:(Sorry about the link problem. The article was quoted at length in a newsletter I receive. I just linked to the original long enough to see it was quoted correctly - I didn't look at the advertising or the rest of the site.
I don't know if I would dismiss it so easily, though. I have observed throughout the years that people usually brush off facts that seem to contradict their worldview without bothering to investigate or think things through. Much of that may be intellectual laziness, but it is a rare person who will take the time and effort to seriously look into something that seems to contradict what they already believe.
People also tend to surround themselves with people who think and hold the same beliefs they do, so they are never challenged to examine their own beliefs or those of others. Many Christians surround themselves with other Christians, so that they are unable to defend their faith when an unbeliever questions or even attacks it. They have never had to!
"I discovered that many, perhaps most, Christians have few or no unbelieving friends. It seems that the more deeply involved we are in "the Lord's work," the more we tend to restrict our associations to Christians. For a body whose chief mandate is to go and make disciples it is alarming, to say the least, to realize that many of the most dedicated Christians have no real contact with non-Christians." Stuart Dauermann, Jews for Jesus website
However, statistics tell us once the average person becomes a believer, they lose contact with all their unbelieving friends inside of twenty-four months.1 As one writer said: “two years after coming to know the Lord, the average Christian no longer has any significant relationships with non-Christians.”2. Westminster Presbyterian Church in Alamogordo, New Mexico
Many Christians first dismiss it, then react with anger when their position is questioned, which is exactly the wrong reaction if we want to see people converted.
This seems to also apply the other way when presenting the gospel to people. Unless they are in a crisis situation that is forcing them to re-examine what they believe, they tend to just brush it off because it doesn't fit into what they have grown up believing. They don't usually want to take the time to look into it for themselves, as Paul commended the Bereans for doing. I have encountered this over and over when witnessing to people who have grown up believing you have to work your way into heaven.
Although this study was limited to politics, it seems to me that it could help us Christians in reaching the lost more effectively. In the political arena, it might make us question the marriage of evangelicalism with right-wing politics, which at present seems to be beyond question to most Evangelical believers, and which I believe will discredit Christianity when the right wing collapses under its own corruption..
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