PHOENIX – Post-Christian America. That’s the only honest way to describe the present culture in the United States. The Cultural Research Center on the campus of Arizona Christian University has just released the 11th in its series of reports on the American Worldview Inventory 2020. The report is entitled, “American Christians Are Redefining the Faith: Adherents Creating New World Views Loosely Tied to Biblical Teaching.”
Accepting the Truth of the Report
“American Christianity is rapidly conforming to the values of the post-Christian secular culture.”
“Evangelicals are embracing secularism . . . Pentecostals and charismatics take secularization a step further . . . Mainline Protestants are the most secular of the four faith families . . . [and] Catholics are increasingly secular and permissive.”
Simply put, the report reveals that an ever-increasing number of Americans are rejecting what the Bible says and are adopting unbiblical beliefs.
Dr. George Barna, Director of Research at the Cultural Research Center, described the demise of Biblical Christianity in America as “the reshaping of the spiritual landscape driven by people customizing Christianity to their liking . . . [while] seeking to retain a Christian identity.”
Accepting the Truth of the Bible
In order to divide rightly between truth and error, we first need to know the truth. Jesus described Himself as the Truth (John 14:6), and He prayed for the Father to sanctify us through the truth that is His Word (John 17:17).
Any variation of the truth is no longer the truth. Here a few highlights of how the “four faith families” in America view the truth as indicated by their own responses to the survey.
- More than 75% of all the people surveyed in each of the four faith families do not believe that we are all sinners.
- More than half of Evangelicals and Pentecostals do not believe that success is obedience to God. That applies to more than 75% of Mainline Protestants and Catholics.
- More than half of Evangelicals and Pentecostals do not believe that the Holy Spirit is a real person and is fully God. 75% of Mainline Protestants and Catholics do not.
- More than half of all the people in each of the four families do not believe there is an absolute moral truth that applies to everyone.
- Over 60% of Mainline Protestants, over 50% of Catholics, about 30% of Pentecostals, and between 25-28% of Evangelicals do not believe that God is the source of all truth or that the Bible is the Word of God and is trustworthy and reliable.
- 52% of Evangelicals, 71% of Pentecostals, 76% of Mainline Protestants, and 84% of Catholics do not believe that what you believe matters as much as having faith in something.
- About 40% of Evangelicals and Pentecostals do not believe that the Bible is the primary source of moral guidance. More than 70% of Mainline Protestants and Catholics also take this position.
Accepting the Reality of the Survey
These are just a few of the 51 questions each respondent answered, from which experienced statisticians and analysts gleaned their findings.
The survey responses are not one-off randomizations. Each response – and the aggregated answers – reveal individual and faith family worldviews subject to an estimated maximum sampling error of ± 2 percentage points, based on the 95% confidence interval. In other words, we have a legitimate and accurate picture of an emergent Post-Christian America. We have become what Dinesh D’Souza described in his book, “What’s So Great About Christianity,” as practicing atheists.
All decisions we make emanate from our own personal worldview. The actions that flow from our decisions may affect our families, our neighbors, our workplace, our community, and even our nation. We must remain upon the Rock of Our Salvation lest the foundations upon which our nation was built crumble beneath our feet.
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Source: Cultural Research Center, AWVI 2020 – Release #11