In Dan Barker's Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists, at the start of Chapter Sixteen, he writes (emphasis mine):
Many bible scholars[25] and ministers—including one third of the clergy in the Church of England[26]—reject the idea that Jesus bodily came back to life. So do 30 percent of born-again American Christians![27]
Is it really true that 30 percent of born-again American Christians answer "no" to a survey asking if they agree that Jesus "bodily" came back to life?
Note that I am not asking what doctrine (in general, or for any particular denomination) is; I am asking how people reply to the question.
Below I try to address several issues that have come up in the extensive comments on this question as well as provide what evidence I have so far.
Please note: I see that many of the comments are about the details of the definitions of certain terms. I would like to suggest that this is not a very productive line to go down and instead we should focus on the evidence we can find and consider whether the definitions used by that evidence are a problem only if the definitions seem terribly out of line with what Barker appears to be using.
Question Forum
How people reply to the question above on a survey is something that can be supported or disconfirmed from modern evidence, and such a survey can be replicated for further support (or disconfirmation). Thus I am posting in this forum, which is for "researching the evidence behind the claims you hear or read". Note that this question does not resemble any of the numerous examples given in "What types of questions can I ask on this site?" for the Christianity StackExchange.
Definition of "Bodily Resurrection"
Regarding the definition of "bodily came back to life," it's clear from context that Barker is talking not about a spiritual body but the actual physical body:
When the Gospel of John portrays the postmortem Jesus on a fishing trip with his buddies and the writer of Matthew shows him giving his team a mountaintop pep talk two days after he died, how can there be any doubt that the original believers were convinced he had bodily risen from the grave?...
The earliest Christians believed in the “spiritual” resurrection of Jesus. The story evolved over time into a “bodily” resurrection.
Unfortunately, without the original source I do not know what the exact question asked in the survey was, nor am I qualified to determine how the respondents would have interpreted that question. However, Barker has extensive training in Evangelical theology so it seems unlikely that he's misunderstanding what he's writing, and likely that he was able to properly understand and interpret the survey question and answers.
Definition of "Born Again"
It is clear that there are Christians who are "born again" and those who are not; that Wikipeda page identifies denominations that fall into this category and Barker gives an example (the Church of England) which is not. There's obviously a spectrum where there's room for argument in the middle but, as with "left wing" and "right wing," that does not mean that the distinction does not exist. I am not terribly concerned about the details of how the distinction is made in surveys or other evidence so long as it's not obviously vastly different from the common definitions.
Evidence from Barker
The footnote given for reference [27] in the quote above is,
“Americans’ Bible Knowledge Is in the Ballpark, But Often Off Base,” July 12, 2000, Barna Research Group.
I've found the Barna Research Group website, but I cannot find this study in a search on that site, nor does it appear in their chronological listing of research.
Evidence from Elsewhere
In a comment Kyralessa offers another Barna study, "Most Americans Take Well-Known Bible Stories at Face Value". On the face of it this seems to disconfirm Barker's statement: the surveyed rate of belief in bodily resurection for all denominations is considerably higher (85%) than Barker quotes for even born again (70%) much less non-born again (one third for Church of England) and for "non-mainline Protestants" (which presumably has a higher proportion of born-again Christians) it's 95%.
