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Page 1 of 5 Vol. 36, No. 12 _ December 2005 In his effort to separate evangelical Christians from other believers in his surveys, George Barna defines "born again Christians" as those who say they have made "a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today" and who also indicate they believe that "when they die they will go to heaven because they have confessed their sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as their savior" (see www. barna.org).
Barna sees "evangelicals" as being a distinct subset of "born again" Christians who, in addition to meeting the born again criteria, also meet seven other conditions. These seven conditions are (1) saying their faith is very important in their life today; (2) contending that they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; (3) stating that Satan exists; (4) maintaining that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not works; (5) asserting that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; (6) saying that the Bible is totally accurate in all it teaches; and (7) describing God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today. Barna and his associates make it a point not to ask survey respondents if they are "evangelical." Rather, they ask questions that relate to the above seven conditions and make that classification themselves. Further, whether or not a believer is an "evangelical" is not dependent upon or related to any church or denominational affiliation, nor is the label related to a believer’s degree of involvement in a local church. Barna calculates that 7% of Americans are "evangelicals" by his definition and in light of his surveys, although those who actually live out the above beliefs in day-to-day life drop to less than 1% of Americans. However, George Barna’s definition of an "evangelical" is just one of many. For example, in The Beliefnet Guide to Evangelical Christianity (Three Leaves Press, 2005), Wendy Murray Zoba takes note of quite a variety of professing "evangelicals." Those who are not familiar with Beliefnet should know that it claims to be "the leading multifaith spirituality and religion website." This said, it is perhaps not surprising that Zoba’s overview of evangelicalism concludes that 35% of Americans today are "evangelicals," while at the same time observing that most people, paradoxically, including those who say they are evangelicals, are uncertain of what the term actually means, not to mention what they actually believe. Readers of Zoba’s book could rightly draw the conclusion that evangelicals include Reformed believers and dispen-sationalists, charismatics and non-charismatics, those who baptize infants and those who baptize only adults, those who repeat each Sunday the Apostle’s Creed and those who have no creed but the Bible. But Zoba’s definition is much broader than this, for it includes political conservatives as well as political liberals, holiness proponents as well as those who refer to themselves as "sinning saints." In fact, the diversity is much greater than these contrasts imply, which is why today many observers of evangelicalism, both inside and outside the movement, refer to an "evangelical right," an "evangelical middle," and even an "evangelical left" in terms of theological beliefs. The end result is that currently just about anyone in any church can refer to themselves as an evangelical, even those who don’t affirm Jesus’ atoning death. However, as much as George Barna’s more narrow definition of "evangelical" does not include, he is perhaps on the right track in terms of separating those who are "born again" from the more narrow "evangelicals," and further observing that many of those who describe themselves as evangelicals, saying they believe in certain biblical and moral standards and the power of God to transform lives, in reality don’t live any differently than the rest of the world, that is, the pagan world (see Barna’s Boiling Point, 2001, 2003), which raises some important questions. For example, in the closing years of the 20th century evangelical leaders were regularly raising the question as to why, on the one hand, conservative or evangelical churches were growing while, on the other hand, evangelicals were having little or no impact on American society. Although evangelical scholars have not answered this question with one voice, many agree a large part of the answer is due to the fact the vast majority of those who label themselves evangelicals - in any sense of the term - do not live out their professed biblical faith on a day-to-day basis. For many years it has been clear that the lifestyle and behavior of "evangelicals" is really no different from non-evangelicals, both Christian and non-Christian. This conclusion has not only been drawn by George Barna, but others, including Ron Sider, Os Guinness, David Wells, Chuck Colson, and Ray Comfort. In his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (Baker, 2005), Sider writes:
I am convinced that at the heart of our problem is a one-sided, unbiblical, reductionist understanding of the gospel and salvation. Too many evangelicals in too many ways give the impression that the really important part of the gospel is forgiveness of sins. If we just repeat the formula and say we want Jesus to forgive our sins, we are Christians. Notice, however, how this can so easily lead to cheap grace. If all there is to accepting the gospel is receiving the forgiveness of sins, one can accept the gospel, become a Christian, and then go on living the same adulterous, materialistic, racist life that one lived before. Salvation becomes, not a life-transforming experience that reorients every corner of life, but a one-way ticket to heaven, and one can live like hell until one gets there (Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, 57-58). Again, almost in as many words, this same truth has been pointed out year after year by evangelical leaders and authors. However, to date, they have largely been ignored, especially by the popular "evangelical" leaders of the mega-churches. The fact most "evangelicals" are actually not evangelical in the classic or traditional sense of the word, either in terms of doctrinal beliefs or lifestyle, is why the term itself is often contested and why there is little consensus as to what constitutes "the defining characteristics of American evangelicalism" (see Kenneth Collins, The Evangelical Moment, Baker, 2005, 20). Because of the influx of popular cultural values into many conservative churches, and even the adoption of what earlier generations considered liberal teachings and practices, Donald Dayton is probably correct in saying that the term "evangelical" has lost "whatever usefulness it once might have had" (Dayton, "Some Doubts about the Usefulness of the Category ‘Evangelical,’" in Variety of American Evangelicalism, edited by Donald Dayton and Robert Johnston, InterVarsity, 1991, 245). Indeed, Dayton goes so far as to say that, in light of the lack of orthodox theology and biblical piety in so much of the so-called evangelical church today, we should have "a moratorium on the use of the term" (Dayton, 245). In other words, despite the broadness and variety that marks what is termed "evangelicalism" today, there is no real way to tie all the varieties together.
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