Survey: Less Than 1 Percent of Young Adults Hold Biblical Worldview
by Jennifer Riley
Tue, Mar. 10 2009 12:19 PM EDT
Less than one percent of the youngest adult generation in America has a biblical worldview, found a new study examining the changes in worldview among Christians and the overall U.S. population.
The Mosaic generation, those between the ages of 18 and 23, “rarely” have a biblical worldview as defined by The Barna Group. The research data found that less than one-half of one percent of Mosaics have a biblical worldview.
A biblical worldview, as defined by the Barna study, is believing that absolute moral truth exists; the Bible is completely accurate in all of the principles it teaches; Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic; a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or do good works; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; and God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.
Only if someone held all the above beliefs did the research consider the person as having a biblical worldview.
George Barna, who directed the research, commented on the “troubling” generational pattern that suggests “parents are not focused on guiding their children to have a biblical worldview.”
“One of the challenges for parents, though, is that you cannot give what you do not have, and most parents do not possess such a perspective on life,” he noted.
The research shows that only nine percent of all American adults have a biblical worldview, which although significantly higher than that of the Mosaic generation is still a small proportion of the total population.
Among “born again Christians,” the study found that they are twice as likely as the average adult to have a biblical worldview. However, that still amounted to no more than about one out of five (19 percent) born again Christians, a small minority, the study pointed out.
A born again Christian is defined by Barna as those who said they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is important in their life today and that they are sure they will go to Heaven after they die only because they confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their savior.
Some of the problems American adults and born again Christians have with the biblical worldview definition include believing that moral truth is absolute and unaffected by the circumstances.
Only one third of all adults (34 percent) hold this worldview, and while more born again adults believe in absolute moral truth, still less than the majority possess this outlook (46 percent).
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