(CP) A distinguished Christian researcher is warning that “we’re on the precipice of Christian invisibility on this nation,” as recent research shows that preteens are rejecting beliefs related to a biblical worldview.
In a statement released last week, the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University shared data in regards to the worldviews held by children between the ages of 8 and 12 years old. The Cultural Research Center contrasted the views of the preteens with those of fogeys of youngsters younger than 13, pastors of Christian churches and teenagers.
The findings of the research are based on responses from 400 preteens collected in December 2022, 600 parents of youngsters younger than 13 gathered in January 2022, 600 pastors of Christian churches collected in February 2022, 400 teenagers gathered in November and December 2022, and a January 2023 survey of two,000 adults.
When asked in the event that they believed that “Jesus Christ is the one option to experience everlasting salvation, based on confessing your sins and relying only upon His forgiveness of your sins,” just 36% of preteens answered within the affirmative. Thirty-four percent of fogeys and 54% of youngsters’s pastors said the identical.
Twenty-five percent of preteens agreed that “the Bible is the true word of God that needs to be a guide to knowing right from fallacious, and living a very good life.” Significantly higher shares of fogeys (44%) and youngsters’s pastors (62%) expressed agreement with the statement stressing the worth of the Bible.
Less than half of preteens (21%), parents (28%) and youngsters’s pastors (36%) believed that “there are absolute truths — things which are right and things which are fallacious, that don’t rely upon feelings, preferences, or circumstances — those truths are unchanging and knowable.”
While similarly small percentages of preteens (27%) and oldsters (33%) agreed that “the predominant reason to live is to know, love and serve God, with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength,” a majority of youngsters’s pastors (56%) identified knowing, loving and serving God as the aim of life.
Only 17% of preteens defined “real success in life” as “consistently obeying God,” together with 19% of fogeys and 42% of youngsters’s ministers. Additional findings in regards to the views and spiritual lives of preteens included within the report state that 26% of youngsters between the ages of 8 and 12 “consistently seek the advice of the Bible when trying to find out right from fallacious” and that 21% of preteens surveyed “consider turning to the Bible is the very best option to distinguish right from fallacious.”
In other cases, the views of preteens closely mirror those of adults. For example, 36% of preteens and 35% of adults consider that “the means to everlasting salvation is by confessing their sins and asking Jesus Christ to avoid wasting them from the results of their sin.”
The research attributed the dearth of a biblical worldview amongst preteens to the undeniable fact that adults shaping the opinions of the youngsters also fail to embrace the biblical worldview. It measured the frequency of a biblical worldview amongst children between the ages of 8 and 12 at 2%. Among kid’s pastors, that figure rises to only 12%.
Reacting to the findings of the research, Arizona Christian University Cultural Research Center Director George Barna said that “the worldview development of youngsters is the existential challenge facing the American Church today.” According to Barna, “Because of the strong correlation between biblical worldview and real Christian discipleship, we’re on the precipice of Christian invisibility on this nation unless we get serious about this crisis and invest heavily in fixing what’s broken.”
The Cultural Research Center defines a biblical worldview as “a way of experiencing, interpreting, and responding to reality in light of biblical perspectives.” It measures biblical worldview based on responses to questions examining respondents’ beliefs about [the] Bible, Truth, and Morals, Faith Practices, Family and the Value of Life, God, Creation, and History, Human Character and Nature, Lifestyle Behavior, and Relationships, Purpose and Calling in addition to Sin, Salvation, and God Relationship.
“If you follow the info, you learn that now we have had a decreasing percentage of Americans embracing a biblical worldview since we began tracking this within the early Nineteen Nineties. We have endured greater than 30 years of consistent decline, with a really limited response by the Church,” Barna added. “The incidence of biblical worldview amongst adults has dropped to only 4%, and amongst parents of young children it’s just 2%. You cannot get much lower.”
Barna elaborated on the importance of specializing in worldview development at an early age: “Children are mental and spiritual sponges of their preteen years. They are desperately attempting to make sense of the world, their identity, their purpose, and the right way to live a meaningful and satisfying life.”
“Parents, particularly, have an obligation to deal with and spend money on the event of their child’s worldview, which is solely their decision-making filter for all times. If parents don’t fill that vacuum, other sources — similar to the media, the faculties, and even the kid’s peers — will influence that worldview construction,” he warned. “The child’s worldview will inevitably develop. The critical questions are who will shape it and what 4 worldviews can be most forcefully and consistently proposed.”
