Evangelical Exodus: Cultural Update with Dr. George Barna

Evangelical Exodus: Cultural Update with Dr. George Barna

August 23, 2024

Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett

Guest: Dr. George Barna

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 8/23/24. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Isaac Crockett:   Hello. Historically, American evangelicals have been a dominant force in shaping American culture, at least at certain periods of our nation, and many, I think would say even looking at our founding and our pilgrim forefathers and Puritan heritage. But I wonder, are evangelicals still making as big an impact on our society today as they have in the even past decades? If you listen to some from the Liberal left, they talk about kind of the evil conservative Christian evangelicals who are trying to take control of you and your personal rights and things like that. But are evangelical Christians Bible believing, Christ honoring evangelical Christians? Are they really making as big an impact in our society as they have at other times? Well, with that, I want to welcome you again to this program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett, and I’m excited to talk with our guest today, a good friend and someone who, if you’re a regular listener, you are probably excited to hear from as well. One of our regular returning guests, Dr. George Barna. He’s the author of 60 books, including recently Raising Spiritual Champions, and he is also the director of the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. So George, thank you so much for setting time aside in your busy, busy schedule to be with us today. Thanks for being on the program.

George Barna:   I always look forward to it, Isaac. Thanks for having me.

Isaac Crockett:   Well, we look forward to it too. I know Sam Rohr was not able to be with us today, but that’s one of the things he misses out on and he really wanted to be on. But we do look forward to these times, these programs where we get to talk to you and you’re working with the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, and you’ve recently released this fourth for this year, I think 2024. This is the fourth release on American Worldview Inventory. I’ve found it so helpful as a pastor and with the radio program as well as a father. I think a lot of people are looking at these American worldview inventories coming out of Arizona Christian University out of the research you do, and it’s very helpful and we want to kind of dig into that report and dig into this topic about evangelicals and are they growing, shrinking, what’s going on there?

Isaac Crockett:   But first it’s that time of year where people are going back to school, and I’d love to ask you a little bit about your role there being involved with college students at Arizona Christian University. What’s it like at the beginning of a new school year? I don’t know if it was the last time we talked, but one of the last times you were on with us, you were talking about giving the commencement address there at the college, and now it’s already time for students to start coming back. So just interesting what all goes into that with a Christian college environment like that.

George Barna:   Yeah, as you, I’m sure remember from college and even grad school, Isaac, the beginning of a new school year, it is always high energy. It’s exciting. It’s a little bit different for me because being faculty and administration, my role is director of research at the Cultural Research Center, which is one of the institutes at the university. And so I tend to spend most of my time conceptualizing research projects, developing questionnaires, overseeing the interviewing and the tabulation of the data, the analysis, the presentation of all that to the public. So it’s a little bit different for me. I tend to focus on these big studies that we do. You alluded to the American Worldview Inventory. We do that at the beginning of every calendar year. At the beginning of every academic year, we do something with all of our students on campus called the Student Worldview Inventory because we’re always tracking the worldview of our students.

George Barna:   We’re the only university that does that, but we believe that worldview is that important, that we need to be studying it, measuring it, and refining our educational process to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to help students graduate with a full on biblical worldview. And of course, in addition to that, I do like this one. I do two or 300 media interviews every year, so I’m a little bit different. I don’t actually have a class that I’m teaching this semester because of all the travel that I have coming up, but I will be guest lecturing in several different classes. I work with interns, we do independent studies. I’ll probably speak in chapel, those kinds of things. But yeah, the beginning of each academic year, it’s like spring coming around again where everything is fresh and new. Everybody’s excited. We’re starting over and it’s a great time.

Isaac Crockett:   Well, thank you for that. And I love what you’re saying about taking that worldview inventory of the students there so that you all there at Arizona Christian University can track that and see what’s happening. But all of the things you do are so helpful to the rest of us to understand, to have these kind of objective truths that come out and just to know things we don’t know what we don’t know sometimes you hear said, and so to be learning these things and then looking to the word of God. And so I want to talk about this last American worldview inventory. And this is the fourth release that’s come out recently and it really, it’s concentrating on the limitations of Christian evangelicals in American society. There’s so many questions we won’t have time to get through all the questions I think I have on my mind about this, but just interesting, what was it that led you to focus on the limitations of evangelicals?

