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Christianity Today, February (Web-only), 2008 |

The Problem with Counting Christians

Pew's new Religious Landscape Survey is helpful, but the maps are fuzzier than you might expect.

Elesha Coffman | posted 2/26/2008 10:30AM

The new U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life renders familiar territory remarkable. This poll of more than 35,000 American adults has produced a map of population ...

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TruetoJC

Posted: March 04, 2008 6:07 PM


Thank God our Lord knows how to seperate the sheep from the goats!Of course that does not help in compiling statistics or canvasing fordata of religeous people. Obviously there are problems and I see even more difficulies than shown in this article. Reason to doubt such statistics.

Philip

Posted: February 28, 2008 11:39 AM

I appreciate having these things pointed out to remind us that the statistics don't always tell us what we think, or are told... nonetheless, as a conservative Episcopalian (an oxymoron?) and having both seen a recent poll re: Christian beliefs and comments to a Lenten study in our own church, the run-of-the mill Episcopalian in the pew is about what one would surmise based on polls -- if not more so.

Kent	Posted: February 28, 2008 10:33 AM

We seem to live by polls & surveys these days. This article points out that things are not always what they seem and I think that is a good thing. I belong to a "so called" mainline church. Presbyterian. I heard from my Baptist friends that all Presbyterians were liberal so while looking for a church I steered away from any Presbyterian congregations. But I found that the congregation I now belong to is not liberal in it's theology. It is an evangelical, bible believing church. As the original Presbyterians were. As R.C.Sproul is. If I had answered the survey as to my congregation I would have been put into the "mainline" category. Johnathon Edwards would have been too.

Rick Blumenberg

Posted: February 26, 2008 7:20 PM

When I read of the Pew Survey I was dismayed. The news article may have been poor writing I thought but PBS-TV news also quoted that 44% of Americans either changed churches or left the church. To lump these two together as the same thing is ludicrous. The survey becomes meaningless! One can change churches for many reasons. Many have left "mainline" denominations because they took on non-Christian theologies and practices (example, ordaining homosexuals, blessing same sex marriages, etc.) People who leave these churches see themselves as leaving denominations that have left Christianity. Such a twisted interpretations of facts uncovered makes one question all their informatioin. Example: 51.3% identify as protestants. Did they count non-denominational or Independent churches? If not, this is as silly as Barna (Barnum) saying church-going Christians have the same divorce rates & sexual immorality as none-Christians. Any church-going Christian knows this is pure nonsense and incorrect.

RB	Posted: February 26, 2008 3:56 PM

The survey is a lot more nuanced than this piece portrays. Why must everything become a fight/contest between evangelicals and mainliners? Those mainliners are really evangelicals! Those evangelicals aren't like us. Look at the survey--we're all doing terribly at retaining people. And we're all doing equally well at attracting each other's castoffs. Is this how we want to live? Far from skewing the importance of the fights in denominations, it contextualizes them to the tiny portion of the population involved. For example, the one percent of the population that is Episcopal gets a lot more attention in the press than the sixteen percent that have thrown up their hands in resignation and left altogether. (And compare that percentage to the five percent that is "nondenominational Protestant.") I've been looking for responses to this survey from the religious sector, and I would have hoped for much better in CT's first response.

Al	Posted: February 26, 2008 3:26 PM

The Pew research is a refreshing look on a scale that no one has made the effort to do in the last decade. However, it is about "religious beliefs" of all kinds . . . not the narrow little box that conservative evangelicals use as a framework. Yes, we are about "beliefs" and "behavior" . . . but what about "worldview" and "values". There is a broader much more comprehensive framework under the term "biblical". It appears that the assessment was purely from a self-centered approach . . . 'how does this stand-up against our conservative framework'? The article was much broader and has some very interesting statistics. We are no longer a "Christian nation" as we want to believe. We are - religiously - becoming much more pluralistic. We are not remaining a Trinitarian society with a Jewish contingency but rather a melting pot of beliefs . . . including agnostics and atheists. It is time to get back to the scripture and make sure our foundational message is the Gospel of the Bible.

Jeff	Posted: February 26, 2008 1:56 PM


The author would like to imply that divorce statistics for evangleicals are skewed. That may be, but from my own anecdotal experience, self-identified evangelical church members do in fact divorce at at least the same rate as the general population.

Adam S

Posted: February 26, 2008 1:17 PM


The point is that it is interesting research, but there is a limit to the results that can be drawn from it. Did you read the article?

Howard Pepper

Posted: February 26, 2008 1:05 PM


Thanks for including this analysis of interesting research. The changing scene of religious affiliations and how to summarize them, what they may indicate, etc. are important for a number of reasons. Perhaps leading the pack among them are matters surrounding the passionate social issues you mention, and fighting over them. Most of such fighting is more emotion-laden than is healthy or necessary.

DICK	Posted: February 26, 2008 12:52 PM


WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS ARTIOLE. IT SEEM TO ME TO BE A LOT TO DO ABOUT NOTHING.

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