SALT LAKE CITY — A national survey has found that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were ranked alongside Muslims and atheists as religious groups that did not share the respondents' beliefs and values, according to the Associated Press.
The study, by the Institute for Jewish & Community Research, said that two of three adults surveyed said atheists are unlike them.
Meanwhile, 56 percent also viewed Muslims and members of the Church of Jesus Christ as holding values and beliefs dissimilar to their own.
"When we put in Mormons as one of the groups . . . I did not expect that finding," said Gary Tobin, president of the institute. "It was really a benchmark to judge or evaluate some other groups."
The institute is a San Francisco-based think tank that does research for Jewish and other communities.
The study was administered by International Communications Research, a Pennsylvania public opinion research organization, which questioned 1,013 randomly selected adults from across the country May 2-7, 2002. The survey has an error rate of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.