George Barna:   Well, as you’re well aware, Isaac, and I’m sure most of the listeners, if not all, are, it’s an election year. And in election year, what happens is the media and the political campaigns, the parties, everybody starts focusing on how do we win these elections? So they concentrate on different segments of voters. And one of those segments that tends to get pretty consistent emphasis are evangelicals, Christian evangelicals. And so it’s seen as a group of people that have influence on the elections and therefore the parties, the candidates, the media want to influence the thinking of those evangelicals. And that’s naturally of interest to me. I want to take a look at groups of people in our population that are significant, that have importance, that are interesting, all these kinds of things. And so when you look at election coverage, what we often find is that the median candidates use fear, frankly, to motivate people to vote or to participate in other ways.

George Barna:   They use fear to cause people to think certain ways about candidates or about issues. And one of the things that they tend to do is they portray evangelicals as a group that the public at large in America ought to be afraid of. And in this particular election cycle, what we’re seeing is that there’s a particular emphasis on this thing called Christian nationalism, which is described as being a group of people, these Christian nationalists. It’s almost synonymous with evangelicals. And the thinking behind it goes that these are people who don’t believe in democracy. They don’t want democracy, they want theocracy, meaning that they want some kind of religious rule. They want Christian leaders to be the ones who are determining what happens, not elected political leaders. And so they’re saying, yeah, we need to eliminate people’s religious freedom. That’s what these evangelicals want to do. So I want to get a better understanding of all that through the research and give a more realistic and objective understanding of where we’re at.

Isaac Crockett:   Well, that is very interesting, very helpful for us to see this objective understanding. We want to ask you some more questions about what you found out as you study Christian evangelicalism here in America where the truth really lies some of the surprising facts for us, even me as a pastor, we have a lot to go over. We’ll be right back on Staying in the Gap today. Welcome back to the program. I’m Isaac Crockett, and I’m here talking to Dr. George Barna, our good friend and our go-to person for all questions of cultural importance and research. And George, you were talking about why it’s important for us to find objective truth about how big of a group we’re talking about when we’re talking about Christian evangelicals, American evangelicals. And you mentioned this idea of Christian nationalism, which I’ve heard everything from late night comedians talking about that and fearmongering about that idea to a lot of political pundits and politicians, especially on the left, making a big deal out of that.

Isaac Crockett:   It seems like this year, maybe more than any other election year. And so I think this is going to be a very interesting study today on what you have found about the trajectory of evangelicals. Are we growing, are we shrinking? And this is a term that goes way, way back, but it’s something that has really been a big part of political life and culture in our country. So with that, George, let’s start asking you some of the questions. Let’s open up this biblical worldview inventory here. What are some of the surprising things that you found out about the decline of American evangelicalism? Because again, if we listen to some of these liberal talking heads on the left, you would think it’s this growing group of mean-spirited people trying to take over your world and not allow you to make your own decisions. But what were some of the surprising things you’ve found out about the decline that’s going on within evangelicalism?

George Barna:   Well, Isaac, I think it all revolves around how different the reality is from what’s being projected to us through the media and from certain candidates. First of all, the group of evangelicals, when you define them theologically, at least, they are much smaller than we’re often told in media reports. As you probably know, if you look at what they’re suggesting, evangelicals represent anywhere from 20 or 25% of the population all the way up to possibly 40%. But looking at the research that we did, when you define them theologically, not based on self-report, we’re only talking about 10% of the adult population. What difference does that make? Well, if you project those numbers to the population of large number of voters, let’s say the media would have us believe, my goodness, evangelicals represent a hundred million voters potentially. Well, I mean, we’re saying now it’s probably closer to 25, maybe as many as 30 million, but not more than that.

