The Pew Research Center came out with a new report on 29 August entitled “The Religious Typology.” In an attempt to develop a new way of categorizing Americans as related to religion, this study asked people a series of questions about such items as their beliefs, religious activities, and sources of meaning. Researchers then used cluster analysis to organize these answers, finding common themes among how people answered the questions and forming their typology from these themes.

The resulting typology includes seven categories which describe how religious Americans are as well as the differences among those who have common levels of religiosity. The categories Pew deems highly religious are the Sunday Stalwarts, God-and-Country Believers, and Diversely Devout. The somewhat religious include the Relaxed Religious and the Spiritually Awake. The non-religious are the Religious Resisters and the Solidly Secular. See below for Pew’s description of each:

Pew’s reason for creating this typology is to provide an alternative way of understanding how Americans do or do not order their lives around religion from the traditional way of typing people based on their religious affiliation (e.g., as Muslim, Buddhist, Protestant). By setting aside sectarian identifiers, they hoped to offer insight into how attitudes toward religion and religious practices are points of agreement or difference across the American public. (Notably, as Chris Seiple has pointed out, in seeking to create a non-sectarian typology, Pew still used decidedly Christian language to describe their categories. A devout Muslim or Jew would likely not seem themselves as a “Sunday Stalwart.” Pew acknowledges this in the report.)

The move toward this typology is something that evangelism practitioners and researchers will find rich with content for their work, not least of which because it offers insight into the decidedly complicated ways that people relate to religion in the United States. Often, Christians assume that evangelism is a matter of the faithful bringing their faith to those who are neither Christian nor interested in anything that Christianity has to offer. Lifeway Research helped to dispel that notion through its study on the attitudes of the unchurched in 2016. Pew’s research provides a much more textured picture yet.

This nuanced picture of American religion brings up two critical questions for those who want to practice evangelism: Who is their audience? What end do they seek as a result of their evangelism? The following chart gives us reason for asking these:

For example, one would assume that people in the highly religious categories are not those who need evangelism. However, as the very first row demonstrates, only the “Sunday Stalwarts” attend religious services regularly. A large majority of both the other two highly religious groups do not. If getting people to participate in a church regularly is a primary result we want to come from our evangelism, then suddenly we find that even the most religious people might well become those we want to evangelize along with those who are non-religious.

Likewise, the row measuring the extent to which people derive meaning from their faith shows an underwhelming response by all groups. Even among the Sunday Stalwarts, 13% of people do not find great meaning in their faith. If moving people to deeper faith through inviting them to connect meaningfully with Jesus Christ is a core result of our evangelism, this suggests we may even need to evangelize within the church walls, since at least 1 in 10 of our “stalwart” attenders may not find any deep meaning in what they say they believe.

The power of this typology is to force these sorts of questions. What exactly do we want to see happen as a result of our evangelism and, based on that, who do we need to reach?

The power of this typology is to force these sorts of questions. What exactly do we want to see happen as a result of our evangelism and, based on that, who do we need to reach? In looking at the variegated set of beliefs and expectations related to religion in the United States, the suggestion is that the local church needs to jettison its antiquated notion of evangelism involving the sturdy believers in the church bringing their faith to the faltering secularists outside the church. Rather, evangelism involves a group of people who are committed, though not always fulfilled, in their Christian beliefs, seeking to grow in their faith while reaching out to others who are not convinced of the necessity of God, but who nonetheless favor living a morally good life. Neither group is monolithic, nor is there a set of “good guys” sent out to convert the “bad guys.” There are just people, all trying their best, and all who stand in need of different blessings that can come through the good news of God through Jesus Christ.