PHOENIX, ARIZONA (ANS) -- While evangelical Christians get a lot of attention from journalists and politicians, most people don’t know really know who evangelicals are, while other people hate them.

The findings are from a new Ellison Research report titled "America’s Definition: What is an Evangelical?" The study was independently designed, funded, and conducted by Ellison Research among a representative sample of over 1,000 American adults.

Ellison Research is a marketing research firm.

Ron Sellers, president of Ellison Research, said in a news release that one of the surprises of the study was how much abuse was aimed at evangelicals.

"Some people used language in describing evangelical Christians that we can't even reprint in the report," Sellers said.

He added, "Evangelicals were called illiterate, greedy, psychos, racist, stupid, narrow-minded, bigots, idiots, fanatics, nut cases, screaming loons, delusional, simpletons, pompous, morons, cruel, nitwits, and freaks, and that's just a partial list. The insults and anger directed at this population group by a surprisingly large proportion of Americans was truly shocking. Some people don't have any idea what evangelicals actually are or what they believe – they just know they can't stand evangelicals, whatever they might be."

Sellers said there’s little understanding among Americans about just who an evangelical is.

Speaking in the news release he added, "Evangelicals are defined every which way, and that is among the people who even attempted to define them. When the media report something about ‘evangelical leaders’ like Rick Warren or James Dobson, or describes a political candidate as meeting with an evangelical group, or polls likely voters and reports that evangelicals are backing a particular candidate, many Americans honestly don't have the faintest notion of just who belongs to that group that is being described, while others are completely off-base in their assumptions of who the report is describing."

Sellers said, that other studies by Ellison Research have shown that only 35 percent of all Americans believe they know someone very well who is an evangelical, while 51 percent don't personally know any evangelicals even casually.

Sellers added, "Americans are less likely to know an evangelical Christian than they are to know a Jewish person, an American Indian, an Asian person, or a gay or lesbian person – all of whom represent populations that are considerably smaller than the evangelical population in this country, no matter how it is defined."

One thing that proved to be a bit surprising to the researchers was how few people specifically define evangelicals according to their politics or world view.

Sellers said in the release, "Especially during election time, we often hear about evangelicals in connection with candidates, or with political or social issues. Yet Americans usually don't define ‘evangelicals’ by their voting habits or politics. There's at least some basic understanding among the American population that evangelicals are defined by religion rather than by politics, even if many people don't really know just what that religious definition is."

A selection of actual quotes from study participants can be found in the full report at www.ellisonresearch.com/releases/20080903.htm.

Jeremy Reynalds is a freelance writer and the founder and CEO of Joy Junction, New Mexico's largest emergency homeless shelter, http://www.joyjunction.org He has a master's degree in communication from the University of New Mexico, and a Ph.D. in intercultural education from Biola University in Los Angeles. His newest book is "The Face of Homelessness." Additional details are available at http://www.HomelessBook.com. Reynalds' upcoming book is "We All Need a Little Help." It will be released on October 3 2008. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For more information contact: Jeremy Reynalds at jeremyreynalds@comcast.net. Tel: (505) 400-7145. Note: A higher resolution JPEG picture of Jeremy Reynalds is available on request from Dan Wooding at danjuma1@aol.com.