Remember that Jewishness is beyond our category of "religion," which is a product of post- Reformation Europe. "Jewish" is an identity category with elements of religion, culture, nationality, ethnicity, and extended family. So there may be people who identify as Jews (by culture, ethnicity, etc.) but who are also straightforwardly Evangelical Christians by religion. Such people may have picked one response to one question and another for the other. I'm not saying that explains all such responses, but it may explain some. (More, though, all of this reminds us indeed that large datasets always contain the weird. I remember when Pew's "Portrait of Jewish Americans" came out in 2013, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/ they found a non-zero number of people who identified as "ultra-Orthodox" Jews but reported that they have a Christmas tree in December! If you know anything about Haredi Judaism, you know that's hilarious.)
The obvious question would be the definition. For many people, evangelical just means evangelizing, spreading the faith. Mormons and Muslims are supposed to spread the faith, while Judaism is a closed and locked club. Atheists are faith-speaders, but they also know the current political meaning of the word (evangelical = TRUMPUTIN) so they wouldn't choose the term.
My two cents: Left-leaning Mormons have to be willing to disregard certain cultural boundaries between religious groups, since Salt Lake-based Mormons are routinely urged by leaders to be more conservative in various ways (eg, see literally anything ever written by apostles Packer or Oaks). Therefore, they might not affiliate with an evangelical church, but consider themselves born again in an ecumenical sense. Several Book of Mormon figures describe themselves as "born again, yea born of God" (e.g. Mosiah 27:24, Alma 22:15, all of Alma 36, etc.) So while all Mormons have been encouraged to be born again, more conservative LDS might be trigger-shy about identifying with a protestant label, where liberal leaning LDS are less so.
What would you assess as the new (next?) meaning of Evangelical to be, if its detaching from the old meaning of "evangelical Christian similar to Southern Baptists, etc"
My guess would be that many of the people answering simply don't know what the work evangelist means. They might be confusing it with devout or firmly or something like that. And I think sometimes we underestimate how many people just don't know what certain words actually mean.
Good stuff. Never seen this discussed before, and it's weird and surprising if there's any substance to it.
But to your last paragraph, the simple explanation would seem to be not that Muslims or Hindus accidentally picked the "born-again" choice (the numbers are too high for that), but that evangelicals accidentally picked the Muslim or Hindu choice. The latter groups' numbers are tiny by comparison so a small percentage of Evangelicals making this error is enough to explain it. These groups also all lean overwhelmingly Democrat, while Evangelicals heavily lean republican, which is why the mis-clickers are much more likely to be Republican than the base rate of these populations.
The only thing this doesn't explain is the fact that the numbers seem to have increased over time, but that's where you'd want to look at the survey closely; maybe those choices moved to a spot that's easier to mis-click?
As a side note, I don't think it's weird that a non-trivial number of non-Protestant Christians might legitimately agree they are evangelical or born-again when asked. They might simply literally be affirming the discussion in John 3: "You must be born again." Or affirming the Great Commission and the concept of evangelism more broadly. I would guess a disproportionate number are converts (formerly evangelical Protestant) who now say, "Just because I'm now Eastern Orthodox doesn't mean I've ceased to be born-again."
But what exactly is going on with Mormon Democrats, I'm also not really sure. I can't align either of my explanations with that information.
Have you done any work on the LDS faith? It might be interesting to check out the anomaly sited in the stats above: more Democrat Evangelicals than Republicans.
I found the grammar in the initial question to be confusing enough to complicate this already complicated issue. Without a comma after "born-again," the question appears to conflate "born-again" with "evangelical," making a binary choice with "or not." Surely some, as the article suggests, have identity resonance with the word "evangelical" that would not call themselves "born-again," and may not even recognize the term. The "or not" seems reiterative and confusing. Potentially , you could answer positively to this question, meaning, "Yes- I am 'or not.'" Since there are three categories lumped together with a yes or no question, it seems messy, although I suspect the conclusions are sound.
