And now for something completely different, at least different from most of what I post here.
LifeWay Research recently issued the results of its State of Theology study, which explores the religious beliefs of adults throughout the United States. The survey, which was also taken in 2014, 2016, and 2018, collected answers from 3000 people across the country. Note that this wasn’t a survey of Christians, but Americans regardless of religion. The Alabama Baptist reported on the survey results here, and much of this post comes from that article. If you’d like to read the full report, you can see it here.
The results of the survey give us a good idea of where our nation sits concerning its beliefs. It also helps us to understand how these beliefs are shaping our culture. We can see areas of weakness where the church must place an emphasis in its teachings, and it gives each of us a peek inside the minds of our unchurched neighbors and friends. I’ll share some of the results of the survey and let you draw your own conclusions.
One of the most concerning, but least surprising, results is that for 54% of Americans, theological beliefs aren’t a matter of objective truth. Instead, one’s belief system is simply personal opinion. In other words, there is no standard, no source of complete truth, such as the Bible. People are free to make up their minds about what to believe, and each person’s belief is as valid as the next person’s.
When it comes to the Bible, one-third of Americans (34%) believe that modern science disproves the Bible. We’re fed this idea constantly in schools and media and from other sources, so that’s to be expected. At the same time, almost half (48%) believe that the Bible is 100% accurate in all that it teaches. And around half (51%) say the Bible has the authority to tell us what to do. I’m sure those figures have dropped since the founding of our nation, but I was genuinely expecting them to be lower.
On the other hand, almost half (48%) of Americans say the Bible, just like all sacred writings, contains “helpful accounts of ancient myths but is not literally true.” Since the survey began in 2014, that number has steadily risen from 41%.
One of the most important doctrines of Christianity is that of the Trinity – one God in three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. While this is a complex doctrine that I would love to write about at some point, it’s fundamental to the Christian faith.
In the survey, a whopping 72% of Americans said that they believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. When it comes to God, 65% are willing to say that God is a perfect being and that he cannot make a mistake. So far, so good.
However, half of Americans (52%) believe that Jesus was not God but was simply a great teacher. Even worse, 30% of people who classified themselves as evangelicals say the same thing. That’s a clear problem for the church.
As C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.”
Interestingly, two-thirds of Americans (66%) believe that Jesus physically rose from the dead. They believe that the accounts of Jesus’s resurrection are completely accurate. At the same time, a little more than half (55%) of Americans believe that Jesus, rather than being the eternal God the Son, was instead the first and greatest being created by God.
When it comes to the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, a solid 59% believe that the Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being. Thank you, Star Wars. One in five Americans (19%) actually believe that this “force” can tell people to do something that is forbidden in the Bible.
Concerning the topic of sin and salvation, Americans are all over the place. Two-thirds (65%) agree that everyone sins a little but that most people are good by nature. One-fourth of Americans (26%) say that even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation. That percentage has grown steadily and is the highest result in the four years of the survey.
Just over half of Americans (56%) believe that hell is a real place where certain people will be punished forever. The same percentage believes that God counts a person as righteous because of that person’s faith in Christ, not because of good works. A majority (60%) believe that only those who trust in Christ as their Savior will receive eternal salvation. 62% believe that there will be a time in the future when Jesus will return to judge all people.
At the same time, two-thirds of Americans believe that God accepts people of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. I’ve heard a Baptist pastor say this from the pulpit, so that comes as no surprise to me.
Only 26% of Americans agree that God chose the people he would save before he created the world, which is the doctrine known as predestination. Arminian theology has made its mark on the church. A greater number of Americans (36%) agree with the statement that God will always reward true faith with material blessings in this life. It seems that the teachers of the prosperity gospel have also left their mark.
When it comes to morals and values, half of Americans (51%) believe that sex outside of marriage is a sin, while 40% reject the Bible’s teachings on homosexual behavior. Only half (51%) believe that abortion is a sin, but over one-third believe that gender identity is a matter of choice and is not based on gender at birth.
One final tidbit – 24% of Americans surveyed believe that Christians should be silent on political issues. I believe we see that desire playing out before our very eyes.