Associated Press

Compared with the devil, angels carry more credence in America.

Angels even get more credence than, well, hell. More than astrology, reincarnation, and the belief that physical things can have spiritual energies.

In fact, about 7 in 10 U.S. adults say they believe in angels, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

"People are yearning for something greater than themselves – beyond their own understanding," said Jack Grogger, a chaplain for the Los Angeles Angels and a longtime Southern California fire captain who has aided many people in their gravest moments.

That search for something bigger, he said, can take on many forms, from following a religion to crafting a self-driven purpose to believing in, of course, angels.

"For a lot of people, angels are a lot safer to worship," said Grogger, who also pastors a nondenominational church in Orange, Calif., and is a chaplain for the NHL`s Anaheim Ducks.

People turn to angels for comfort, he said. They are familiar, regularly showing up in pop culture as well as in the Bible. Comparably, worshipping Jesus is far more involved; when Grogger preaches about angels it is with the context that they are part of God`s kingdom.

American`s belief in angels (69%) is about on par with belief in heaven and the power of prayer, but bested by belief in God or a higher power (79%). Fewer U.S. adults believe in the devil or Satan (56%), astrology (34%), reincarnation (34%), and that physical things can have spiritual energies, such as plants, rivers or crystals (42%).

The widespread acceptance of angels shown in the AP-NORC poll makes sense to Susan Garrett, an angel expert and New Testament professor at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Kentucky. It tracks with historical surveys, she said, adding that the U.S. remains a faithfilled country even as more Americans reject organized religion.

But if the devil is in the details, so are people’s understandings of angels.

"They’re very malleable," Garrett said of angels. "You can have any one of a number of quite different worldviews in terms of your understanding of how the cosmos is arranged, whether there’s spirit beings, whether there’s life after death, whether there’s a God … and still find a place for angels in that worldview."

Talk of angels, Garrett said, is often also about something else, like the ways God interacts with the world and other hardto-articulate ideas.

The large number of U.S. adults who say they believe in angels includes 84% of those with a religious affiliation – 94% of evangelical Protestants, 81% of mainline Protestants and 82% of Catholics – and 33% of those without one. And of those angel-believing religiously unaffiliated, that includes 2% of atheists, 25% of agnostics and 50% of those identified as "nothing in particular."

The broad acceptance is what fascinates San Francisco-based witch and author Devin Hunter: Angels show up independently in different religions and traditions, making them part of the fabric that unites humanity.

"We’re all getting to the same conclusion," said Hunter, who spent 16 years as a professional medium, and started communicating as a child with what he believed were angels.

Hunter estimates that a belief in angels applies to about half of those practicing modern witchcraft today, and for some who don`t believe, their rejection is often rooted in the religious trauma they experienced growing up.

"Angels become a very big deal“ for long-time practitioners who`ve made occultism their primary focus, said Hunter, an angel-loving occultist. "We cannot escape them in any way, shape or form."

Jennifer Goodwin of Oviedo, Florida, also is among the roughly seven in 10 U.S. adults who say they believe in angels. She isn’t sure if God exists and rejects the afterlife dichotomy of heaven and hell, but the recent deaths of her parents solidified her views on these celestial beings.