What Purpose Drives Americans? With Over 20 ...

What Purpose Drives Americans? With over 20 million having read Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, The Barna Group polled Americans on the question, “What do Americans perceive their purpose in life to be?” Priorities differed according to faith commitments. Evangelicals were the only segment to place personal faith consistency as their highest priority. Non-evangelical born again adults were 52% more likely than Evangelicals to list family life. Notional Christians (not born again but describe themselves as Christian) were 7 times more likely to list family life than spiritual life. Notional Christians represent nearly half of adults attending churches on a typical Sunday, but only 7% said their spiritual life took precedence. People aligned with non-Christian faith groups were 4 times more likely to do so. The only group besides evangelicals who rated faith first was those with an “active faith” (attends church, read the Bible and prays during a typical week). 39% of this group said their faith commitment was tops, while 35% opted for family. (Editor Note: The high incidence of marriage and relationship problems among Christians indicates perhaps that putting family above personal biblical faith consistency actually harms family relationships.) (The Barna Update 5/17/05)

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