Your wording is confusing. Sometimes you say "evangelical Christian" and sometimes you just say "evangelical." It is much more credible that a Muslim would say "Yes, I am an evangelical" than "Yes, I am an evangelical Christian." Perhaps you were just being concise. But it is important for the reader to know the EXACT phrasing of the survey question.
Your last claim, "Or maybe the data is suggesting that the word evangelical doesn’t mean what it used to mean." isn't quite justified by this data. You've only shown in this post:
1) More and more non-Christians are identifying as evangelical
2) Recently, more Republican non-Christians identify as evangelical than Democratic non-Christians.
There's a slight gap there. What you seem to be implying is that the partisan association of the word "evangelical" has changed over time, but you haven't shown that. After all, "evangelical" might have always meant "vaguely religious and conservative" as Lyman Stone put it. Maybe non-Christian Americans (apart from atheists/agnostics) are disproportionately immigrants who have steadily become more conservative as they have integrated into society and no longer feel like outsiders.
Specifically, can you look at the D/I/R crosstabs of the 2012-2022 CES data (and ideally Nationscape data as well, but maybe there's some reason why you didn't show their time series trend in this post?). Has the slight increase in non-Christian evangelicals been disproportionately among Republicans?
Fascinating article, thank you. I wonder if some of the non-Christians identifying as Evangelicals may have seen the term used in news reporting or analysis and thought they agreed with the (more socially conservative) views of that group, without knowing the background of the term. Maybe it has been used on its own enough that, as you said, it now has a new definition which is tied more to political stances than religion.
At a guess, most of those calling themselves ”evangelical/‘born again’ Jews” are members of so-called Messianic groups—evangelical Christians with a smattering of Jewish-flavored practice and who call themselves Jews.
Is it possible the question is misleading this small percentage of people if they read it as follows.
"Are you born again?" No. OR "are you evangelical?" No OR "Are you NOT one of those two?" YES. So they answer "Yes" thinking they are saying they are not one of the first two. The "or not" part creates a double negative.
What strikes me as odd is that Jews, Muslims, etc. would describe themselves as “Christian,” whether evangelical or not. They seemed to focus on the modifier rather than the noun in the survey question.
Remember that Jewishness is beyond our category of "religion," which is a product of post- Reformation Europe. "Jewish" is an identity category with elements of religion, culture, nationality, ethnicity, and extended family. So there may be people who identify as Jews (by culture, ethnicity, etc.) but who are also straightforwardly Evangelical Christians by religion. Such people may have picked one response to one question and another for the other. I'm not saying that explains all such responses, but it may explain some. (More, though, all of this reminds us indeed that large datasets always contain the weird. I remember when Pew's "Portrait of Jewish Americans" came out in 2013, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/ they found a non-zero number of people who identified as "ultra-Orthodox" Jews but reported that they have a Christmas tree in December! If you know anything about Haredi Judaism, you know that's hilarious.)
The obvious question would be the definition. For many people, evangelical just means evangelizing, spreading the faith. Mormons and Muslims are supposed to spread the faith, while Judaism is a closed and locked club. Atheists are faith-speaders, but they also know the current political meaning of the word (evangelical = TRUMPUTIN) so they wouldn't choose the term.
My two cents: Left-leaning Mormons have to be willing to disregard certain cultural boundaries between religious groups, since Salt Lake-based Mormons are routinely urged by leaders to be more conservative in various ways (eg, see literally anything ever written by apostles Packer or Oaks). Therefore, they might not affiliate with an evangelical church, but consider themselves born again in an ecumenical sense. Several Book of Mormon figures describe themselves as "born again, yea born of God" (e.g. Mosiah 27:24, Alma 22:15, all of Alma 36, etc.) So while all Mormons have been encouraged to be born again, more conservative LDS might be trigger-shy about identifying with a protestant label, where liberal leaning LDS are less so.
What would you assess as the new (next?) meaning of Evangelical to be, if its detaching from the old meaning of "evangelical Christian similar to Southern Baptists, etc"
My guess would be that many of the people answering simply don't know what the work evangelist means. They might be confusing it with devout or firmly or something like that. And I think sometimes we underestimate how many people just don't know what certain words actually mean.
