December 9, 2002

Barna poll: Non-Christians not impressed with evangelicals
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___VENTURA, Calif.--Non-Christian adults in the United States view "evangelical" Christians somewhat more kindly than prostitutes but with less affection than lesbians and lawyers.
___That's according to new data released by the Barna Research Group, which recently conducted a national telephone poll of adults who do not consider themselves Christians. The poll asked respondents to record their impressions of 11 categories of people, including military officers, ministers, "born-again" Christians, Democrats, Republicans, real-estate agents, movie and TV performers, laywers, lesbians, evangelicals and prostitutes.
___Evangelicals received favorable marks from only 22 percent of the non-Christians interviewed, higher than the 5 percent approval rating given prostitutes but lower than the 23 percent rating given lesbians and Republicans.
___Evangelicals ranked 10th out of the 11 categories among those reporting "favorable" impressions.
___On the other hand, ministers as a group came in second, with a 44 percent favorable rating, behind military officers, who scored 56 percent favorable.
___"Born-again" Christians also fared better as a group than evangelicals, drawing a 32 percent favorable rating, the third-highest of all categories.
___Pollster George Barna interprets the results as evidence of the power of labeling in American society.
___"Our studies show that many of the people who have negative impressions of evangelicals do not know what or who an evangelical is," he said in a statement accompanying the survey results.
___"People's impressions are often driven by incomplete, inaccurate or out-of-context information conveyed under the guise of objectivity, when, in fact, there is a point of view being advanced by the information source."
___For example, he pointed to the fact that "born-again" Christians drew a more favorable rating than evangelical Christians, "although few adults are able to identify any substantive differences between those two groups."
___"This is most likely a result of the thrashing evangelicals receive in the media," he said. "It seems that millions of non-Christians have negative impressions of evangelicals, even though they cannot define what an evangelical is, accurately identify the perspectives of the group or identify even a handful of people they know personally who are evangelicals."
___Barna urged Christians to draw a lesson from this study as they are tempted to judge other people by stereotypes as well.
___"We may also consider people groups about whom we have developed a negative or unflattering impression and examine the basis of those attitudes," he said. "We find that when people examine the foundation of their impressions and then talk to a few people from the groups of which they have a low opinion, they discover those people are not so bad after all. There may be some differences of opinion, but the negative impressions that result in animosity and division often dissipate if we dig beneath the surface of our attitudes."
___The findings of this survey are based on a national telephone poll of 1,002 adults conducted in May. Among that sample were 270 adults who described themselves as non-Christians. The findings reported for opinions of non-Christians carry a margin of error of plus or minus 6.2 percentage points.


___
___
___
___
___
___
___
___
___
___
___
___
___
___
___

Question: Is your impression of people in this group generally
favorable, generally unfavorable or somewhere in-between?
	Favorable	In-Between	Unfavorable
Military officers	56%	32%	6%
Ministers	44%	40%	9%
"Born-again" Christians	32%	41%	17%
Democrats	32%	47%	12%
Real-estate agents	30%	51%	11%
Movie/TV performers	25%	54%	14%
Lawyers	24%	53%	18%
Republicans	23%	47%	22%
Lesbians	23%	38%	30%
Evangelicals	22%	33%	23%
Prostitutes	5%	29%	55%
The balance of respondents in each category indicated they did not know any answer to the question. Data reported by Barna Research Group.

Get printer-friendly version of this story


Send this story to a friend



News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

---

Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!/ Signup for FirstLook