Perspective: "Evangelical" is Not a Helpful Term

Exit polls are an important part of understanding and predicting voter demographics in the country.

In regards to religion, the exit polls in some states only ask “are you a born-again or Evangelical Christian?”

Pew Research has defended this in their own research by claiming that those who describe themselves as such are more religiously observant and do in fact have very distinct voting patterns, especially when race/ethnicity is taken into account.

To give an example, Pew performed extensive research on church attendance, in which they compared self-described Evangelicals with other Christian groups.

It has previously been established that false self-reporting of church attendance is common. Other research has determined that level of education among Christians actually has a slight positive impact on rates of attendance at religious services, contrary to popular belief.

Pew Research in particular associated measures of political conservatism with church attendance. U.S. Evangelicals, of course, lean further right than the rest of the population.

This seems logical. When one thinks of Evangelicalism, individualism often comes to mind.

“My Bible, and my family,” seems to be the self-reliant rural ideal, after all.

Many Evangelical churches do in fact have an individualist theological orientation (“no creed but Christ”) and a congregationalist government structure, which may influence political views and nurture a populist-leaning distrust of large corporations, elite institutions, and those removed from immediate oversight such as the federal government.

The Evangelical movement as a whole, however, is somewhat difficult to define. Pew Research itself has done so in two different and occasionally contradictory ways, one of which involves people’s self-perception as a “born-again or Evangelical” Christian, the same as with the exit polls.

Another method has appeared to somewhat arbitrarily define certain denominations as Evangelical or mainline. Despite the “Evangelical” movement as we know it today largely originating some time after the fundamentalist modernist-controversy of the early 20th century, and climaxing with the ministry of Billy Graham (which took a more ecumenical approach), some more historic groups are classified as Evangelical. 

It is also likely that political affiliation influences willingness to self-identify as Evangelical. For example, during the Trump presidency, there was an increase in white Americans identifying as Evangelical, especially among his supporters.

Political affiliation and Evangelical-identification, then, may be confounding variables, making them less helpful when measuring church attendance levels, especially since the term has been twisted by the media to have such an explicitly political connotation.

Not to mention, it is significantly more difficult to define certain restorationist movement-influenced denominations such as Churches of Christ, which likely have a mix of people who self-identify as Evangelical and those who don’t. Political orientation is also less of a factor in these churches, seeing as they are more moderate than Evangelical churches, and seem to avoid partisan preaching about contemporary political topics, unlike some liberal mainline churches.

The Evangelical movement, historically, has taken a higher view of the Bible than more diverse mainline protestant groups, which tend to have greater acceptance of modernist views. It is possible that Pew Research and others, then, have conflated theologically conservative Christianity with Evangelicalism.

It may be more helpful to attempt to associate level of agreement with biblical inerrancy or infallibility, or the belief that the Bible is inerrant (without error) or infallible (incapable of error) in either its modern translation or in the original languages, and authoritative in modern life, with other factors

This still leaves two major groups of theologically conservative Christians to be accounted for, confessional and non-confessional. Non-confessional Christians are what the public tends to associate with Evangelicals. All tend to have a congregationalist government structure and will, at most, have a congregation-specific statement of faith, or hold up the Bible itself as their statement of faith without going into much further detail or presenting any sort of systematic theology (“no creed but Christ”). This would include (most) Baptists, including the Southern Baptist Convention, most non-denominational churches, and  most pentecostal churches.

Confessional Christians, on the other hand, tend to have a higher view of church government (such as the Presbyterian Church in America). They tend to emphasize their historic roots more than non-confessional Evangelicals, and strictly uphold denominational confessions as standards for faith and practice in their churches.

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, for example, is significantly older (founded in 1847) and more historic than even its “mainline” (according to Pew Research Center) counterpart, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (founded in 1988, from a merger of two other Lutheran groups).

Some other groups have historic roots but to some degree originated from a split with the more historic theologically-liberal denomination, such as the Anglican Church in North America, which split from the Episcopalian Church.

Their adherence to confessions and biblical inerrancy suggests this group may be less individualistic than the former group of theologically conservative Christians.

There are also confessional, theologically conservative, and politically conservative Christians within the diverse mainline Christian denominations, such as the Presbyterian Church in the USA.

It’s reasonable to conclude that being in a moderate environment like this would have a moderating effect. However, it seems to be the common assumption that these churches are entirely infested with liberalism: a view that is in no small part due to the intensive political activism of many of their ministers.

This might make conservative members feel marginalized, which might make them less vocal about their beliefs, or less aware of or swayed by cultural issues. This may or may not be reflected in their voting patterns.

It is also possible that economic regulation may be more palatable to those in the latter, confessional group, even among those who hold to strict theological conservatism, reflecting conflicting motivations for involvement in the current political duopoly, and another possible discouragement from voting.

Roman Catholic social teaching emphasizes distributism, which also has a higher view of economic regulation, although it falls short of socialist centralized planning. These same patterns, then, may also be noticeable in the Roman Catholic Church.

It may be better, then, to describe these groups as more traditionalist and community-oriented than individualistic. That traditionalist orientation may impact their church attendance, and act as a check on those who have a false idea of what a relationship entails, and would de-emphasize the church or religion.

“Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” - Hebrews 10:25

Research methodology which seeks to associate church attendance with other factors, then, should consider confessionalism and belief in biblical inerrancy separately, and should consider measures of economic and social views separately.