Christians Might Be Crazy

When we undertook this survey, my main objective was to discover the primary objections to Christianity from the dechurched dones and unchurched nones. The following list of their objections comes from a subset of the survey, those people who claim to be Christians. This research reveals that, in addition to non-Christians, even those who say they are Christians are opposed to beliefs that are historically held by mainstream Bible based Christians from a wide variety of denominations and traditions. Participants named numerous objections, but nine rose to the top:

TOP 9 OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIANITY

1. Some Christian groups are too intolerant: 55%
2. The Christian faith and I have different views on social issues like abortion or gay marriage: 50%
3. I don’t like how some Christian groups meddle in politics: 49%
4. Many Christians are hypocrites: 45%
5. There are lots of religions and I’m not sure only one has to be the right way: 42%
6. Christians believe that all people are not created equal: 29%
7. I don’t share the beliefs that the Christian faith tells me I should: 28%
8. Christianity is about making money not religion: 26%
9. The Christian faith is not relevant to modern times: 21%

There were interesting insights in all the data we gathered. I was a little surprised that the dechurched dones and unchurched nones listed the same top five objections to Christianity in the exact same order. The survey showed that older participants objected to Christianity less because their views differed with Christianity and more because of the intolerance they perceive in Christians. The survey showed that men and women posed similar objections to Christianity, yet women objected more often to perceived intolerance while men disliked Christians meddling in politics. We will explore these points in greater detail later.