George Barna:   But a second thing that I found really interesting and disturbing is that evangelicals, who by definition should be deeply immersed in the scriptures, in their faith, in Christ, living that out, projecting that to other people. What we’re finding is that they’re a lot less biblical than we might’ve imagined or expected. And so really their beliefs and their behavior is kind of a combination of biblical and cultural perspectives rather than being really emphasizing the biblical in that equation. We also found through the research that there are fewer committed voters among evangelicals. Then certainly the media would have us believe or then we’ve seen in past years, of course, I’ve been studying this for more than 40 years, so those numbers are down. We no longer see evangelicals considering voting to be kind of an irrefutable commitment of theirs, rather it’s become kind of a conditional choice in their minds and hearts. And we also would say that sadly, most evangelicals do not have a biblical worldview. Now, to me, this is particularly disturbing because again, here’s a group that part of their definition is that they believe that the Bible is the true, reliable, relevant word of God for their life, and yet we find that most of them do not have a biblical worldview. So this whole group of theologically defined evangelicals is quite significantly different than what we might’ve expected.

Isaac Crockett:   That is, I would say concerning as well as surprising. Well, in this research, and again, we’re going to kind of get into this cultural influence or lack thereof that’s going on from evangelicals, but in it, you say in this that the cultural awareness sparked by the Covid pandemic, and now the 2024 presidential campaign has highlighted, I like this word you used, you say it’s highlighted the depravity of American society. I’d love for you to kind of elaborate on how that has highlighted the depravity of our nation. But I just want to quickly point out that this word is used oftentimes by theologians that I like to study. And these are the guys that lived back in the 16 hundreds and 17 hundreds, oftentimes referred to as puritans, and they freely talk about man’s depravity. But when I listen to modern day preachers and conservative speakers, you don’t hear people a lot of times talking about our sinful depravity. So I’m glad you used that word, but I’d love for you to kind of elaborate on how you saw this highlighting of depravity in the American society.

George Barna:   I love the fact you highlighted that word, Isaac, because I think we’re probably influenced by a lot of the same old time theologians. But when I look at what’s going on in our culture today, why did I use that word? Because when you look at so many of our political leaders, what you find is that kind of depravity. They practice lying. They practice stealing and cheating. They’re using the system for personal advantage, whether it’s the weaponizing of the justice system of all things justice, you would think, okay, well, we’re not going to mess with that. But they have now, they’re using that for their own personal benefit. They’re using their political position for personal financial gain at the expense of the public at large. So that’s an example of depravity. We can look at the media. The media are, I would say, guilty of subjective reporting.

George Barna:   There’s no longer an objective reporting of events and news that’s going on. There’s even a collusion among our journalists. There’s biased sources that they use. They’re censoring through the kinds of sources that they use, the kinds of information that they choose not to report depravity through our broken social institutions, depravity by using the law as a weapon. This whole concept of law fair, where rather than seeking justice, we’re seeking our preferences by abusing the law and governmental policies, what they were designed for. Instead, it’s all now for our benefit. So we’re taking ideology and we’re politicizing everything in the law rather than trying to be impartial as we use the laws that were created. We can look at depravity in our political systems through what the elites, those who hold high offices and who are protected by the law in those offices to create one world government.

George Barna:   We look at the world economic form and all the depravity that they stand for in terms of how they want to put down the people and raise up, rise up the elites, the World Health Organization already coming out with their next pandemic that we’re going to be hearing more and more about in the next month or two, the United Nations. These are groups that want to redistribute wealth. These are groups that want to reduce the population, and all of these kinds of things that I’m talking about are so unbiblical. That’s why they’re problematic. It’s not just that they’re in a group that I’m not in. That’s not the issue. The issue is that they represent and they’re reinforcing and they’re promoting things that are against the ways of God, and that’s what makes it depraved, and that’s what makes these people despicable in God’s eyes. They’re not promoting a biblical worldview. They’re promoting alternative worldviews, and that’s our problem.

Isaac Crockett:   That is a huge problem. I don’t know how much time we’ll have for this. We may have to get into it in the next segment, but you mentioned that evangelicals are more likely to be shaped by the culture around them than to influence it. We just have a moment here for you to mention something about it. We’ll get into it next segment, but could you mention a little bit about that influence that’s hitting us as evangelicals?

