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Posted on 01/12/2009 5:52:48 AM PST by Sopater
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January 12, 2009
(Ventura, California) - For much of America’s history, the assumption was that if you were born in America, you would affiliate with the Christian faith. A new nationwide survey by The Barna Group, however, indicates that people’s views have changed. The study discovered that half of all adults now contend that Christianity is just one of many options that Americans choose from and that a huge majority of adults pick and choose what they believe rather than adopt a church or denomination’s slate of beliefs. Still, most people say their faith is becoming increasingly important as a source of personal moral guidance.
Choosing a Faith
The survey shows half of Americans believe the Christian faith no longer has a lock on people’s hearts. Overall, 50% of the adults interviewed agreed that Christianity is no longer the faith that Americans automatically accept as their personal faith, while just 44% disagreed and 6% were not sure.
Two-thirds of evangelical Christians (64%) and three out of every five Hispanics (60%) embraced that position, making them the groups most convinced of the shift in America’s default faith. The study also showed that residents of the Northeast and West were much more likely than those from the South and Midwest to assert that Christianity has lost its place as the first faith option people consider. People who said they are politically conservative, however, saw things differently than did the rest of the country: a slight majority of conservatives claimed that Christianity remains the natural choice of most Americans.
Faith and Moral Guidance
By an overwhelming margin - 74% to 23% - adults agreed that their religious faith was becoming even more important to them than it used to be as a source of objective and reliable moral guidance.
This perspective was championed by born again Christians: 91% concurred with the survey statement. In contrast, just two-thirds of the people who consider themselves to be Christian but are not born again (67%) embraced this view, and only four out of every ten Americans (39%) who do not affiliate with Christianity also said their faith has increasing influence on their moral judgments.
A sizeable majority of almost every subgroup of the population accepted this perspective as an accurate representation of their personal experience. African Americans were the ethnic group most supportive of the notion (84%). Conservatives (84%) were far more likely than either political moderates (70%) or liberals (65%) to agree - although comfortable majorities of those segments adopted the same view as conservatives.
Choosing Specific Beliefs
The United States has well over 200 different Christian denominations, a testimony to the historic importance people have attached to doctrinal accuracy. But things have changed dramatically in recent decades. The Barna survey underscored the fact that people no longer look to denominations or churches to offer a slate of theological views that the individual adopts in its entirety.
By a three to one margin (71% to 26%) adults noted that they are personally more likely to develop their own set of religious beliefs than to accept a comprehensive set of beliefs taught by a particular church. Although born again Christians were among the segments least likely to adopt the a la carte approach to beliefs, a considerable majority even of born again adults (61%) has taken that route. Leading the charge in the move to customize one’s package of beliefs are people under the age of 25, among whom more than four out of five (82%) said they develop their own combination of beliefs rather than adopt a set proposed by a church.
Evidence of people’s willingness to part with church teaching was shown in other data from the survey regarding what people believe. Among individuals who describe themselves as Christian, for instance, close to half believe that Satan does not exist, one-third contend that Jesus sinned while He was on earth, two-fifths say they do not have a responsibility to share the Christian faith with others, and one-quarter dismiss the idea that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches.
Implications of the Research
Asked to describe what the research means for American society today, researcher George Barna offered several insights.
Related Resources
Tyndale House Publishers has just released a new book by George Barna and Bill Dallas, entitled Lessons from San Quentin . This book describes the journey taken by Dallas, a young, aggressive entrepreneur who quickly built a highly successful career - and just as quickly wound up in prison because of his illegal financial dealings. As his self-indulgent, no-holds-barred lifestyle came to a crashing end, so did his self-reliance and moral certainty. Lessons from San Quentin describes not only Dallas’s rise from rags to riches and then his crash and burn phases, but also his restoration through his exploration of Christianity and the tutelage of a group of men sentenced to life imprisonment in San Quentin. During those years, Dallas discovered, experimented with and ultimately embraced a body of biblical principles that have served him well ever since, particularly in his current role as founder and president of Church Communication Network (CCN), the largest satellite-based church training network in North America.
