The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s just released US Religious Landscape Survey 2008 is the most comprehensive (35,556 adult telephone interviews) I’ve encountered. It sub-classifies Protestant churches into three groups:
Evangelical
Mainline
Historically black
While not listed specifically in many places in the 140 page report, on page 105 the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is listed under Baptist in the Mainline Tradition under Mainline Protestant Churches. So presumably, as to count inclusions, any CBF folk in the 35,556 are grouped under Mainline. Whereas folk who identified themselves as SBC folk are included under Evangelical.
The interviews were conducted from May 8 to August 13, 2007, resulting in more recent data than most reports tracking national trends.
While the report received a flurry of articles in the media, much of the most informative data remains buried in the numerous detailed tables such as the one entitled ‘Family Composition’ on page 65.
You can download the full PDF report from here:
That’s interesting in several respects.
I think it’s fitting to identify CBF with the mainline protestant denominations. It suggests in some respects that CBF has been successful in positioning itself as a moderate (read encompassing the middle of the belle curve) Baptist movement.
However, I think it’s interesting that, at least in the public mind, being evangelical and being mainline protestant are mutually exclusive. I know that many (probably most) in CBF life consider themselves evangelicals.
If memory serves, evangelicals started calling themselves as “evangelicals” in part to distinguish themselves from fundamentalists. In the public eye perhaps this has been a distinction without a difference.
To add to the confusion (the subject, like the tax code, defies simplification) on pages 131 and 132 there is a tables categorized by denominational names, such as ‘Baptist Family’ and ‘Methodist Family.’ Presumably those percentages include Baptists, both evangelical and mainstream.
I’m intrigued by the ‘Living with Partner’ category. I haven’t yet reconciled the data from various tables using that category name, so I’m not certain of the exact implication yet. Suffice it to say this is a category we would not have if the information was being reported by the churches rather than individuals.