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March 12, 2015|4:28 pm

Illegal immigrants from Guatemala, who were deported from the U.S., wait while collecting their belongings from immigration officers processing their re-entry at La Aurora airport in Guatemala City, August 14, 2014. A flight carrying 135 illegal Guatemalan migrants which departed from Brownfield, Texas, U.S., arrived at La Aurora airport on Tuesday, according to immigration authorities.

Nine out of 10 Evangelicals say that the Scripture has no impact on their views toward immigration reform, according to a poll released Wednesday. The poll similarly found that nearly seven in 10 Evangelicals have never been encouraged by their church to reach out to immigrants.

The Christian polling organization LifeWay Research surveyed 1,000 Evangelicalson their attitudes toward immigration reform for the Evangelical Immigration Table and World Relief. The poll found that 61 percent of Evangelicals favor immigration reform that will provide a path toward citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Meanwhile, 86 percent of Evangelicals said they favor greater border security and 88 percent said immigration reform should uphold "the rule of law."

Although the two-thirds of Evangelicals said they want Congress to act on immigration reform before the end of the year, only 12 percent said their views on immigration reform were influenced by biblical principles. Evangelicals' views on immigration reform are more likely to be influenced by relationships with immigrants (17 percent), friends and family (16 percent) and the media (16 percent), than the Bible.

"The sad part of this research on immigration is that American Evangelicals are more influenced by the media than by their Bibles and their churches combined," Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said in a press release. "We need to turn off our TVs and open up our Bibles."

The poll did, however, find that most Evangelicals are interested in learning what the Bible has to say about immigrants. Sixty-eight percent of Evangelicals say their churches and pastors have never preached about the importance of reaching out to immigrants. The same number, 68 percent, say they would "value" hearing sermons on the Bible's views on immigration.

"I was encouraged that almost seven in 10 Evangelicals wanted to hear a sermon on how Biblical principles apply to this issue. At the same time, I was discouraged that the survey also said that almost one in five hadn't heard anything from their churches or pastors," Kevin McBride, senior pastor at Raymond Baptist Church in Raymond, N.H., told reporters during a Wednesday press call announcing the poll's results.

"As Evangelicals, our final source of faith and practice is Scripture," McBride continued. "As pastors, we should be helping our churches in this area. The study sounds like I'm in the minority of pastors that have been addressing this issue. People in our churches want to know how Scripture applies to what they are seeing in the daily news and I am glad the Evangelical Immigration Table has developed tools for pastors to do this."

Although the survey indicates that the majority of churches are not speaking on immigration reform, 53 percent said they are already familiar with Bible's teachings on immigrants.

The rest is here:
Poll: 9 in 10 Evangelicals Say Bible Doesn't Influence Immigration Views