Critical responses to David Kinnaman and David Lyons, unchristian: What A New Generation Thinks About Christianity…and Why It Matters. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007).
The text has an admirable stated goal – to see how Christianity is viewed by outsiders from the ages of 16-29 (what the book calls the generation of “mosaics” and “busters”). This view might be helpful for those interested in understanding these generational gap, how religion is perceived in the world, or for churches attempting to understand their role and image in society (15). This view is admirable and much of the research done by this Barna group might well represent the views of 16-29 year olds generally. The book, however, fails on two fronts.
The books posits that outsiders, age 16-29 view Christianity (in descending order of consensus) with the following negative attributes: anti-homosexual, judgmental, hypocritical, old-fashioned, too involved in politics, out of touch with reality, insensitive to others, boring, not accepting of other religions, and confusing. The same group felt that the following positive characteristics could be found (though it should be noted, the numbers often are lower than the negative characteristics): teaches same basic idea with other religions, has good values and principles, friendly, a faith you can respect, consistently shows love for other people, offers hope for the future, people you trust, seems genuine and real, something that makes sense, and relevant to your life (28).
First, it fails to present the actual research data that a sociologically sound document would require to be understood and analyzed by a reader. The readers are left to take it as an article of faith that the Barna group has accurately and precisely described their research. Giving the Barna group as much credit as possible, this short essay will assume that the Barna group is generally trustworthy and that their statistics are sound.
Secondly, and more troubling than the lack of statistics are the conclusions the authors draw from this data sample. A good sociological theory is a theory that predicts how people will act in a given circumstance. Therefore, if the goal of the book is to understand how Christianity is viewed by outsiders of ages 16-29, the conclusions should be asking why and in what circumstances such people hold these views. This would provide the reader with ample discussion of differences in values that might show the bias of an individual thereby making spurious relationships no longer present (e.g. are these views specific of Christianity or merely the generation preceding them at large and Christianity is merely seen as a category of that older generation).
More significant, however, than their lack of useful conclusions that would explain the data is the authors’ rampant conclusions about how to “fix this problem.” These views are mere opinions of the authors as their research was not directed toward this view whatsoever. They seem to have decent research that outsiders have a particular problem with Christianity – for instance, that 91% of outsiders think Christianity is “anti-homosexual” (93). Further, they have follow up thoughts that most outsiders think that Christians believe that 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina are God’s judgments on homosexuals. They think that pastors and other Christian leaders are attacking gays, Christians use course jokes and prejudical slurs, and that aggressive anti-homosexual websites are the general views of most Christians. (93-94). The study then goes into an interesting comparison that such views are generally held by a majority of what the study calls “born again Christians” (94-95). This data is striking and ought to be considered in depth to lead to an interesting conclusion; the authors’ response to this, however, is not trying to understand carefully why this is true. Rather, they go into a discussion that Christians must respect other people more than they do, and that they need to offer forgiveness for these sins. (95-109) The data for this is completely anecdotal. There is no seeming consensus of data that they present at all. It even seems that their study did not even ask these questions. Had they done a study of people who were openly gay and had them describe the positive/negative relationships they had with Christians and how they have been reached/turned off from Christianity, such a discussion would be possible. However, as it is currently stated, there is no reason to accept the generally “evangelical” doctrines of these figures.
While some may argue that such sociologically predictive theory is simply not possible, the work of sociologists of religion such as Rodney Stark, William Baimbridge, James Wellman, and Russel McCutcheon show that such predictive theories are not only possible but quite helpful. Rodney Stark has shown decisively how likely someone will be to join an emerging religious movement. He has been able to, given specific enough parameters, to generally predict what values will be most attractive to which people. This Barna study does not provide that type of analysis. While the general audience might be willing to accept their research data without proof and careful analysis as an article of faith, the general audience must not accept as equally the authors’ opinions bout how this can be changed when it is not based upon any data whatsoever.
Beyond the methodological nightmare that this book presented, the biases of the authors have completely voided the conclusions found. Even if the conclusions of the authors could be supported by some type of data, the analysis of that data would be aggressively skewed. For instance (using the anti-homosexual viewpoint because it was the most striking data that outsiders viewed), there is no discussion that there is a debate within Christianity on this topic. It is taken as a matter of fact that Christianity is opposed to the gay lifestyle. For instance, right after showing the striking evidence of both outsiders and insiders views of what Christians think about homosexuality, there is no discussion as to whether it should be seen as a sin. Instead, the discussion develops directly into the concept of forgiveness for sin (95-97). While this is certainly the view of the evangelical movement in America, nowhere in the book do the authors make clear this is the target audience and the foil from which all Christianity is drawn. Without this discussion, it is clear that the authors aren’t willing to entertain other ideas. This leads this reviewer to wonder if this might have been the cause of their lack of doing careful sociologically predictive theories about responses to these questions – perhaps the authors did not want conclusions that would not fit within their rather strict parameters.
In conclusion, the twenty aspects of how outsiders from the age of 16-29 view Christianity is quite useful. It is generally helpful to recognize the attributes, both positive and negative, of how Christianity is perceived. The study also shows very interesting comparisons with those inside the movement and those outside it view Christianity (summarized nicely in a chart on page 28). However, the conclusions drawn from these aspects are wildly conjectural, methodologically flawed, and unsupported by any type of data.
