http://www.thechurchreport.com/mag_article.php?pageno=1&mid=640&pname=January&pyear=2006
Back of the Book
by Dr. George Barna
Commitment to Christianity Depends on How It's Measured
Four out of every five adults in the United States consider themselves to be Christian. How committed are they to the Christian faith? It depends on how you measure commitment. That’s the conclusion of a new report from The Barna Group, based on nationwide surveys with a random sample of 4,015 people conducted this year. The research explored eight different measures of people’s commitment to their faith.
Eight Measures of Commitment
The indicators of commitment that showed the broadest attachment were those that assessed people’s psychological commitment to their chosen faith, which included:
• “Have you ever made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in your life today?” (Seventy-two percent said “yes.”)
• “Your religious faith is very important in your life today.” (Seventy-one percent strongly agreed.)
The research found that more demanding involvement in practical forms of Christianity generated lower scores, such as:
• “The single, most important purpose of your life is to love God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul.” (Sixty-two percent strongly agreed.)
• “How committed are you to the Christian faith?” (Forty-two percent said they are “absolutely committed.”)
The lowest scores were recorded for the pair of indicators that required the most intense level of participation in the Christian faith:
• Twenty-nine percent had attended a church service, prayed to God and read from the Bible during the past week.
• Sixteen percent said the highest priority in their life was their faith.
Who’s Most Committed?
A demographic analysis of the eight measures of commitment showed highly consistent trends in relation to gender, age, region, ethnicity and faith subgroups.
Women were more likely than men to express a higher level of commitment to the Christian faith for all eight of the factors studied.
Adults who were 40 or younger – i.e., those in the Baby Bust or Mosaic generations – were less likely than older adults to indicate commitment to their faith in relation to each of the eight measures. In addition, the survey found that the older a person was, the more likely they were to be committed to the Christian faith in connection with six out of the eight measures tested.
Residents of the South were the most likely to express significant commitment on seven of the eight measures. Blacks emerged as the ethnic group most likely to be committed to Christianity.
Out of more than 60 subgroups studied in this research, evangelical Christians were the top-ranked people group for each of the eight measures of faith commitment.
The most dramatic differences were found in relation to making their faith the highest priority in their life (55 percent of evangelicals claimed to do so, versus 16 percent of the population-at-large) and demonstrating an active faith (73 percent had attended church, read the Bible and prayed during the preceding week, compared to 29 percent nationally).
Protestant adults had higher scores than did Catholics on all eight measures of commitment. On average, Protestants were 66 percent more likely than Catholics to say they were committed to their faith in the manner posed by the survey question.
Dr. George Barna is an author, pastor and the founder of The Barna Group in Ventura, Calif., a firm specializing in conducting research for Christian ministries and nonprofits.
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