Faith and the Ballot Box: A Cultural Update with Dr. George Barna

Faith and the Ballot Box: A Cultural Update with Dr. George Barna

Oct. 11, 2024

Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett

Guest(s): Dr. George Barna

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 10/11/24. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Isaac Crockett:   Welcome to the Friday edition of Stand In the Gap. Today, I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and my guest today to talk to us about it. What appears to be a very concerning issue, a very growing number of Christians who say they’re not planning to vote in this year’s election. Our guest to talk about that is a good friend, frequent guest, somebody I think you’re all going to recognize Dr. George Barna, who is the author of 60 books. That’s 6 0 60 books. If you haven’t read any of his books, I would encourage you to start with his last book, raising Spiritual Champions, Nurturing Your Child’s Heart, Mind, and Soul. As a parent, it was convicting to me as a pastor who was convicting to me. Anybody, no matter what age, no matter what generation you are, I think you’ll find it very practical and helpful. That’s raising spiritual champions. Dr. George Barna, thank you so much for taking time away from all of your different duties that you’ve got going on to be on this program with us,

George Barna:   Isaac, it’s always a pleasure.

Isaac Crockett:   Well, before we go into this research that you’ve been doing, this pre-election research and things, you have been doing some globetrotting, some traveling, and we’re missing Sam Rohrer today because he’s traveling and you’ve been on the same continent and then you’ve been sending videos over to Sam and Gary who are over in Africa right now. But you were just over in Africa a few weeks ago. Sam Rohrer and Gary Dull are over there right now in Nairobi, Kenya. Could you maybe just talk to us a little bit about what it was that took you over to Africa, where you were and some of what you were doing there?

George Barna:   Oh, sure. A few years back, my wife had started a ministry in Uganda called Abundant Blessing Ministries, and the whole idea was to try to help poor people escape from poverty because we know that the chances of them hearing the gospel is much better when they’re not worrying about are they going to live until tomorrow. Are they going to be able to feed their family today? And so she started this ministry and the whole idea was let’s go into the poorest villages we can find, and we’ll start by offering them training in business. The idea was to help them understand how can you start a business because that’s your best route of climbing out of poverty, having your own little business. And the idea was that they would make a three month commitment to us and we would continually teach them business principles. Now, all the business principles we were teaching them are drawn from the Bible because we believe the Bible is the source of all truth.

George Barna:   It’s the source of understanding why we have hope in this life. And so for three months they learned biblical principles about business, and then if they had stuck with that and then they had a viable idea for starting a business in their region, in their area, we would give them a small loan to start that business. And then after that we said, okay, once you start your business, there’s another three month session that we also want you to take, which is just straight on Bible teaching, helping them to understand core biblical principles, essentially trying to teach them a biblical worldview. And so we’ve had hundreds and hundreds of people across. Right now I think we’ve got 13 villages going who have gone through the training, have started businesses. We’ve got more than I think right now, it’s somewhere higher than a 95% payback on the loans.

George Barna:   We were told by other missionary groups, you know what, you’ll never get your money back. These people not only gave them money back where we have one village which was a hundred percent Muslim when we started. It’s now a hundred percent Christian. And the phrase that I love the most, well, the person who wound up being the leader of the village, we asked her, how did this happen? Why did this happen? I mean, we know it’s God’s blessing and guidance, but from their perspective, why were they willing to leave Islam and convert to Christianity? And she said, you know what? For years we came together all the time and we prayed for Allah to help us. Allah never showed up. You came, your God showed up, and that’s why we converted. And so that’s an example of what’s been going on in all of these villages.

George Barna:   We are hoping to expand by two or three villages each year. We continually work with them. We built community in those places. We found that poor people don’t spend time with each other. They’re fearful of each other. They don’t trust each other. And we found that in the villages we’ve been in, once Christ became the center of the village, we were able to see meaningful relationships built. The whole community tenor changes. Because of that, we’re seeing families get stronger and healthier. So it’s just a great blessing to be able to be in Uganda doing that work.

