Survey: 'Evangelical' Label Less Popular Among Christians
The most comprehensive national religion survey to date found that only a small percentage of Americans prefer to label themselves as evangelicals over other terms including “Bible-believing” and “Born Again.”
The recent survey – analyzed by sociologists from Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, in Waco, Texas, and conducted by Gallup – found that only 15 percent of the population use the term “evangelical” to describe their religious identity when given a list of religious terms to choose from. Moreover, barely two in 100 Americans say the term is the best description of their religious identity.
Participants picked from a list of 14 religious terms including Bible-Believing, Born Again, Mainline Christians, Theologically Liberal, Seeker, Fundamentalist, and Charismatic.
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By far, the most popular religious self-identity was “Bible-Believing” with nearly half of Americans (47.2 percent) preferring the label. Americans in the South and the Midwest were more than twice as likely to choose the identity of Bible-believing (52.8 percent and 54.2 percent, respectively) than evangelical (19.2 percent and 17.3 percent, respectively).
“Born Again” was favored by those with ties to Black Protestant and Evangelical Protestant religious groups, while “Mainline Christian” is the term of preference for Mainline Protestants and Catholics.
Results also indicate that people with household incomes of more than $100,000 a year are twice as likely to describe themselves as “Theologically Liberal” than are people with household incomes of $35,000 or less a year.
Touted as the most comprehensive religion survey to date, the survey contained 77 questions and nearly 400 answer choices was fielded during the winter of 2005. Some 1,721 Americans participated in the survey. Data was made available for analysis in the spring of 2006.
