GLENDALE, Ariz. (Cultural Research Center) — New research from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, led by veteran researcher Dr. George Barna, highlights a significant transformation within the evangelical community over the past 30 years and paints an alarming portrait of modern American evangelicals.
The cultural awareness sparked by the COVID pandemic and the 2024 presidential campaign has awakened millions of Americans to the pervasive depravity within American society. Corrupt politicians, dishonest journalists, broken social institutions, immoral religious leaders, and unconstitutional government programs have dominated headlines, underscoring the nation’s moral decline and the perceived demise of the United States.
Amidst this backdrop, a crucial question emerges — how did America stray so far, so quickly, from its historical Judeo-Christian values?
Dr. George Barna, Director of Research at the Cultural Research Center, asserts that the nation’s cultural decline is deeply rooted in the spiritual collapse of Christianity.
Evangelicals, as defined by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), are people who recognize their sinful life, rely upon Jesus Christ for their redemption, and receive practical life guidance and wisdom from the Bible in their quest to live under the lordship of Jesus.
The demographic profile shows them to be older (median age of 54), predominantly white (74%), and more likely to be married to their first spouse (48%). Lifestyle choices among evangelicals differ notably from the general population: they are less likely to identify as LGBTQ (3% vs. 12%), less likely to be military veterans (7% vs. 11%), and less likely to have been involved in an abortion (7% vs. 16%).
There are, however, fewer of them than we’ve been told. Contrary to media reports that suggest 25% to 40% of American adults are evangelicals, more rigorous estimates from the American Worldview Inventory 2024 (AWVI 2024) place the figure at only 10%, translating to 25 to 30 million adults.
Not only are evangelicals smaller in number than previously believed, the research also indicates that they are less biblically grounded and less politically active.
According to the AWVI 2024, only about one-third of evangelicals even possess a biblical worldview. The data also suggests that today’s evangelicals are more influenced by the surrounding culture than they are by their faith. Almost half of the adults attending evangelical churches (44%) believe that there is no absolute moral truth and two out of every three evangelicals do not possess a worldview and lifestyle that is consistently in harmony with basic biblical teaching.
In fact, the AWVI 2024 research points out that the dominant worldview among Christian evangelicals remains Syncretism, a worldview defined as a disparate, irreconcilable collection of beliefs and behaviors. Nearly two-thirds of evangelicals (64%) qualified as Syncretists.
As regards the November election, while evangelicals have historically been portrayed as a monolithic voting bloc, Barna’s research reveals a more nuanced reality.
While 67% of evangelicals typically vote, only one-third reported being ‘very likely’ to vote in the 2024 general election. Notably, evangelicals are more conservative than the general population, with 53% identifying as consistently conservative compared to 23% of non-evangelicals.
However, there are some noteworthy differences in social and political considerations that distinguish evangelicals from non-evangelicals. It starts with their ideological perspective, which is undoubtedly influenced by their theological views. Evangelicals are more than twice as likely as other adults to claim to land on the right side of the political continuum. A slight majority of evangelicals embrace the “consistently conservative” label (53%) compared to just one-quarter of non-evangelical individuals (23%).
One of the most important and intriguing voting blocks in America is SAGE Cons—the Spiritually Active, Governance Engaged Conservative Christians. That segment represents 8% of all voters, but emerged as the biggest concentration of Trump voters in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. Nearly half of evangelicals (44%) qualify as SAGE Cons. Put differently, most SAGE Cons (55%) are theologically-defined evangelicals.
Beyond elections, evangelicals are also more likely than other Americans to express their socio-political preferences by boycotting products and services. Half of all evangelicals (52%) have done so, compared to four out of 10 non-evangelicals (42%).
The inconsistency in belief and practice among evangelicals is concerning to Barna, who notes that many evangelicals struggle to apply core biblical principles in daily life, falling prey to cultural slogans and behaviors.
“Identifying evangelicals and then developing an understanding of the mind and heart of the group is not a simple task,” the veteran researcher admitted. “There is little uniformity to the belief patterns and lifestyle choices of evangelicals. The entire faith matrix of America is frighteningly complex. Other studies I have conducted underscore how unique each person’s faith journey is, and that journey both shapes and is shaped by a person’s belief structure and religious practices.”
While emphasizing the need for pastors to dismantle unbiblical views among their congregants, Barna also criticized the media for misrepresenting evangelicals, often defining them inaccurately and relying on flawed data.
“First,” he explained, “most journalists inaccurately define who evangelicals are. Second, few journalists discuss evangelicals on the basis of data. Third, those who do rely on data are studying information based on improper definitions. Fourth, research has shown that a large share of the more influential journalists, or those serving influential media outlets, do not have positive views of the Christian faith and Christians. They are therefore comfortable seeing evangelicals as a group to be feared, a group that seeks theocratic rule in America, and thus a group to be thwarted by all means for the sake of democracy. Of course, evangelicals do not pose any threat to democracy, they do not want a theocracy, and their numbers are significant but in no way dominant.”
Admittedly, Barna says, making sense of all of these data points is complicated, Barna says, but also all the more reason to carefully filter the messaging we receive about evangelicals from various sources and media.
“Unfortunately, it seems that complexity often leads us to seek the simplest analyses and conclusions, causing us to settle for comforting, if inaccurate, big-picture narratives. So, when consuming media reports about evangelicals, it is wise to be cautious about who the media have defined as members of that segment.”