Isaac Crockett:   That’s such a neat blessing. It’s interesting you bring all that up at this time on yesterday’s program, Dave Kistler and Pastor Aaron Causby who are at the tip of the spear with the recovery efforts in North Carolina from Hurricane Helene. They were talking about meeting people’s physical needs. And Dave was saying how on a regular basis as Christians, that’s part of being like Christ is. Sometimes people won’t listen or understand the spiritual until another emotional or physical or financial need is met. And so it’s very, very interesting that this would come up. Well, I want to kind of change a course here and get into this amazing research you’ve done. It’s pre-election research. This is the first release. And just curious, as you have so many things, this study, what prompted you to do this research on this first release here and what were some of the findings? We’ll see if you can squish some of that in a little bit of time. We have,

George Barna:   Yeah. There were a couple of motivations. One is that I actually got started in research, doing research through politics. I was a campaign manager for a number of campaigns, and the thing that I enjoyed the most was the polling. And so all throughout my career for more than four decades now, whenever there are major elections, I’ve been blessed by being able to come up with the funding to do research related to those elections. It’s a personal interest, but a second motivation is recognizing what huge influence politics and government has on the lives of the American people. And because as Christians we’re called to have influence in every dimension of culture, you can’t have influence if you don’t understand what it is that you want to influence. So when I do these projects, I’m trying to educate, trying to activate Christians in the political arena, not because it’s more important than our faith in Christ because it’s not, but it’s the outworking of our faith in Christ. We have the opportunity to influence political leaders, the political system, political policies. And so that’s what part of that research was about was to explore. Are Christians willing to get involved or not?

Isaac Crockett:   Well, that is a good question and that’s a question that you’ve asked. And the research indicates that there are many people who claim to be church going Christians who are not planning on getting involved when it comes to the ballot box. This year, we have a lot of questions for Dr. George Barna about the latest CRC research on this political topic. Please don’t go away. We’ll be right back on Stand in the gap today. Welcome back to the program. We’re talking with Dr. George Barna, the researcher from Cultural Research Center of Arizona Christian University. He’s an author, speaker, and a lot of different hats that you wear, George. But this political research is really, as you were just telling us right up your alley, one of your favorite things and one of the things that many of us look forward to, and in this latest release, I’m just going to read from this release from the CRC here, it says, the research indicates that as many as 104 million people of faith are unlikely to vote in this upcoming election.

Isaac Crockett:   And among those 32 million self-identified Christians who regularly attend church won’t cast their ballots. George, if this ends up turning out to be the case, this could be very interesting. And we were just hearing from Dave Kistler yesterday that they are going through all kinds of things in North Carolina to try to ensure that people can cast their ballots. These people who have lost everything that still want to vote, they’re trying to make sure they can. And here you’re identifying 32 million people who say they’re Christians that regularly attend church, they go to church, but they don’t want to go cast their vote. What potential consequences do you as a researcher and as a Christian with biblical worldview and as an American, what do you foresee we might expect as a result of that?

George Barna:   Well, Isaac, I think there are a number of things that are likely to happen. One of those is that you’re going to have a bigger impact on Republican candidates than Democrat candidates. And the reason for that is that church going people, they’re more likely to have a tendency to vote for Republican candidates rather than Democrat candidates. And so in this particular case, given the massive numbers of people who normally would vote for Republican candidates, one of the likely consequences is that this is tantamount to giving victory in the presidential race to Kamala Harris. What we did in the research, we even looked at, well, even if you’re not planning to vote, if you were to vote, who would you vote for? And we found that by about a three to one margin, the church going Christians, the born again Christians, the Christians who attend evangelical churches, tens of millions of these people are telling us they’re not going to vote.

George Barna:   Among theologically defined born again Christians, 41 million are planning not to vote among people who regularly attend evangelical churches, you’ve got 14 million who are planning not to vote. Well, the presidential election is going to hinge on swing states and the margin of victory across the seven swing states is going to be less than 1 million votes. And so when you’ve got that many Christians, regular churchgoers, mostly Bible readers who would tend to vote for Mr. Trump by a three to one margin who don’t show up, that’s a game changer right there. But then there are other things that we can expect too because it’s not just about the presidential candidates right now, the Congress lies in the balance of the vote, and so both the House and the Senate are up for grabs. And if these Christians do not turn out once again, what’s going to happen is you’re probably going to see both the House and the Senate go Democrat.