George Barna:   Yeah. I mean, we have the data. Six out of 10 don’t really pay much attention to news about politics and government. Millions of evangelicals accept abortion as something that’s legitimate no matter what the circumstances are. You’ve got close to a quarter of ’em who morally accept lying if it protects their best interest. You’ve got a little bit more than a third of them who regularly choose not to vote. That is to abandon the right that people fought for and politicians worked hard for to give them that right to vote. But they’re choosing not to exercise it on a regular basis. They’re choosing not to engage in the culture to advance God’s agenda. In fact, we found that theologically defined evangelicals intentionally choose not to engage people in conversation. If those people have different political views than they do being the single segment of the population we found that’s least likely to be talking about these things, particularly from a biblical perspective.

George Barna:   I mean, that’s just mind boggling. So these are just a few of the examples of how we know that evangelicals are being influenced by the culture more than they’re influencing the culture. They don’t have a mindset that says, I’m here to represent Christ in the world. Not only do I want to talk about theological truths, but I want to be taking those theological truths and showing people how biblical principles should be impacting every public policy, every law, every choice that every person is making, every moment of every day. That’s what a biblical worldview compels you to think and to do. And many, many millions of evangelicals do not have that mindset. In fact, they’re running away from

Isaac Crockett:   It. And that’s why today I’m calling the program the evangelical exodus. People maybe still claim the name of Evangelical, but they don’t seem to still have that biblical worldview that goes to the heart of the gospel that describes what an evangelical is. Well, we’ll be taking a quick break to hear from some of our partners when we come back. We want to continue talking with Dr. George Barna about what evangelical Christians look like today in America. Welcome back to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett, and I’ve been talking with Dr. George Barna about really a decline going on within evangelical Christians in America or those who claim that name. And if you go to george barna.com, just George Barna all one word.com, towards the bottom of his website, you’ll see research articles by George Barna, and there’s an article right there. New research reveals the Limitations of Christianity Evangelicalism in American Society. If you click on that, you can kind of track along with what we’re talking about today, or you can go to links there to see the full Biblical worldview inventory there. Just some really fascinating details going on. But before I go back to look at some of those fascinating details that you can find there that were released in August, I want to go to our producer, Tim Schneider and see if he has any fascinating details of some of the things going on at Stand in the Gap Media and the American Pastors Network.

Speaker 3:           Well, yes, Isaac. I will share with you some fascinating details about some things that are happening here at the American Pastors Network that are happening behind the scenes. So if you only listen to our radio program or check our TV program, but don’t see any of the other resources, please consider checking out some of the stuff that’s mentioned because you’ll definitely find it useful as you continue to follow this ministry and the Lord continues to speak to you through it. One of the things is we are on social media. One of the places is YouTube. We have three great YouTube channels, the American Pastors Network stand in the Gap TV and Stand in the Gap radio, check them out to see our archives and all the great content being posted. If you were to go and check out our TV page on YouTube and or our American Pastors Network page, you’d see some recent TV programs we have posted.

Speaker 3:           We have a two part special with Dr. Marlene McMillan called Choosing to Choose. Critical Thinking is Not Biblical Thinking. We’re talking about Gideon, the Might of God displayed for such a time as this talking about Esther. If any of you lacks wisdom, let a Mask as another program. And when the righteous are in authority, we got lots of TV programs posted there on our YouTube channels. So subscribe to our YouTube channels by searching for American Pastors Network. Stand in Gap radio and stand in the cap tv and then subscribe to these channels after you search for them to be notified when new content is posted. Also, we encourage you, please pray for this ministry. Nothing happens without prayer. And we covet your prayers for the things that are happening here at the American Pastors Network and stand in the gap media. And also, if you’ve been blessed by this ministry, we please encourage you to consider giving no amount, too big, no amount, too small is too much, but please consider giving financially so we can continue to do the things that the Lord has called us to do, and we thank you in advance.

Speaker 3:           So those are some of the fascinating, wonderful things I’ve got to talk about, Isaac, and I’ll go ahead and send it on back to you.

