Most Popular U.S. Worldview Disregards Biblical Values

By DEACON MIKE MANNO

An “overwhelming majority of American adults lack a cohesive, coherent worldview, and instead substitute a patchwork of conflicting, often irreconcilable beliefs and values as they navigate life,” according to the newly released American Worldview Inventory 2021 by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University.
The report is made up of three surveys: The first found that only 6 percent of American adults have a truly biblical worldview; the second found that the most popular worldview is that of “moralistic therapeutic deism, which recognizes the existence of an uninvolved God, and where being happy and feeling good is the polestar; and the new generation of Millennials seek a nation without God, the Bible, and churches.”
The results are a warning of things to come as the millennial generation comes of age. Beliefs and behaviors of the younger generations “threaten to reshape the nations’ religious parameters beyond recognition,” says the report, warning that a “radical spiritual revolution” has created this generation of Millennials.
The findings confirm a decade’s long decline in the prevailing Judeo-Christian culture formerly found throughout the United States.
The project’s lead researcher, sociology professor Dr. George Barna, found that nearly nine of ten adults (88 percent) embrace an impure, unrecognizable worldview that blends ideas from multiple perspectives, which Barna call “syncretism.”
“Rather than developing an internally consistent and philosophically coherent perspective on life, Americans embrace points of view or actions that feel comfortable or seem most convenient. Those beliefs and behaviors are often inconsistent, or even contradictory, but few Americans seemed troubled by those failings,” the survey reported.
The survey was taken last February among a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults in half-hour long personal interviews. It has an error rate of plus or minus two percentage points. It compared the generational attitudes of Millennials (born 1984-2002), Generation X (1965-1983), Baby Boomers (1946-1964), and Builders (1927-1945) and their worldviews. It found:
“Together, Gen Xers and Millennials (i.e., two generations currently in their late teens through mid-50s) emerged with many beliefs that stand in sharp contrast to those held by Boomers and Builders (the two generations in their mid-50s and older). The younger pair of generations is substantially more likely than their elders to believe the following:
“Horoscopes provide useful guidance for their life; Getting even with those who offend or harm them is defensible; God is not involved in people’s lives; Allowing people to own property facilitates economic injustice; Karma is a viable life principle; The Bible is ambiguous in what it teaches about abortion; Human beings have developed over a long period of time from less advanced life forms to our current condition; and the Bible is not the accurate and reliable (i.e., inerrant) word of God.
“In fact, the two younger adult generations are considerably more likely than older generations to rely primarily on Moralistic Therapeutic Deism for worldview guidance which typically conflicts with core biblical teachings. They are also significantly more likely than people from older generations to argue that traditional moral perspectives are irrelevant today, making a series of formerly rejected behaviors now considered to be morally acceptable. Those included lying, not repaying loans, taking illegal tax deductions, speeding, and committing suicide, or allowing for euthanasia.
“The two younger generations are also much less likely than their older counterparts to accept the Golden Rule,” according to the survey, or to accept that “wealth is provided by God for its possessors to manage for His purposes.”
The survey notes that Millennials have gone further than any other recent generation to cut ties with traditional Christian views and biblical teachings:
“Gen X and the Millennials have solidified dramatic changes in the nation’s central beliefs and lifestyles. From a nationwide perspective, the Christian Church has done shockingly little to push back. The result is a culture in which core institutions — including churches — and basic ways of life are continually being radically redefined,” said Dr. Barna.
In expanding on his comments, he continued, “The family unit and traditional family practices have been reshaped, with some long-term, fundamental family ideals and practices outlawed. The responsibilities of government have been significantly broadened and transformed. The influence of the Christian church has diminished while the influence of arts, entertainment, and news media has exploded. As millions of parents discovered during the pandemic, public schools have become indoctrination farms rather than places for teaching basic life skills.”
Barna lamented the direction that Millennials have embraced. “Millennials are leading the way toward the new worldview emphases in America,” he stated. “The research reveals that their rhetoric is often inconsistent with their behavior. Because people do what they believe, if behavior does not coincide with stated beliefs we know that people do not truly hold those beliefs.
“For example Millennials champion the concept of tolerating different points of view. Yet we see in the research that their behaviors — such as promoting getting even, situational treatment of other people, or censoring specific viewpoints or policies — conflict with their alleged embrace of tolerance and diversity. In fact, Millennials are twice as likely as older adults to specify that the people they respect are those who hold the same religious and political views as they do. The attitudinal and behavioral evidence related to a variety of beliefs and related behaviors suggests that they are not a tolerant generation despite their self-image and public promotion as such.”
“More importantly,” Barna continued, “the millennial generation in particular seems committed to living without God, without the Bible, and without Christian churches as foundations in either their personal life or within American society. In the sixties and seventies, Baby Boomers opened the floodgates of questioning cultural foundations. Baby Busters, or Gen X, continued that cultural transition, though less emphatically. Millennials are emulating the aggressiveness of the Boomers in their determination to reshape culture according to their preferences.
“It is hard to imagine a louder, clearer, and more direct challenge to the future of the Christian faith in the United States,” Barna concluded. “If Christian churches, pastors, schools, and individuals believe that a biblical Christian faith is important — not just for themselves but also for our nation and the world beyond it — time is running out to aggressively and strategically act on that belief, before those who so vehemently disagree succeed in destroying the freedom and opportunity to preserve the ways of God.”
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, commented on the report: “These results are the logical fallout of what happens when God and truth are jettisoned. Having rejected any external basis for truth, the nucleus of one’s moral compass reverts to oneself. That being the case, happiness and comfort become paramount, and anything that stands in the way of their fulfillment is verboten.”
The American Worldview Inventory 2021 is an annual survey that evaluates the worldview of the U.S. adult population. Begun as an annual tracking study in 2020, the assessment is based on several dozen worldview-related questions drawn from eight categories of worldview application, measuring both beliefs and behavior. The eight are: Biblical Theism (or a biblical worldview), Secular Humanism, Postmodernism, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, Nihilism, Marxism (along with its offshoot, Critical Race Theory), and Eastern Mysticism (also known as “New Age”).
This new research revealed “that across all four generations the category in which Americans are least likely to think and act biblically is the dimension of ‘Bible, truth, and morals’.”
Obviously, this does not bode well for the future of the world nor our children. It does suggest, however, that our family and religious values can easily be undermined by a Marxist approach to education, a complicit media and entertainment industry, and politicians who value their next election more than they value the worth of the next generation.
Prayer would not be a bad option for us to follow, especially Eucharistic adoration.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central Time on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)