07-30-2007, 04:19 PM
And who is the Barna Group? Interesting question, with an answer that obviously shows how they got their results.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Barna
These numbers are, dollars to donuts, deflated in order to show what Mr. Barna wants to show: that those who "really" believe are a small minority of faithful, engaged in a David-vs-Goliath struggle with the giant of secular society. Evangelical isn't just an objective category for him and his company, nor is it a matter of self-identification. It is a goal to be attained. Hardly an objective source on who is and isn't Evangelical, I'd say.
Their definition of evangelical is a remarkably thorough affair, excluding anyone with so much as a scrap of religious moderation left in their bodies.
http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=...TopicID=17
So, perhaps the group of people this describes is only 9%. That alone is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies, because a tenth of the electorate is definitely non-trivial. If 9% of the voting public were fundamentalist Muslim, I'll give you 2000-1 odds you wouldn't be so dismissive. But the group of people who believe much or most of that definition, who go to those churches, listen to those preachers, and self-identify as being "Evangelical," is much larger. It is them who I am talking about. Depending on when you poll them, and how you phrase the question, that's anywhere from about 15% through to about 40%.
(Monstrous? Preposterous? I'm not the one who claimed a number that's 1/18th of even this maddeningly conservative estimate (in both senses) matched their personal experience.)
-Jester
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Barna
These numbers are, dollars to donuts, deflated in order to show what Mr. Barna wants to show: that those who "really" believe are a small minority of faithful, engaged in a David-vs-Goliath struggle with the giant of secular society. Evangelical isn't just an objective category for him and his company, nor is it a matter of self-identification. It is a goal to be attained. Hardly an objective source on who is and isn't Evangelical, I'd say.
Their definition of evangelical is a remarkably thorough affair, excluding anyone with so much as a scrap of religious moderation left in their bodies.
http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=...TopicID=17
So, perhaps the group of people this describes is only 9%. That alone is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies, because a tenth of the electorate is definitely non-trivial. If 9% of the voting public were fundamentalist Muslim, I'll give you 2000-1 odds you wouldn't be so dismissive. But the group of people who believe much or most of that definition, who go to those churches, listen to those preachers, and self-identify as being "Evangelical," is much larger. It is them who I am talking about. Depending on when you poll them, and how you phrase the question, that's anywhere from about 15% through to about 40%.
(Monstrous? Preposterous? I'm not the one who claimed a number that's 1/18th of even this maddeningly conservative estimate (in both senses) matched their personal experience.)
-Jester