The professional surroundings mirror Barna's own unassuming style. Fresh out of Boston College in the late 1970s, Barna was working on political campaigns when he had his initial contact with polling. He recognized Oral Roberts' name, he said, mainly because he had heard Oral Roberts University had a good basketball team. It was a whole new world for me to get to know. Asked if he sees himself primarily as a market researcher or an evangelical Christian, Barna affirmed his faith without hesitation.
Marketing is just a research tool.
Barna describes himself as a regular churchgoer, but prefers not to disclose the church he attends. People who know Barna and his work see no conflict between the researcher's spiritual commitment and his quantitative objectivity. To assume that we have to not be a Christian in order to do an effective job of objectifying statistics is . . . It's an impossibility. Seeing his work as primarily descriptive, not prescriptive, Barna hopes his findings will give a better sense of the U.S. population's spiritual attitudes and religious practices.