Isaac Crockett:   Alright, well thank you very much Tim. And if you listen to us only on podcast or radio, you might find it interesting to actually watch one of these videos that we do for Stand In the Gap tv. It might be very disappointing when you see Sam and myself on video, but the studio that we record in from Lighthouse TV is a very neat studio, top of the line kind of studio and some really neat things going on there, kind of shorter programs. But thank you for that, Tim. Well, George, let me go back to this research and you already talked about it, but one of the takeaways I got in reading through this inventory a couple of different times and putting all these questions together is it is really surprising that I think of evangelical Christians being a big block of American culture, of the American population. And your research indicates that really evangelical Christians are only about 10% of the adults that would qualify for that, which is very different than what you said so often in the news we hear 25 to 40%. So what do you see is causing this discrepancy in the number of adults who really qualify as evangelicals?

George Barna:   Well, really Isaac, the big difference is that those media reports depend usually on one of two things. The dominant one is the self-report of individuals. And what that means is when major polling firms, all the network pollsters and so forth go out and ask people about their faith, the question they’ll ask them is, do you consider yourself to be an evangelical Christian? And that’s when you get say 25, 30, 35, 40% of people saying, oh yeah, that’s what I am. As opposed to having any kind of definition or delineation of what that actually means, what you have to believe or do to be considered an evangelical. So that’s why the surveys that we do are so different. We don’t rely on that kind of self reportage because people can call themselves all kinds of things. We know for instance, that two out of three Americans call themselves Christian, but we also know that a large majority of them don’t trust Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

George Barna:   They don’t believe that their sin is great enough that they have to confess that sin and rely upon Jesus to save them from the consequences of it. They just go to church or some of ’em don’t even go to church, but they consider themselves Christian. In fact, one of the studies we did, we found that most people call themselves Christians say that they believe that because they think they’re good people. So in their mind, being a Christian simply means that you think you’re doing your best or that you’re a good person or that you’re better than some other people. So we’ve completely detached ourselves from biblical descriptions, and that’s what’s happened with evangelicals as well. Now the other thing I have to point out is that the term evangelical doesn’t appear anywhere in the Bible. And so this is a term that scholars have come up with and they’ve come up with the definition.

George Barna:   So even the definition that I’m using is actually from a theologian, which was then embraced by the National Association of Evangelicals. So it’s not something where we can go back in the Bible and say, aha. Jesus said, I will call the evangelicals unto me. He never said that. But what we’re looking for when we define it based on that theological definition is people who have accepted Christ as their savior believe they’re only going to heaven after they die simply because of Jesus, not as anything they’ve done. They believe they have a responsibility to share the good news, to share the gospel with other people, and they believe that the Bible is God’s true word that’s reliable and relevant for their life today.

Isaac Crockett:   That’s great. And there’s probably somebody listening right now, probably a lot of people listening right now say, well, George, I thought that’s what Christians were. I thought that describes all Christians. But no, unfortunately, there are people who claim to be Christians that don’t believe in the gospel in Christ alone. They may believe in that plus other things. So that’s good to put that out there on the table, and that’s what you’re saying, theologically, really we can only put it at about 10% of the population. Now, again, another one of the sad things of that 10% of that population of evangelicals, according to your data, only about one third of evangelicals possess a true biblical worldview. What does that mean for our society, George? What does that mean for even our Christian society that only one third truly have that biblical worldview we talk about so much?

George Barna:   Well, it’s a real challenge for us, Isaac, because you think about it, evangelicals should be the role models for a biblical worldview. We should be able to watch the people who have earned, if you will, that evangelical label through their beliefs and their lifestyle, and understand what it means to follow Jesus, what it means to believe that the Bible is true and what difference that makes in your life. Evangelical churches should be centers of biblical teaching and accountability for that teaching in the lifestyle of people. But sadly, what it means for us now is that evangelicals cannot be relied upon consistently to be those kinds of role models, to be those kinds of exemplars or to be the kind of people who can describe what the Bible says about certain public issues, certain laws, certain policies that candidates are proposing to us in the course of the campaigns.

George Barna:   What’s happened unfortunately is that society has led s, excuse me, evangelicals astray. And what that in turn has done is that it means that the boundaries of biblical righteousness in the eyes of Americans who are watching evangelicals and checking out their churches, those boundaries of righteousness have shifted. Why? Because again, the culture is impacting evangelicals more than evangelicals are impacting the culture. New standards are being created, new standards are being accepted, new standards are being followed. So it really is a challenge to evangelicals, to disciples of Jesus, to pastors of Christian churches, particularly evangelical Christian churches, to rethink what we’re doing, the teaching, the accountability, the standards, because what we’re doing isn’t having the same impact that it had in the culture of 40 or 50 years ago.

