George Barna has kept careful watch on the vitality of American Christianity for more than 30 years, with a keen eye to the dangers of secularization and assimilation into the dominant popular culture. Currently, he is a Senior Research Fellow at the Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, and Director of Research at Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center, where he is also an ACU professor. He spoke at FRC’s PrayVoteStand Summit on October 7, focusing on the connection between worldview and individual decision making, and the (witting or unwitting) waning influence of a worldview shaped by the Bible with the most recent generations.
Barna began his presentation by observing that life involves numerous personal decisions over the course of a day. These are decisions by oneself and by other people. The sum of these decisions result in large measure in the world in which we live. Decisions by government leaders or officials make an important difference in how we can live our lives. It’s why Christians are in the (presumably increasingly disadvantaged) position that they are today in America, he said. These decisions also result in many crises which are at least claimed to exist today. Crises Barna mentioned included political, economic, environmental, health care, educational, international security, digital security, and leadership. But America is struggling above all with a worldview crisis. This is the “root crisis.” It’s “what drives all these other difficulties … If we don’t solve the worldview crisis … we are not going to solve any of the other issues.”
Discussion of worldview is not wanted in today’s society, Barna believes. Attempting it results in “the eye roll, you get the deep sigh … Many people think it it’s an academic exercise – it isn’t.” It’s “one of the most fundamental development realities in the life of every human being.” One cannot get through a day without a worldview. It is the filter through which we see and respond to the world. “You do what you believe.”
Barna seemed to indicate it is not a strictly formulated belief system (although it may well include that), but the accumulation of all of one’s beliefs. It’s necessary to simply make sense of the world. Our beliefs then determine our behavior. “If what we’re concerned about is how America is acting, how the nation is comporting itself on the world stage, the problem that precedes that action is the beliefs that led to that action.” With a computer, if there is no CPU, the computer is inoperative. A person’s worldview begins to develop at 15 to 18 months of age, and is fully developed by the age of 13. “Every person’s worldview is essentially in place by the time they become a teenager.” This fact should greatly affect the way we think about and engage child rearing and Christian ministry. He said that research shows that people typically die with the same worldview they had at age 13. One will be confronted with more information over the course of one’s life, but one will have the same worldview.
Barna said that there are three phases in the worldview one holds. These include the “developmental phase” (15 months to 13 years of age), followed by a period of refinement from 13 to about 25, followed by a final phase, a period of “evangelism,” (not to be confused with religious evangelism), in which people share their worldview with others, expressing “how other people ought to think and live.” What we share is what we believe. He emphasized that all decisions, including “whether you even bother to set goals,” proceed from worldview.
Shifts in values and morality, which recently have been substantial, are the result of shifts in worldview. “Worldview is shaped by many external influences,” he said. These influences are affected by other worldviews than the one received and developed as a child. He said that in the critical childhood phase of worldview development, his research shows the principle influences were “the media, public policy, and family.” School and peers are also influences, but the most “impactful,” was the media. “A majority of the choices that we make in terms of our worldview and that then get demonstrated through our behavior come because of the influence of media.” He identified “movies, TV, music, and Internet/social media” as the elements of the mass media influential with all groups (children, teenagers, and adults). School and peers are replaced by celebrities, books, and affinity groups after the childhood development phase, but the more important categories, including all elements of the media, followed by public policy, laws, and family, remain.
Given this tremendous impact of the mass media, Barna in a subsequent panel discussion urged parents to “monitor, minimize, mediate, and moralize” the content found on mass media for their children. Mass media is not everything, but it is much of what socializes young Americans today.
We continue to make choices in adulthood, even about worldview, but “we don’t buy, lock, stock, and barrel, into any one worldview.” A given worldview may be dominant, but most people are influenced by others. He said that most Americans “consider all the options that they’re exposed to, and they pick and choose the ones they like.” People pick up conflicting ideas which they then retain as part of their worldview, despite the incompatibility of those ideas. Barna sees America as now “a superficial nation, more interested in doing than thinking.” He therefore sees the worldview of most Americans as “a customized blend,” personal and specific to a given individual.
Barna said that “to make a difference in the world,” Christians must address the worldview issue. “Every television program you watch has a worldview underlying the messages that it’s communicating to you, every song that you listen to has a worldview underlying the messages its communicating to you, every book you read whether its fiction or nonfiction … it has a worldview.” Barna observed that textbooks in Christian schools have many non-Christian elements, because of the underlying non-Christian worldviews that are influencing them (and the wider Evangelical community). People commonly absorb elements from different worldviews without thinking about it. A key factor in this is the failure to bear in mind that “there is right and wrong.”
The importance of a Biblical worldview in the personal worldview of any given person is the degree to which that person makes day to day decisions “through the lens of Scripture.” Barna observed that one cannot “think and act like Jesus” unless he or she views the world through the lens of the Bible, i.e., unless one has a Biblical worldview. He said that the Biblical worldview should be dominant, but it is not dominant in America today.
This conclusion comes from Barna’s research, much of it from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. His conclusions differ from many Americans’ perception of themselves. For instance, 51% of adults believe they have a Biblical worldview, but in fact only 6% of Americans have a Biblical worldview. Thus, most “Christians” don’t have a Biblical worldview, and aren’t even aware of it. There is a steady decline in a Biblical worldview. Long-term monitoring has shown that the percentage of Americans holding a Biblical worldview has declined from about 12% in 1995 to 6% today. 4 out of 5 people attending Evangelical churches do not have a Biblical worldview. He believes that part of the problem is that “Evangelical churches do not teach the Bible as often or as deeply as used to be the case.” Most people have no overall worldview. 9 out of 10 Americans are syncretists.
Barna said that an individual’s worldview “radically affects” their practical morality and way of life. 11 to 1 people with a Biblical worldview believe in absolute morality. Sexual immorality is increasingly acceptable because of the decline in Biblical worldview. This is because without the Biblical worldview people are likely to think that happiness is the point of life. Abortion and evolution are much less likely to be acceptable to people with a Biblical worldview. Indeed, Barna cited a whole range of issues: pornography, socialism, LGBT behavior, marriage, abortion, helping the poor, accepting science, and supporting homeschooling, to claim that worldview strongly affects Americans’ beliefs and behavior.
Change in worldview isn’t a game changer, Barna maintains, “it’s the game”. The Biblical worldview will cause people to make wise choices. Political solutions to individual social issues, such as abortion or the LGBT revolution, weighty as these may be, are “temporary solutions that don’t deal with the underlying issues. Investing in children is critical.” Most mass media today is antithetical to a Biblical worldview. Churches in America are being shaped by the culture, they are not shaping the culture. Barna’s research finds that only 7% of parents with children under the age of 18 have a Biblical worldview. Yet education of children is extremely important, especially in the current situation. “Ultimately we will win or lose this battle by what we do with children today,” Barna said.
Although the challenge may seem daunting, Christians cannot decline to engage in teaching and advocating for a Biblical worldview, because we know that God has revealed it. It is our duty to God and our neighbor. Another summit speaker, Nancy Pearcey of Houston Baptist University, discussed the practical consequences of the clash between Biblical and non-Biblical worldviews in America today. This will be reviewed in a subsequent article.
(Read part 2.)
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