During the past quarter century, pollster George Barna has written more than 40 books examining America’s beliefs and practices, including 1988’s Marketing the Church (which encouraged churches to try new forms of outreach) and 2005’s Revolution (which showed how post-church Christians gather). His Barna Research Group also provided the data for unChristian, a 2007 book that examined why so many people dislike conservative Christians.

In Barna’s latest, The Seven Faith Tribes: Who They Are, What They Believe and Why It Matters (Tyndale House), he looks beyond the Christian landscape to rekindle thinking about how Christians can interact with the broader culture.


Who are the Seven Tribes?

Our research basically broke Americans down into these seven groups, starting with the biggest group: Casual Christians; Captive Christians; Skeptics; Jewish; Mormons; Pantheists; and Muslims.

Was there anything in the research that really jumped out at you?

Yes. One thing I think is real significant is the only tribe that is really growing at this point is the skeptics. This group includes atheists, which are very few in number, and agnostics, which are more numerous. They have not given up on God, and may even be on a spiritual quest.

When you look at what is taking place in our culture, particularly with young adults, my expectation is that this is the tribe that will continue to grow the fastest.

Why is that?

There are five reasons. First, I believe media content has the single biggest impact on people’s lives today. And when you look at the nature of that content, it suggests there is no God, or that we can’t know if there is a God, or if there is a God it’s pretty irrelevant to our lives.

Second is education. Schools, for the most part, do what they can to avoid questions of God and sources of truth such as the Bible, mainly to avoid legal issues.

Third is peer pressure. Young people are relational, and they talk about a lot of stuff. But it has become much more in vogue to question the existence of God, and it is certainly much more feasible to do so in our current cult context.

Fourth is the behavior of Christians themselves. As we found in the research for unChristian, our behavior is not something that draws people to God in many cases.

Add to all this the message our culture is essentially sending: Take care of yourself. Exploit every opportunity or person you come into contact with. That’s how you get what you deserve. If that’s your perspective, it makes all the sense in the world to say there’s not really a God.

You write that you have an urgent motivation for this book. Part of that motivation comes from wanting to help Christians stop “the inadvertent self-destruction of America.” What do you mean?

If you study the rise and fall of great cultures during the last two thousand years of history, some patterns begin to emerge. And as you look at American society today, there are patterns showing that our legacy of being one of the world’s great societies is significantly on the decline. Unless something successful and strategic is done to change things, our society is in the throes of its demise and will cease to be one of the great societies of our world.

Devoted Christians could play a role in turning this around but we have spent too much time and energy competing, comparing, complaining, and condemning when we should be cooperating, communicating, collaborating, and contributing. The future of America depends more on our compassionate engagement than our persistent insistence of our own moral supremacy. We need to stop taking and start giving. That means working in harmony with non-Christians and doing so without a covert evangelistic agenda.

Photo: Lukasz Kulicki
A young man prays alone in church

What group, network, or community helps keep you connected and spiritually grounded?

For four years, I’ve been leading a house church. It’s small by design. We probably have around 25 people or so that participate in it, including children. It has been a great experience.

I didn’t really know much about house churches until I was doing the research for Revolution. That’s when I discovered how many people are engaged in that form of faith community. After spending time with leaders of the house church movement around the country, I became aware of a number of people in our city, great Christian people, who were really, really frustrated with the conventional church experience. We got together and talked about what was going on in our lives, our faith, and our children’s faith. We spent a few months praying about whether this was something we should try out. And now, almost four years later, here we are, pretty much the same people we had at the start.

How has your calling or sense of purpose changed over the years?

It hasn’t really changed that much over the past 25 years. I still want to try and bring current and relevant information to leaders so it can help us become a more genuine representation of the Kingdom of God.

My calling is my calling. I can’t change it. God gave it to me. I am honored by it. And I hope I am pleasing Him by what I am doing with it

What are you working on next?

I’ve been doing a lot of research on transformation. I am trying to break down things like: What is transformation? What does it look like? What is the process? Where are you on that journey? And what is evidence of it? Those are the kinds of things we should be looking at.

So far I’m finding that most people aren’t on that journey. And those who are are not real articulate about it. It’s not predictable. It’s a mystery. But I’m committed to going back and trying to figure out what the journey of transformation is supposed to be about, before we lose sight of these kinds of things.

Steve Rabey is an award-winning writer and an adjunct professor with Fuller Seminary.