Isaac Crockett:   We have about a minute, but how are some of the lifestyle choices of evangelicals different from the rest of the population or maybe areas they’re not so different?

George Barna:   Well, I mean, we know that two out of three people who are evangelicals unfortunately believe that everybody needs to earn their respect and kindness. Now, of course, the scriptures teach no God’s is free. It’s his gift to us. And we in turn are supposed to give it freely to others. We’re supposed to love other people. They don’t have to earn our respect. They shouldn’t have to earn our kindness. They shouldn’t have to earn compassion from Christians. That’s something that we do as followers of Christ. We know that seven out of 10 evangelicals say it’s best to follow your instincts and instincts or feelings. No feelings lead us astray. It’s God’s truth that we follow, and that’s black and white. It’s not like feelings which are always changing and being changed by the circumstances. We know that half of evangelicals believe that all people are good wrong. The scriptures teach us that we’re all evil, we’re all sinners. That’s why Jesus had to die on that cross to redeem us, to give us hope, to give us a future, to change our destiny based on his atoning sacrifice on that cross. So it’s these kinds of things that this report that we put out talks about to understand where evangelicals are going astray.

Isaac Crockett:   Well, I love that, George. I’m so glad you’ve brought us there. We’re going to take our last time out and come back to wrap things up, and that’s what we want to look at, how we can love God, glorify him and love and serve other people as well. So please keep the radio tuned to this station. We’ll be right back after this brief time out. Welcome back to the program. I’m Isaac Crockett, and I’m talking with George Barna about the limitations to the American Evangelical movement, really a decline in evangelicalism. And so we’ve been looking at no evangelicals, Christians who believe the gospel. They don’t make up 25 to 40% of the population research that George is doing shows it’s more like 10%. And those who are evangelical, many of them, unfortunately, even most of them, don’t have that biblical worldview that they ought to have. So George, as we look at these facts, again, it’s quite alarming, kind of sobering to see these things, but we need to see this, what steps can be taken that evangelicals can become more influential, that we can be shaping the culture. One of the things you said is that evangelicals seem to be more shaped by the culture than the culture shaped by them. So what can be done there? Maybe how can our leaders, evangelical leaders or pastors address issues like biblical literacy and engaging in our communities, things like that?

George Barna:   Yeah, there are all kinds of things we could talk about. Isaac, you know this as a pastor, but the first thing I’d say is, well, why don’t you sit back and reflect on your own commitment to Christ? That’s where it’s got to start. Are you really dedicated to being a disciple of Jesus? And before you say yes, keep in mind that we’ve got upwards of 40% of Americans saying, yeah, I’m an evangelical Christian, but they really don’t know Christ as their savior. So calling yourself a disciple doesn’t mean you’re a disciple. What does it mean to be a disciple? Well, when I wrote that book, raising Spiritual Champions about raising children up to be disciples of Jesus, one of the, I think most significant things I discovered in addition to all the research we did with our culture was the research in the Bible. And we found the six times when Jesus said, either you will be my disciple if, or He said, you cannot be my disciple unless, and when you look at those things, you find out that being a disciple of Jesus according to him means that you’re going to obey biblical principles.

George Barna:   You’re going to love other disciples, unreservedly. You’re going to be consistently producing spiritual fruit. You’re going to love God far and above anything and everything else in your life. You’re going to willingly and continually submit to God’s authority and you’ll surrender everything to follow his call on your life. So if you’re meeting those six criteria, praise God, you’re a disciple of Jesus. If you’re maybe slacking or lacking in some of those, well then today’s the day to get on course to figure out what you can do to get back there. Now, a second thing I’ll say that comes out of this research is that simply because you go to an evangelical church or what is thought of as an evangelical church doesn’t make you an evangelical. We found that most of the people who are theologically defined as evangelicals don’t attend what is normally thought of as an evangelical church.

