The Qualitative Differences Between Self-Identification as a Born-Again and/or Evangelical Christian

Abstract

How do members of the evangelical religious tradition choose to identify themselves, and how do they define terms such as “evangelical” or “born-again?” Extant scholarship traditionally utilizes quantitative data in order to isolate the pitfalls associated with this conflation. In order to validate these quantitative measures and to better understand how adherents of the evangelical religious tradition conceptualize these identities, I leverage 63 face-to-face interviews conducted with white evangelicals. I find that “evangelical” is not commonly used among adherents, who view the term as esoteric and ill-defined. Democrats specifically recoil against the term due to its perceived conservative nature; however, some Republicans also eschew identifying as such, viewing it in some cases as too liberal or contaminated by the media. I also find that the term “born-again” is much more commonly used, regardless of the respondent’s partisanship. This work reveals the continuing politicization of “evangelical” and the endogeneity of religious orientations to politics.