Are Evangelicals Really so Awful?

Shayne Raynor links to a Christianity Today article on widespread divorce, premarital sex, and racism among evangelical Christians. The conclusions are premised on recent surveys by Gallup and Barna. Raynor notes:

Before some of my conservative readers try to spin this as polling bias, save your keystrokes. Because even if all these numbers were improved by half, I'd still be embarrassed. Sadly, the modern evangelical movement in many places has become a brokerage for fire insurance. United Methodists are guilty of it too, although we have less of an excuse because we have holiness and discipleship in our heritage, so we know better than to focus only on "walk the aisle" Christianity. For all of its good points, we need to face the fact that modern evangelicalism has created more than its share of shallow Christians.

Agreed. But I've done some research and have found the polling methodology to be curious. Gallup lets you get a 30-day free trial registration, so sign up and let's have a look at the numbers.

First, what is an evangelical? There are lots of definitions going around. Donald Sensing defines evangelicism as:

...a theology that holds the greatest imperative for a Christian is to lead others to confess personal faith in Jesus Christ as risen Lord and savior. Its primary fealty is to Christ personally rather to his ethical propositions or moral examples. Evangelicalism insists that human sins have been fully and eternally remitted by the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection by the power of God. Hence, all persons who “believe in their hearts that Jesus was raised from the dead and confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord will be saved,” to slightly paraphrase Saint Paul’s teaching in Romans 10.

This is a theological definition. But evangelicals, in the sense that Gallup and Barna are using, are a social cohort -- a group of individuals with common and discrete characteristics. I preface with this distinction because I think that an evangelical, in the sociological sense, is someone who is strongly culturally tied to a church.

So how do Gallup and Barna identify evangelicals? Gallup defines it as someone who has had a 'born again' experience. Theologically, I agree. But if that self-identified person does not show up to church at least once a week, I do not think that he could be defined sociologically as an evangelical or, better put, a member of the evangelical culture. Gallup says that 41% of Americans self-identify as evangelical. Maybe so, but 41% of Americans aren't showing up to church on a weekly basis. Barna defined the Christians within their sample as those who have "accepted Jesus Christ as their savior"...and that's it, no other identifiers. So Gallup and Barna are theologically correct in their defintion, but not sociologically correct.

Another Gallup survey says that 41% of Americans claim to attend church at least once a week, which I find unbelievable. I would have placed weekly church attendance down lower, at perhaps 20%, with regional variations. I may be falling into the "Nobody I know voted for Nixon" fallacy, but I've never lived in a community with such high church attendance, and I'm from the Deep South. However, this number does support Gallup's conclusion about evangelicals and demonstrated morality.

All of this is not to say that divorce, premarital sex, and other moral problems do not exist for evangelicals, possibly even at the levels that Christianity Today is talking about. But I think that the polling methodology was sufficiently flawed as to call into doubt the conclusions being drawn.