George Barna:   So it’s not about what church you go to that defines you as an evangelical. It’s about what you believe and what you do with those beliefs. Do you translate them into a lifestyle that honors God and advances his kingdom? And then a third thing that I’d recommend is that if you want to enlarge the magnitude of the evangelical movement, well then start focusing on children, raising children up to be true disciples of Jesus. Young people who know what the Bible teaches, young people who believe it, young people who model that in their lifestyle choices. Young people who are very intentional and strategic about how they live, because they want to glorify God through everything they do and believe and say, and the kind of influence that they have for him. In our culture today, children are a target, and there are countless media outlets and public officials and educators and other people of influence who do not want children to love Jesus Christ.

George Barna:   They want them to love the world. They want them to love the philosophies espoused by these kind of elites. So it’s a war for the mind and the heart and soul of our children just as every day is a war for your heart and mind and soul. And that’s why you as an adult have to be so vigilant that you’re not letting these errand thoughts and influences come into your mind and heart. But we’ve got to protect our children. We’ve got to raise up our children to be spiritual champions. It’s a very intentional choice that you have to make. And that’s how we are not only going to rebuild the church, but this idea of evangelicals. That’s how we’re going to expand the number of evangelicals in America.

Isaac Crockett:   And I love that book, raising Spiritual Champions. I’ve read through it and sent it to different folks I know because it does help me as a parent and as a pastor who’s dealing with families, look at these criteria of what it means to be a follower of Christ and how we pass that on to other generations. And even if you’re not a parent or a grandparent, there are people, young people that you can influence in that way. And so we need to be thinking that way. In fact, I may have shared this on the radio before, but I shared it many times with my church, and I think it was DL Moody, the great evangelist, he said something to the effect of, oh, I praise the Lord. I saw two and a half souls converted. Two and a half people saved today. And somebody said, oh, what is that?

Isaac Crockett:   Two adults and one child the half? And he said, no, two children and one adult, because the children have their whole lives ahead of them to live for the Lord that the adult has already lived at least half their life. So that is so important. Well, George, what kind of hope would you give as we look at the future of evangelicalism in America? What hope do you see for a revival or a resurgence back to the original message of the gospel that you’ve been talking about and actions that follow what we say we believe, and what can those who are concerned about this, what can they do positively steps in the right direction to see good things happen?

George Barna:   Isaac, I tend to think that this is such an incredible, wonderful time to be alive because the opportunity is everywhere. I mean, as we described the depravity of American culture, we can get depressed and say, oh my gosh, it’s hopeless. Far from it. This is a time of great hope and a time when more and more millions of people need that hope. But the only hope is in Jesus Christ, God is always at work, and he always uses a remnant of his people to bring about that kind of renewal and revival in society. And so the fact that you and I are talking about these things, people are listening to this and saying, yeah, I want to be part of that. That’s part of the hope. We are the remnant, and this is our time. So it’s not something to get discouraged about. It’s a time to recognize that God’s ways are not our own.

George Barna:   Maybe this isn’t the way that we would’ve designed culture unfold, but it’s the way he is allowed it to unfold. And so human depravity has taken it down all these unfortunate pathways, but it’s his holiness and his love that we get to experience and then to share with others that gets to transform that culture. We don’t transform it. He transforms it because of Christ using us to bring Christ to the masses. It may not be our timing. It doesn’t matter. It’s his timing. And so we get to play within those boundaries. And the fact that he would count us worthy to be used in this process, how exciting is that? How enthusiastic should we be about that? So rather than say, you know what? This is an awful time to be alive. Look at how dark the day is. It’s like, yeah, but Jesus is the light. We know him. He lives within us. We live within this culture. So we should be lighting up this culture with him, living through us, and bringing his truth to the world.

Isaac Crockett:   Amen to that. Amen. Just on yesterday’s program, talking with Pastor Matt Recer of New York City about the beatitudes, about being blessed of God, there’s so much hope, so much excitement when we’re seeking first the kingdom of God, his righteousness. Well, Dr. George Barna, thank you so much. You can find this article more on george barna.com. Thank you so much for the research you’re doing for taking time to explain it to us today in helpful ways. And for those of you listening, thank you for listening. We appreciate you so much, and please stand in the gap wherever you are today.