Good stuff. Never seen this discussed before, and it's weird and surprising if there's any substance to it.
But to your last paragraph, the simple explanation would seem to be not that Muslims or Hindus accidentally picked the "born-again" choice (the numbers are too high for that), but that evangelicals accidentally picked the Muslim or Hindu choice. The latter groups' numbers are tiny by comparison so a small percentage of Evangelicals making this error is enough to explain it. These groups also all lean overwhelmingly Democrat, while Evangelicals heavily lean republican, which is why the mis-clickers are much more likely to be Republican than the base rate of these populations.
The only thing this doesn't explain is the fact that the numbers seem to have increased over time, but that's where you'd want to look at the survey closely; maybe those choices moved to a spot that's easier to mis-click?
As a side note, I don't think it's weird that a non-trivial number of non-Protestant Christians might legitimately agree they are evangelical or born-again when asked. They might simply literally be affirming the discussion in John 3: "You must be born again." Or affirming the Great Commission and the concept of evangelism more broadly. I would guess a disproportionate number are converts (formerly evangelical Protestant) who now say, "Just because I'm now Eastern Orthodox doesn't mean I've ceased to be born-again."
But what exactly is going on with Mormon Democrats, I'm also not really sure. I can't align either of my explanations with that information.
Have you done any work on the LDS faith? It might be interesting to check out the anomaly sited in the stats above: more Democrat Evangelicals than Republicans.
I found the grammar in the initial question to be confusing enough to complicate this already complicated issue. Without a comma after "born-again," the question appears to conflate "born-again" with "evangelical," making a binary choice with "or not." Surely some, as the article suggests, have identity resonance with the word "evangelical" that would not call themselves "born-again," and may not even recognize the term. The "or not" seems reiterative and confusing. Potentially , you could answer positively to this question, meaning, "Yes- I am 'or not.'" Since there are three categories lumped together with a yes or no question, it seems messy, although I suspect the conclusions are sound.
Your wording is confusing. Sometimes you say "evangelical Christian" and sometimes you just say "evangelical." It is much more credible that a Muslim would say "Yes, I am an evangelical" than "Yes, I am an evangelical Christian." Perhaps you were just being concise. But it is important for the reader to know the EXACT phrasing of the survey question.
Your last claim, "Or maybe the data is suggesting that the word evangelical doesn’t mean what it used to mean." isn't quite justified by this data. You've only shown in this post:
1) More and more non-Christians are identifying as evangelical
2) Recently, more Republican non-Christians identify as evangelical than Democratic non-Christians.
There's a slight gap there. What you seem to be implying is that the partisan association of the word "evangelical" has changed over time, but you haven't shown that. After all, "evangelical" might have always meant "vaguely religious and conservative" as Lyman Stone put it. Maybe non-Christian Americans (apart from atheists/agnostics) are disproportionately immigrants who have steadily become more conservative as they have integrated into society and no longer feel like outsiders.
Specifically, can you look at the D/I/R crosstabs of the 2012-2022 CES data (and ideally Nationscape data as well, but maybe there's some reason why you didn't show their time series trend in this post?). Has the slight increase in non-Christian evangelicals been disproportionately among Republicans?
Fascinating article, thank you. I wonder if some of the non-Christians identifying as Evangelicals may have seen the term used in news reporting or analysis and thought they agreed with the (more socially conservative) views of that group, without knowing the background of the term. Maybe it has been used on its own enough that, as you said, it now has a new definition which is tied more to political stances than religion.
At a guess, most of those calling themselves ”evangelical/‘born again’ Jews” are members of so-called Messianic groups—evangelical Christians with a smattering of Jewish-flavored practice and who call themselves Jews.
Is it possible the question is misleading this small percentage of people if they read it as follows.
"Are you born again?" No. OR "are you evangelical?" No OR "Are you NOT one of those two?" YES. So they answer "Yes" thinking they are saying they are not one of the first two. The "or not" part creates a double negative.
What strikes me as odd is that Jews, Muslims, etc. would describe themselves as “Christian,” whether evangelical or not. They seemed to focus on the modifier rather than the noun in the survey question.