Pew’s recent report What Americans Know about Religion offers a piece of insight that may help explain the continuing struggle of both Evangelical and Mainline Protestants to grow in the United States. Curiously, it comes as a result of being on the opposite ends of two specific line statistics.

The first statistic deals with how knowledgeable Evangelical Protestants and Mainline Protestants are concerning the Bible and Christianity. The following two charts relate the results of both groups (along with others) after each took a multiple-choice quiz that included several questions that tested specific knowledge about the Bible and the Christian faith.

According to these charts, Evangelicals were anywhere from 2% – 24% more likely to know specific elements from the Bible. They were also between 7% – 13% more likely to know specific elements about Christianity in general or Protestantism in general.

While Pew is quick to point out in its methodology that the questions it asked are not comprehensive and cannot be used to judge the overall knowledge someone has of a particular belief system, the consistently higher scores by Evangelical Protestants compared to Mainline Protestants is suggestive. It appears that Evangelical Protestants are more knowledgeable about the contents of the Bible and the core teachings of the Christian faith and the Protestant tradition than their Mainline Protestant counterparts.

Before Evangelical Christians exult about this, they need to consider another aspect of Pew’s study. In addition to testing knowledge, Pew also asked its participants to rate how favorably they saw various religious traditions. Rating this on a scale 0 – 100, with 0 being the coldest view of a belief system and 100 being the warmest view, Evangelicals ranked well beneath Mainline Protestants.

Notable in this table is not only that Mainline Protestants score higher overall than Evangelical Protestants, but that the percentage of participants who had a very cold view of Evangelical Protestants was almost twice as high as those who had such a negative view of Mainline Protestants.

The news for Evangelical Protestants gets even worse. Not only do people have colder feelings toward them, but the ones who have the coldest feelings also are the most knowledgeable about religion generally.

All of this has direct implications for both Evangelical Protestants and Mainline Protestants in seeking to provide a Christian witness within the United States. Before I get to that, let me share what it does not promote. It does not promote each group crowing over the other.

Evangelical Protestants often look down on Mainline Protestants for their lack of biblical and doctrinal knowledge. Mainline Protestants often join the chorus of those who badmouth Evangelical Protestants for appearing prickly in the public domain.

In John 13:25, Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” If Christians publicly attack each other on their weak points, they only serve to undermine the ability of those who are around them to recognize that they are, in fact, followers of Jesus Christ. No such judgement from one side toward the other can be brooked if there is any hope of an effective Christian witness in the United States.

What, then, ought to be done?

For Mainline Protestants, the primary issue is that, while they are comparatively well-regarded, they are unequipped to share the gospel with those who might be interested in hearing it from them. A lack of internal formation in the Christian faith has left them wanting.

As a result, while those outside of Mainline Protestantism may see Mainline Protestants as benign, they also do not see them as having anything worth offering and certainly nothing worth committing to. Even members of the Mainline Protestant denominations seem to think this as numerous studies have shown in terms of the steep decline in Mainline Protestant membership over the past decade.

The message is clear for Mainline Protestants: get serious about forming your own people in the Christian faith. Learn the Bible. Learn the Christian Tradition. Learn to articulate the gospel. Learn to live in the power of God. In doing this, Mainline Protestants will have a group of people who can leverage the goodwill they have with those outside their tribe to evangelize effectively.

Evangelical Protestants have the reverse problem. They know their Bible and their Christian beliefs well. They are well-prepared to explain what they believe to those who desire to know it. However, not as many people will ask or listen because not as many people like them. More than this, the more people know about religion, the less likely they are to like them. Knowledge, far from being their friend, is something that militates against them.

The answer for Evangelical Protestants? Build relationships. Pew demonstrated that people were far more likely to develop warm feelings for those of other religious groups when they knew someone who belonged to that group.

The fact that Evangelical Protestants have one of the lowest bump through being known by someone outside of their group suggests they have some Christian formation to do. Unlike their Mainline counterparts, they do not need to learn more, they need to become more gracious in their character, more open and engaged in their manner toward others. This will help overcome the negative stereotype of being hardened and judgemental that has long plagued them.

These relationships would break this stereotype not only because it would allow others to get to know them, but it would allow them to get to know others. They would gain more positive views of people outside of the Evangelical Protestant camp. This does not mean that they would lose their zeal for sharing their faith or minimize their commitment to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, but that they would share it within gracious relationships in which both people already thought well of the other, rather than as a combative attempt to overthrow another belief.

These are sobering statistics for all Protestants in the United States. They show that neither knowledge of their faith nor a good reputation is enough to engage in effective, culture-shaping evangelism. Christian witness requires both.