VENTURA, California (WordNews.org) April 30, 2013 – A new study finds that more than half of the Christians surveyed tend to emulate the actions and attitudes of Pharisees, those self-righteous and hypocritical leaders, rather than the actions of Christ.
The Barna Group research found just 14 percent of self-professed Christians emulate the actions and attitudes of Christ, while 51 percent of this group’s actions and attitudes looked more like that of a Pharisee’s.
In order to assess this, Barna researchers presented a series of 20 agree-or-disagree statements. Five actions and five attitudes that seem to best encapsulate the actions and attitudes of Jesus Christ during his ministry on earth. The researchers did the same for the Pharisees (10 total statements, five reflecting behaviors and five examining attitudes).
David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group, directed the study.
“Our intent is to create some new discussion about the intangible aspects of following and representing Jesus,” he said. “Obviously, survey research, by itself, cannot fully measure someone’s ‘Christ-likeness’ or ‘Pharisee-likeness.’ But the study is meant to identify baseline qualities of Jesus, like empathy, love, and a desire to share faith with others—or the resistance to such ideals in the form of self-focused hypocrisy. The statements are based on the biblical record given in the Gospels and in the Epistles and our team worked closely with a leading pastor, John Burke, to develop the survey questions.”
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