George Barna:   And so you would have a Democrat president, a Democrat senate, a Democrat house, and that’s going to radically change policy, public policy from the federal government in this country for at least the next four years. And among the things that that’s going to mean probably is a loss of influence for churches, a loss of funding for many kinds of programs that Christians believe in, we’re going to have less religious freedom. There will be new morality laws that will be put on the books that are unbiblical, and it’s just not a pleasant picture when you look at it. It’s vitally important that every Christian recognize we have a responsibility to vote, and if we don’t, you reap what you sow. And so it’s not going to be a pretty picture.

Isaac Crockett:   Well, we often hear it said, and we say down here that elections have consequences, so not voting, there’ll still be consequences from the research that you’re doing. What are you finding are maybe some of the common reasons that Christians, especially those going to church are citing for not planning on voting?

George Barna:   Well, we asked that question and what we found is that there’s lower interest and lower enthusiasm than usual. The amount of people who are following the election is lower. The amount of people who say I’m interested in the election is lower, and the reasons have to do with disinterest. In politics in general, we found that a majority of people also gave us other reasons like they dislike both of the major party presidential candidates. A majority said that they believe that both of the major party presidential candidates do not reflect their personal views on the issues that they consider to be most important. We found that a majority of them said, I don’t think my one vote is going to make a difference, so why should I bother? And then you had about half of these people planning not to vote who said, the election is so controversial, I don’t even want to participate in this.

George Barna:   I don’t want people challenging me. I don’t want people arguing with me. I don’t want people getting mad at me. I just don’t want to have anything to do with it. We found about half of the expected non-voters said that I’m not going to vote because I think the election is going to be rigged, so what difference does it make whether I vote or not? They already know who’s going to win. And then we also had just under half of the expected non-voters who said, I really don’t know what candidates to vote for because I can’t find an unbiased source of information about what the candidates stand for, what they believe, what their past record is, what they’re likely to do. And so rather than take an educated but wrong guess, I’m just going to stay out of it.

Isaac Crockett:   That is very interesting, very telling because all of those things you’re talking about, I think all of us listening can relate to that. And it’s also interesting because this go around, you have President Trump who has a record as president. You have Vice President Kamala Harris who has a record as vice president. So we’re looking at two presidential candidates, very different from each other, but they have a record just Monday of this week, we’re talking about October 7th, and I was asking the expert about Israel, which one has a better record with Israel? There’s a record there. There’s things out there. So it’s interesting, all of these things, I know you find it extremely interesting. I think all of our listeners will as well. I’m interested with those. You say that they just don’t have enthusiasm about it. There’s a drop in voting enthusiasm. What do you think that is? I don’t know if your research points to that or if you have any hypothesis about what could be causing that.

George Barna:   Yeah, we did look at that, Isaac, and we found that people have, and I’m not faulting them for this, I think it’s justifiable a very low level of trust in public officials. They feel like they’ll say anything to get elected, but then they don’t uphold their promises, and so they don’t feel like they owe these people their vote. Some people that we interviewed said that politics is dangerous. You make these choices and then they come back to bite you. We found that there were a bunch of people who said, I just don’t know what to believe, so how can I get excited about something where the means of getting ahead is based on deception. And personally, my read on all the research we’re seeing here is that that drop in enthusiasm relates to the fact that the vast majority of these Christians who are not going to vote have the worldview of syncretism.

George Barna:   And by that I mean they don’t know what they believe, and so how can they pick out somebody else based on what that candidate believes? They don’t know what would coincide with what they personally think is right, biblical, righteous, appropriate, helpful, and so they’re confused about their own understanding of the world and they’re not really in a place where they can make helpful judgments on what other people want to do with the world, where they want to take our nation in the future. In other words, they haven’t really made a viable connection in their own mind and heart and soul between their faith and their social responsibility. And I can tell you, because again, we look at these things that most of those non-voters are unaware of verses like Proverbs 29, 2 that talks about when the godly are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the wicked are in power, the people grieve, the people groan. And that’s another way of saying, you know what? You’ve got a responsibility to determine how are these people going to identify? How are they going to define justice? Part of their job is to promote goodness. What do they think goodness looks like? Is abortion good? Is open borders, good? Is letting criminals out of jail? Good. These are the kinds of choices that we as informed Christians have to make when we vote.

