Faith and Liberty part two
In response to my previous entry, Tony pointed out my preposterous, if not confusing, statement:
"I'm not shocked that fewer than half of the Denver MSA's 2 Million residents attended this event." (Note: MSA means Metropolitan Statistical Area)
He replies, "This seems to say that although you were not shocked at the number who attended, you had some hope or some sort of expectation that on the order of 1 million people would show up to a conference." Indeed, I seem to imply that.
Yes, a million would be a lot. I was, of course, joking. But consider the importance of the topic. Shouldn't a lot of people show up, if a lot even exist in the first place? Wouldn't it make sense for those who care about Christ and/or liberty to simply attend a local event about faith and liberty? How many people should we expect at such an event? Maybe a little exploration is in order. I'll use a couple of examples from events involving personal experience.
Billy Graham had a crusade in Fresno, California in 2001. The MSA, at the time, had a little over 800,000 population. Saturday night (October 14th), over 60,000 people showed up in person - about 7 1/2% of the MSA population.
Could we estimate the percentage of Christians that showed up using available data? Statistics show about 47% in Fresno County are affiliated with some sort of congregation. For sake of comparison, let's assume that's the percentage that are actually Christian. That would mean that about 15% of the area's Christians showed up. Not bad.
Lest we chalk this up to anomaly, let's look at another large Christian event in Fresno. In 1997 Promise Keepers attracted over 44,000 men (literally, not people, but males). Graham's event was free. As I recall, the 44,000 at the PK event paid for admission. If half of the Fresno MSA's Christians are women, this event was nearly twice as effective as Graham's at drawing Christians, or, as one might hope in either case, creating new ones.
There are two variables, then, that we need to control for. First, the effectiveness of the event at attracting (or creating) its audience. Second, the size of the audience.
First, Billy and his organization are more famous and probably more effective than Alan Keyes or Chuck Baldwin. At the time, Promise Keepers was phenomenally effective, too. This Faith and Liberty Conference, while advertised to the target audience, wasn't advertised as heavily as the 2001 crusade or 1997 PK rally was.
So we shouldn't expect this event to be as effective as those at drawing its target audience all at once. Was this event 10% as effective as those? How about 1%? Worst case, maybe .1%? We don't really know because of the other factor.
Not all Christians care about liberty. Frankly, that is a mystery to me. So the "Faith and Liberty" conference would be drawing from only a subset of all Christians (more like Promise Keepers, who only allow men at their events). We may be able to closely estimate how many Christians are men (helpful with respect to PK attendance), but it's not as easy estimating the subset of Christians that are reasonably libertarian. Would this be half of Christians? Less? More? Obviously, I think it should be all, but it's not.
If all Denver Christians were libertarian, and this event was as effective as the others I mention, the crowd size should have exceeded 100,000. Not quite the million I imply above, but huge anyway.
Here's what we do know. Graham attracted 7 1/2% of congregants and Promise Keepers attracted 11% of male congregants in Fresno. The Faith and Liberty conference attracted less than .02% of Denver's congregants.
What does that tell us? Here are the two extremes of possibilities:
1: If this event was roughly as effective as the Graham crusade or Promise Keepers, then less than .2% of Denver's congregants are both Christian and reasonably libertarian. Pretty depressing, right?
2: But what if it's all the event's fault? What if, instead of Christians being .2% libertarian, they were almost 100% libertarian? In that case, this reasonably well-advertised event with nationally-known speakers held on a Saturday at an attractive local facility was thoroughly ineffective at attracting its target audience. That conclusion would be similarly discouraging, especially given the lack of competing (Christian libertarian) events. If all Christians cared about freedom, they sure don't care very much - not enough to show up to the Faith and Liberty Conference.
The truth is probably somewhere between these extremes. Neither outlook, nor any combination of them, is encouraging, at least on the surface. But, as I said in my previous entry, despite these observations, I'm actually encouraged. My estimation, based on intuition and experience (not hard data) is that very few Christians understand and embrace liberty. While this event might not have been as effective as Graham or Promise Keepers, I think the real problem is mostly the first one above. There just aren't many Christians who understand and care about freedom.
Given the arguably tiny population of Christian libertarians, the fact that any others are ready to speak out is encouraging. In fact, the mere existence of people who care about Christ and liberty is encouraging to me. Seeing some of them coming together at a conference is very encouraging. And hearing that some would consider geographic concentration is even more encouraging.
How encouraging is it? Imagine what could happen if a significant portion of our rare breed of Christian libertarians joined the FSP and moved to New Hampshire? This Faith and Liberty Conference event drew from less than 1% of the U.S. population. Even with its seemingly low attendance, this event suggests over 20,000 people in America might feel similarly to those in attendance on Saturday. That's a small remnant, overwhelmed by over 300 Million who feel otherwise. But what if even 10% of that tiny remnant took up residence in one small state? What if that place were New Hampshire???
Evidence to suggest even 2,000 Christians who value freedom actually exist is encouraging. I'm completely convinced 2,000 strongly committed Christians who understand and care about freedom enough to move to another state would have a radical impact here. I can only hope so many will feel the call to do.
