Many non-churchgoers still call selves Christians

Brian Rauber grew up in church, slacked off during college, then stopped going to church altogether.

He stayed away for 10 years.

Caridad Cruz was active as a youth in a conservative congregation, but she stopped, too, and avoided church for eight years.

Even during those years away from church, they considered themselves Christians.

Rauber, 35, and Cruz, 26, are examples of people in a recent Barna Group survey that found that three out of five U.S. adults who don't attend church are self-described Christians.

A total of 28 percent of the U.S. adult population said they had not attended church in the past six months.

Americans identifying themselves as Christian make up the overwhelming majority, 83 percent, according to Barna. Other polls vary slightly.

Another Barna finding from past studies showed that almost 4 in 10 (37 percent) of unchurched Americans don't attend services because of painful experiences with the church or people in the church.

The latest survey gathered "several interesting insights" that define the self-identified Christians who don't go to church:

30 percent have distanced themselves from being Protestant; 17 percent from being Catholic.

18 percent said they had made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important to them today.

68 percent hold a view that God is all-knowing, all-powerful and the creator of the universe.

35 percent said the Bible is totally accurate.

15 percent said their religious faith is very important in their life.

"Demographically, the self-identified Christians among the unchurched stray from common assumptions," Barna researchers said. "Within this group, women outnumber men; boomers and their elders outnumber the young; downscale adults double the number of upscale unchurched; conservatives are more common than liberals, and whites outnumber minorities by nearly a 3-to-1 margin."

Barna, in Ventura, Calif., is a private, nonpartisan organization that has been researching cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors since 1984.

The Barna results aren't surprising, said Roger Finke, a religious studies professor at Penn State University and director of the Association of Religion Data Archives, because some people consider themselves Christian but are anti-church.