Isaac Crockett:   Well, you have brought up a lot of questions. I don’t know if we will have time for me to ask you all of them. I’m going to try to pepper you with a lot of questions, but we’re going to take a quick time out, hear from some of our partners and come right back talking to Dr. George Barna about the results of this research that seem to be pointing to the fact that tens of millions of churchgoing Christians are choosing not to vote this election. We’ll be right back on Stand in the gap today. Well, thank you for listening today. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett. I’m talking with Dr. George Barna about the cultural research center research that has just come out, another release pre-election research that’s going on. And before I go back to peppering Dr. Barna with tons of questions that I have, I do just want to let you know if you’re just now tuning in or if you haven’t been able to hear the whole program or you want to go back and listen to this or share it with people, I would highly encourage you to use our online resources.

Isaac Crockett:   We have a Stand in the Gap app that you can download that has all of these archives on it, and you can listen to it, share it, get the transcript there, or you can go to our website, stand in the gap media.org and you can share it from there. This month of October is pastor appreciation month, and you may want to share some of this information with your pastor or a ministry leader that maybe doesn’t know about it or just with a friend or loved one who would like this that maybe doesn’t know about it, a great resource to be sharing. Well, alright, Dr. Barnett, let’s go back to the Inquisition here. You’ve done all this research and I just want to pick your brain about what does that mean? How can we apply some of this? But as you look at it, and you’ve been involved with churches for decades, you’ve pastored and all kinds of different things. In your view, what should be the relationship between church engagement and voter turnout?

George Barna:   Well, I think when churches have an opportunity to help their people make a difference in the world, they ought to embrace that opportunity. We’re called to be agents of transformation in whatever culture God places us. And so the more that the church can equip us to be effective in that role as an agent of transformation, not seeking transformation for its own sake, but transformation that lifts Christ higher, that makes the Bible come alive for people, that enables individuals to be part of his church here on earth that brings goodness into our community in the name of Christ that advances the kingdom of God in any way. That’s why the local church exists is to help us to do that. We can do it through worship, we can do it through community, we can do it through teaching. We can do it through a lot of mechanisms that prepare us to go out and be Christ representative in the culture.

George Barna:   One of the fascinating things to me out of the research was we asked people, look, if your church registered voters provided information about issues and candidates encouraged people to vote without endorsing any particular candidate and taught what the Bible has to say about the current social issues, do you think that your church would be doing things that are helping the community or harming the community or not making any difference? We got six out of 10 of them saying, yeah, you know what? That would be helping the community. So most believers recognize, yes, my church should be equipping me to be an agent of transformation. Then we ask them about doing those same things, registering voters, providing information about the candidates, encouraging people to vote, teach them what the Bible says about the issues. If your church did that, would it be carrying out its biblical responsibility or is not that not a biblical responsibility of the church?

George Barna:   Once again, we’ve got a majority of church going, people saying, well, yeah, that’s its biblical responsibility. So it’s not like if a church does this, the people are going to recoil and say, Ooh, how dare you do that? That’s out of bounds. What we know is that most of them are in some ways waiting for their church to do this. We hear from a lot of pastors that, well, we don’t do anything with politics and government in the church. We’ll, shame on you. You should, because that’s an area of influence in our culture. It’s an area where your people have a responsibility. They’re going to vote for leaders. They have to make decisions about whether or not to do what those leaders are going to be calling them to do through speeches, through policy, through programs. And so it’s important that you teach your people.

George Barna:   What does the Bible say about these kind of issues, about these kind of matters that are out there today? So you’ve got all that going on. And then look at the fact that people are telling us, well, I’m not going to vote because I don’t understand what the Bible says about the issues. I don’t know how to gauge the character of a politician or a candidate. Well, those are the things that the Bible speaks to. And so if church going people don’t know how to address those issues, it’s because their church isn’t preparing. It’s not equipping them. And I’m not saying that the church should be a political machine that that’s all that we should be focusing on. No, but the church needs to be helping people to deal with the opportunities and the challenges in their lives by understanding what the Bible teaches about those moments. And clearly what the data is showing us is that Christians are not becoming activists in the culture because they don’t know how to think biblically about those challenges. They don’t know how to act biblically about those challenges, and they’re not being encouraged and prepared by their church for those opportunities.

Isaac Crockett:   That is so key to this is that they’re not being encouraged and prepared, as you just said. Based on what you found in your research, and I don’t know how surprising it was to you as you did it, but did you see any strategies that you could recommend for the Christian community as a whole to be able to increase the voter engagement within these communities, the Christian community?