About the Research
This report is based upon telephone interviews conducted by The Barna Group with a random sample of 1,004 adults selected from across the continental United States, age 18 and older, in August 2008. The maximum margin of sampling error associated with the aggregate sample is ±3.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Minimal statistical weighting was used to calibrate the aggregate sample to known population percentages in relation to several key demographic variables.
“Born again Christians"{ were defined as people who said they had made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that was still important in their life today and who also indicated they believed that when they die they will go to Heaven because they had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. Respondents were not asked to describe themselves as "born again."
“Evangelicals" meet the born again criteria (described above) plus seven other conditions. Those include saying their faith is very important in their life today; believing they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; believing that Satan exists; believing that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not works; believing that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; asserting that the Bible is accurate in all that it teaches; and describing God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today. Being classified as an evangelical is not dependent upon church attendance or the denominational affiliation of the church attended. Respondents were not asked to describe themselves as "evangelical."
The Barna Group, Ltd. (which includes its research division, The Barna Research Group) is a private, non-partisan, for-profit organization that conducts primary research, produces resources pertaining to cultural change and spiritual development, and facilitates the healthy spiritual growth of leaders, children, families and Christian ministries. Located in Ventura, California, Barna has been conducting and analyzing primary research to understand cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors since 1984. If you would like to receive free e-mail notification of the release of each new, bi-monthly update on the latest research findings from The Barna Group, you may subscribe to this free service at the Barna website www.barna.org. Additional research-based resources, both free and at discounted prices, are also available through that website.
© The Barna Group, Ltd, 2009.
Europe has long since lost its faith. The USA is close behind and will suffer the consequences. No faith, no morals, no law.
The world won’t be right again until a Great Awakening sweeps away the darkness. Personally, I think Christ will return before we get that chance.
Thanks for your post. I’m always interested in Barna’s reseach and analysis.
The following quote is unfortunately something that is very true:
“With people spending less time reading the Bible, and becoming less engaged in activities that deepen their biblical literacy, faith views are more often adopted on the basis of dialogue, self-reflection, and observation than teaching. Feelings and emotions now play a significant role in the development of people’s faith views - in many cases, much more significant than information-based exercises such as listening to preaching and participating in Bible study”
How do we know this isn’t just the way it’s supposed to be, and that this is the way God wants it?
bookmark
If Christianity was someone’s ‘default faith’, then they weren’t really Christian to begin with. They just played one ‘on TV’.
It’s been creeping up on us since the 1950’s but few have noticed it.
I once saw a New Testament curriculum for Texas public schools in the 1940’s. Students had to pass a New Testament class in order to graduate high school! It didn’t matter what religious faith you came from. Political correctness ruined that. Then they took prayer out of the public schools in the early 1960’s and that was it. The stage was set for total apostacy.
The problem is that, over the past half-century, many protestant churches worked hard to become irrelevant to the people they were designed to serve.
I wouldn’t limit it to just protestant churches. :)
C.S. Lewis once estimated that only
10% of England was practicing Christian
(in the 1950’s).
This would probably be a good
ballpark estimate for the USA also.
In my grandmother’s day there was a saying about not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I’ve not heard it in use for several years now, but it really fits the situation outlined in this article.
Those very religious beliefs and practices helped to make America the greatest nation in history. They are discarded at our peril.
Of course, we all have the God given ability to believe as we choose. I choose to believe the bible, and according to the scriptures, this is not what God wants.
The vast majority of the world’s great powers fell only after the people had become immoral and wicked.
What we are now witnessing is the loss of faith in God which is being replaced by the self-centered faith served up by the Democrat Party. "Feelings and emotions" along with "what's in it for me" is the essemce of the Democrat's winning message.
I really don’t like the term “default faith” either. Many religions believe that children born to their members are also members of that faith. Not so with Christianity. However, there was a time that it was assumed that if you grew up in America, that you would adhere to the Christian faith. As this article points out, that is no longer the case.
Christianity is slowly being replaced by the Church of Global Warming and hedonism.
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