that group over the past several years. Roughly six-in-ten U.S. Catholics (59%) now favor same-sex marriage.
As the swift rise in support among black Protestants shows, things can change in a hurry. But white evangelicals aren't just lagging, they're falling further behind. It's already clear how history will judge this issue; time for the laggards to catch up.