[This subject line was tongue in cheek, right? This poll ranked the most favorably looked up groups as the military first, ministers second and born-again Christians third. Lesbians are in 9th place out of 11.]
> <http://www.abpnews.com/abpnews/index.crm>
> Associated Baptist Press - December 5, 2002
>
> Unfavorable image of evangelicals shows power of labels, Barna says
> By Mark Wingfield
>
> VENTURA, Calif. (ABP) -- Non-Christians in the United States view
> evangelical Christians somewhat more kindly than prostitutes but with
> less affection than lesbians and lawyers.
>
> That's according to new data released by the Barna Research Group,
> which recently conducted a national telephone poll of adults who do
> not consider themselves Christians. The poll asked respondents to
> record their impressions of 11 categories of people -- military
> officers, ministers, evangelicals, born-again Christians, Democrats,
> Republicans, real-estate agents, movie and TV performers, lawyers,
> lesbians, and prostitutes.
>
> Evangelicals ranked 10th out of the 11 categories. They received
> favorable marks from only 22 percent of the non-Christians
> interviewed, higher than the 5 percent approval rating given
> prostitutes but lower than the 23 percent rating given lesbians and
> Republicans.
>
> On the other hand, ministers as a group came in second, with a 44
> percent favorable rating, behind military officers, who scored 56
> percent favorable.
>
> Born-again Christians also fared better as a group than evangelicals,
> drawing a 32 percent favorable rating, the third highest of all
> categories. But pollster George Barna said most respondents don't
> know the difference between the two terms.
>
> "Our studies show that many of the people who have negative
> impressions of evangelicals do not know what or who an evangelical
> is," he said in a statement.
>
> For example, he pointed to the fact that "born-again" Christians drew
> a more favorable rating than evangelical Christians, "although few
> adults are able to identify any substantive differences between those
> two groups."
>
> "This is most likely a result of the thrashing evangelicals receive
> in the media," he said. "It seems that millions of non-Christians
> have negative impressions of evangelicals, even though they cannot
> define what an evangelical is, accurately identify the perspectives
> of the group or identify even a handful of people they know
> personally who are evangelicals."
>
> Barna said the survey is evidence of the power of labeling in
> American society. He urged Christians to draw a lesson from this
> study as they are tempted to judge other people by stereotypes.
>
> "We may also consider people groups about whom we have developed a
> negative or unflattering impression and examine the basis of those
> attitudes," he said. "We find that when people examine the foundation
> of their impressions and then talk to a few people from the groups of
> which they have a low opinion, they discover those people are not so
> bad after all."
>
> The findings of this survey are based on a national telephone poll of
> 1,002 adults conducted in May. Among that sample were 270 adults who
> described themselves as non-Christians. The findings reported for
> opinions of non-Christians carry a margin of error of plus or minus
> 6.2 percentage points.
>