Religion News Service has produced a revealing graph that shows the direct correlation between religious beliefs and political ideology.

Taking the findings of Pew’s Religious Landscape survey that focused on the political ideologies of 44 different American religious groups, RNS plotted the results on a graph that provides a clear breakdown of religious denominations' views on the size of government and government involvement in moral issues: 

The size of the circle indicates the relative size of the church's population.

The placement shows church members' opinions of big v. small government and greater or lesser government protection of morality. RNS provides these notes on the two axes:

• Government involvement in the economy (x-axis). This is the major ideological divide in the country. At one end are the “small government” folks who want a  less regulation, fewer services, and more market-oriented policies. At the other are those who want a stronger safety net, tougher consumer protections, and greater checks on the economy. In the Pew survey, this is measured by a question asking whether they wanted: “a smaller government providing fewer services” or “a bigger government providing more services”?
• Government involvement in morality (y-axis). How much should government be involved in regulating morality? Some people believe that the government should protect morality and should uphold traditional values and religion. Others think government should “stay out of bedrooms” and keep up a high wall between church and state. This can be measured using a question that asked people to pick which statement comes closest to their beliefs: “The government should do more to protect morality in society” or “I worry the government is too involved in this issue”?

Here are some of RNS’ key observations, including that clearly there is a direct correlation between religious and political ideologies, Evangelical Christians are “classic conservatives,” Catholics are generally center on both size of government and government protection of morality, and there is a major divide between Orthodox Jews and other forms of Judaism.  

• Churches that are similar religiously are also similar ideologically.
• Evangelicals are classic conservatives (small role in economy, protect morality).
• Pentecostals want a larger role for government on economic issues.
• Presbyterian Church in America, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and smaller Methodist churches have historical ties to both evangelicalism and mainline denominations. On the question of government and morality, they are between other evangelical churches and mainline denominations.
• Mainline churches hold similar economic views as evangelicals but want less government involvement protecting traditional morality.
• Christians in traditionally black denominations and evangelicals are similar in their views toward morality policy, but there is a large divide on economics.
• Catholics are large and represent the center on both dimensions.
• Jews are centrist on the economy. There is a major divide between both Conservative and Orthodox Jews and other streams of Judaism. This divide falls along the morality dimension.
• The “nones” are united on their ideology toward morality (keep government out!) but there are interesting divides on government services. Atheists want more government services; agnostics favor less governmental involvement in the economy. If you consider Unitarians part of this group, then they’re the most supportive of government services. 

One group not mentioned in RNS’ highlights is Muslims, who—similar to Jehovah's Witnesses and African American Baptists and Pentecostals—want both bigger government and greater government involvement on morality.

​H/T HuffPost.