A ten-percent cohort claiming biblical worldviews drives the movement

Evidence

Forbes directly referenced Barton’s work, his statement also likely alluded to the work of evangelical pollster George Barna. Barna, hailed in Christianity Today as “evangelicals’ most-quoted statistician,” is a prolific author and activist who founded the Barna Group, an evangelical market research firm based in Ventura, California, that focuses on cultural and religious trends. Barna identified a cohort of “SAGE Cons,” or “spiritually active, governance-engaged conservatives,” and introduced the term into movement leadership parlance in his 2017 book The Day Christians Changed America: How Christian Conservatives Put Trump in the White House and Redirected America’s Future. “The driving force behind their faith is that nine out of ten of them (90%) have developed a biblical worldview,” Barna writes. “That compares to just 1% of the rest of the U.S. adult population.” According to Barna, SAGE Cons number just 10 percent of the population but vote in highly disproportionate numbers and, more to the point, are motivated to persuade others to vote for their preferred candidates. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 652

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines SAGE Cons, the analytical category underpinning Forbes’ ten-percent theory from paragraph 651.
• XREF: connects to: Grassroots mobilization coexists with direct elite capture in today’s Christian nationalism — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 142; Christian nationalists openly avow a ten-percent minority can seize power — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 651

Broader Connections

• Christian nationalists openly avow a ten-percent minority can seize power #corroborates (0.90) — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 651
• Grassroots mobilization coexists with direct elite capture in today’s Christian nationalism #complicates (0.80) — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 142