October 15, 2007
Radio host and columnist Paul Edwards recently spoke with the President and Strategic Leader of The Barna Group and author of the new book, “UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity and Why it Matters,” David Kinnaman.
Paul Edwards: Christianity has an image problem—that, at least, is the view of the new book “UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity and Why it Matters.” In this book the President of Barna Research David Kinnaman says, “Our most recent data show that young outsiders, those ages 16-29 outside the church, have lost much of their respect for the Christian faith. These days nearly two out of every five young outsiders—38 percent—claim to have ‘had a bad impression of present day Christianity.’ Beyond this, one-third of young outsiders said that Christianity represents a negative image with which they would not want to be associated….They are more likely than previous generations to believe that Jesus Christ committed sins. They’re also more likely to believe that people can live a meaningful life without Jesus Christ….Their negative perceptions outnumbered positive perceptions of born-agains by more than a three-to-one ratio—35 percent to 10 percent….Among those aware of the term evangelical the views are extraordinarily negative, 49 percent to three percent….There are roughly 24 million outsiders in America who are ages 16 to 29. Of these, nearly seven million have a negative impression of evangelicals, another seven million said they have no opinion and 10 million have never heard the term evangelical. That leaves less than half-a-million young outsiders, out of the 24 million, who see evangelicals in a positive light.”
This audience is going to say, look, Jesus said the world is going to hate us, so what’s the problem?
David Kinnaman: Christianity has an image problem and the real question is whether to care. And the way we approached this as researchers and writers and as committed Christians is to realize that there is this tension between being liked and being like Christ. What we really find in this whole project is that when people say they reject us—it’s very complicated and there are a lot of reasons for that—a lot of times they are rejecting some of the superficial Christianity that we display to them. So it’s not simply an image problem, although certainly you could make the argument that it’s been given to us by a skeptical media and a skeptical culture, but it also represents some substantive issues that we need to wrestle with.
The Scripture is very clear that we are likely to be hated, we will not be popular for following Christ, but it also doesn’t let believers off the hook. It [the Bible] says we must be careful, have a good reputation with outsiders, be wise in the way we act toward outsiders and our lives are to be read by people as if we are an open letter. So we have to take some of the things we’re responsible for and then try to understand them.
Edwards: I think what your research is saying….these negative perceptions come from us not being the kinds of Christians that Jesus calls us to be.
Kinnaman: One of the phrases we use is, it would be one thing if they were judging us, if outsiders were skeptical of us, because of righteousness sake, the truth is I think it’s because of self-righteousness sake….Those of us on the inside also have to take account for the fact that we often add to the gospel something other than what Jesus really intended. Like Galatians says, having begun your life in the Spirit why are you now trying to prefect it through human effort? And if you don’t [live your life in the Spirit] you actually end up devouring people.