V-
"I'm not shocked that fewer than half of the Denver MSA's 2 Million residents attended this event." (Note: MSA means Metropolitan Statistical Area)
He replies, "This seems to say that although you were not shocked at the number who attended, you had some hope or some sort of expectation that on the order of 1 million people would show up to a conference." Indeed, I seem to imply that.
Yes, a million would be a lot. I was, of course, joking. But consider the importance of the topic. Shouldn't a lot of people show up, if a lot even exist in the first place? Wouldn't it make sense for those who care about Christ and/or liberty to simply attend a local event about faith and liberty? How many people should we expect at such an event? Maybe a little exploration is in order. I'll use a couple of examples from events involving personal experience.
Billy Graham had a crusade in Fresno, California in 2001. The MSA, at the time, had a little over 800,000 population. Saturday night (October 14th), over 60,000 people showed up in person - about 7 1/2% of the MSA population.
Could we estimate the percentage of Christians that showed up using available data? Statistics show about 47% in Fresno County are affiliated with some sort of congregation. For sake of comparison, let's assume that's the percentage that are actually Christian. That would mean that about 15% of the area's Christians showed up. Not bad.
Lest we chalk this up to anomaly, let's look at another large Christian event in Fresno. In 1997 Promise Keepers attracted over 44,000 men (literally, not people, but males). Graham's event was free. As I recall, the 44,000 at the PK event paid for admission. If half of the Fresno MSA's Christians are women, this event was nearly twice as effective as Graham's at drawing Christians, or, as one might hope in either case, creating new ones.
There are two variables, then, that we need to control for. First, the effectiveness of the event at attracting (or creating) its audience. Second, the size of the audience.
First, Billy and his organization are more famous and probably more effective than Alan Keyes or Chuck Baldwin. At the time, Promise Keepers was phenomenally effective, too. This Faith and Liberty Conference, while advertised to the target audience, wasn't advertised as heavily as the 2001 crusade or 1997 PK rally was.
So we shouldn't expect this event to be as effective as those at drawing its target audience all at once. Was this event 10% as effective as those? How about 1%? Worst case, maybe .1%? We don't really know because of the other factor.
Not all Christians care about liberty. Frankly, that is a mystery to me. So the "Faith and Liberty" conference would be drawing from only a subset of all Christians (more like Promise Keepers, who only allow men at their events). We may be able to closely estimate how many Christians are men (helpful with respect to PK attendance), but it's not as easy estimating the subset of Christians that are reasonably libertarian. Would this be half of Christians? Less? More? Obviously, I think it should be all, but it's not.
If all Denver Christians were libertarian, and this event was as effective as the others I mention, the crowd size should have exceeded 100,000. Not quite the million I imply above, but huge anyway.
Here's what we do know. Graham attracted 7 1/2% of congregants and Promise Keepers attracted 11% of male congregants in Fresno. The Faith and Liberty conference attracted less than .02% of Denver's congregants.
What does that tell us? Here are the two extremes of possibilities:
1: If this event was roughly as effective as the Graham crusade or Promise Keepers, then less than .2% of Denver's congregants are both Christian and reasonably libertarian. Pretty depressing, right?
2: But what if it's all the event's fault? What if, instead of Christians being .2% libertarian, they were almost 100% libertarian? In that case, this reasonably well-advertised event with nationally-known speakers held on a Saturday at an attractive local facility was thoroughly ineffective at attracting its target audience. That conclusion would be similarly discouraging, especially given the lack of competing (Christian libertarian) events. If all Christians cared about freedom, they sure don't care very much - not enough to show up to the Faith and Liberty Conference.
The truth is probably somewhere between these extremes. Neither outlook, nor any combination of them, is encouraging, at least on the surface. But, as I said in my previous entry, despite these observations, I'm actually encouraged. My estimation, based on intuition and experience (not hard data) is that very few Christians understand and embrace liberty. While this event might not have been as effective as Graham or Promise Keepers, I think the real problem is mostly the first one above. There just aren't many Christians who understand and care about freedom.
Given the arguably tiny population of Christian libertarians, the fact that any others are ready to speak out is encouraging. In fact, the mere existence of people who care about Christ and liberty is encouraging to me. Seeing some of them coming together at a conference is very encouraging. And hearing that some would consider geographic concentration is even more encouraging.
How encouraging is it? Imagine what could happen if a significant portion of our rare breed of Christian libertarians joined the FSP and moved to New Hampshire? This Faith and Liberty Conference event drew from less than 1% of the U.S. population. Even with its seemingly low attendance, this event suggests over 20,000 people in America might feel similarly to those in attendance on Saturday. That's a small remnant, overwhelmed by over 300 Million who feel otherwise. But what if even 10% of that tiny remnant took up residence in one small state? What if that place were New Hampshire???
Evidence to suggest even 2,000 Christians who value freedom actually exist is encouraging. I'm completely convinced 2,000 strongly committed Christians who understand and care about freedom enough to move to another state would have a radical impact here. I can only hope so many will feel the call to do.
V-