Crossinator

What is your most important relationship? Your spouse, children, God, friends, or other family??

Barna's recent survey suggests that opinions vary across the spectrum of people.

• Seven out of ten adults mentioned family or family members as their most significant connection.
• God, Jesus Christ, Allah, and the Trinity were among the names listed by one out of every five adults (19%).
• 2% of adults said a specific friend represented their most important personal relationship.

I would say that my wife is my most important earthly relationship.

Here are a few more interesting tidbits from their research:

1. The people most likely to list God were 40 or older.
2. Political conservatives were almost three times as likely as political liberals to identify God as their most important relationship (33% vs. 12%, respectively).
3. The only subgroup for which at least one-third said God was their most significant relationship was evangelicals, among whom 70% listed God.
4. Thirty percent of Protestants listed God as their most important connection. In contrast, just 9% of Catholics did so.
5. Blacks were about twice as likely as all other Americans to describe their bond with God as their most important relationship.
6. Women were nearly twice as likely as men to list their children as their most important relationship.

A whole section of their research looked at social groups and how connected individuals felt to different groups. The younger demographics were less likely to have church has their most important social group - which shouldn't be too surprising since they are a smaller demographic within the church.

The 5 main categories of social groups and their respective percentages are below. The % indicates how many % of people say that group is their most important.

Church - 29%
Work - 18%
Friends - 14%
Hobby/Social Group - 12%
Neighbors - 7%

I don't have any major conclusions to draw from this research! Just putting it out there! Barna has also picked apart the data to include conservatives versus liberals, etc.