As Americans pause at the end of the year to review what happened over the past 12 months, the story of the year was the 9-11 attack on America. But plenty of other changes and revelations occurred during the past year that merit recollection. Based on more than a dozen national research studies conducted by the Barna Research Group of Ventura, California during 2001, it is obvious that even the faith realm provided its fair share of drama.

In his annual review of the top religious findings, George Barna provided five lists of faith-related survey results – the most revealing, most controversial, most surprising, most significant-but-not-surprising, and most challenging faith-related insights. “Other people would probably place some different outcomes on each of these lists,” admitted Barna. “But based on our on-going assessment of the spiritual climate and religious gyrations in America, these 40 outcomes give a pretty dynamic summary of what happened in the U.S. in its religious life this year. Such lists are always subjective, but the breadth of revelations represented by these factors may be helpful in reviewing the true spiritual condition of America.”

The 7 Most Important or Revealing Results

Poring over hundreds of statistics released during 2001 through The Barna Update, the bi-weekly report on American culture and faith, Barna chose the following seven outcomes as those that have the most significant implications.

1. When people who regularly attend Christian church services were asked to describe the importance of various spiritual endeavors, a minority of regular attenders described evangelism, having meaningful relationships with other people in their church, and giving 10% or more of their income to their church as very important endeavors.