George Barna:   Yeah, there are a number of things that come out. One is that, again, we have to remember that so much of what constitutes the life of the Christian body is through our families. And so one of the issues here is our churches teaching parents to raise their children to be good citizens. That’s a vital activity of a parent. And part of what it means to be a good citizen is to be informed about what’s going on in our community, in our country. Part of being a good citizen means that you’re going to be registered to vote, you’re going to be prepared to vote, and then you’re going to vote. And the greatest level of accountability is going to come from parents with their children, even their grown children. And I think about that in my situation, you probably are thinking about it in yours, and I’ve got three grown daughters.

George Barna:   Every single election that comes up, we get together, we talk about the election, we take the election guide that we get from the state where they list out, here’s all the things that’ll be on the ballot, and we sit there and we do homework together on should we vote on this referendum or this initiative? Ooh, here are two candidates running against each other. Which one reflects biblical values the best? Which one has the character that I can trust? We spend hours doing our homework. That’s something that I taught to my children. It’s something that I model for my children. And even though they’re in their twenties and thirties now, we still do that together because they’re still my children. I’m still responsible for them. And so that’s part of it. But part of it too is that I go to a church where we have a pastor who leads us through that process of where do you get information?

George Barna:   What information matters? What are the big issues? What does the Bible teach about those issues? And I’m sitting there taking notes. I go home, I watch it online again because I want to make sure that I know it, I understand it, and I’m looking for the right thing. When I do my homework, I’m studying the right issues in the right way for the right reasons. So that’s part of it is this whole connection between family and church and community. We want to be stellar model citizens. We can only do that if we’re participating in the process, if we’re talking to other people in the community about that process. And we’re well enough informed both from biblical truth and from understanding who’s running and what the issues are that we can actually engage in meaningful conversations and model appropriate action.

Isaac Crockett:   So important. It’s great what you’re saying there. Don’t just slap a bumper sticker on your car, something. Talk to your kids about who and what needs to be voted on and why the biblical worldview of it. Well, George, we’re running out of time here, but what do you think? Is there an opportunity that churches can still try to improve their engagement for this election and what can they do for future elections?

George Barna:   A few weeks left and people do change their mind in the weeks before an election. So pastors prepare, learn about government, study the policy issues, study what the Bible says about them and teach that to your people. Now, why aren’t we getting that kind of teaching now? Because you can’t teach what you don’t know. And I know from other studies that we’ve been doing that pastors don’t understand how government works. Some of them, some of them aren’t tracking with the policies. Some of them just don’t feel that they should be involved. I think it’s imperative that pastors be involved because if you want to be a leader, what does a leader do? A leader influences people to think appropriately, and this is an area of government law, public policy that has a huge impact not only on how we live, but on the development of our worldview. This is a worldview challenge. We’re talking about what is the appropriate role of Christians in a secular society? So prepare your people for this. Do everything you can to get them ready to be effective leaders in their own circles of influence, individuals who can talk to their friends intelligently and righteously about these issues, not arrogantly, but knowing what truth is and knowing the best way to approach these things and where the candidates stand on this.

Isaac Crockett:   George, very helpful. Great insight right there. We’re going to take another time out to hear from our partners, but when we come back for our last segment, we want to dig deep into what you’re talking about. What can we do? What is the takeaway from this? What is the action plan for everybody listening and everyone who listens to this, maybe you’re sharing this with friends and family, that’d be great because we want to think about what can we do and how can we make a difference in our community and our families, but even in our country. So we’re going to hear it from some of our friends and then we’ll be right back on Stand in the Gap today. Welcome back to the program as we finalize the rest of this program, this interview with Dr. George Barna. I do want to encourage you, if you haven’t already done this, to go and look at this report, this release that’s come out from the Cultural Research Center.

Isaac Crockett:   You can just Google Cultural Research Center, Arizona Christian University Cultural Research Center, George Barna. You can go to www.arizonachristian.edu. That’s the Arizona Christian University website, Arizona christian.edu, and go to the Cultural Research Center tab, click on that, click on the research, and you’ll be able to read this research that we’re talking about. And George, I’m so thankful for it because you walk us through in the way you’ve released it in a way that just explains all of this, and there’s so much more than what we would ever be able to get into in this one hour of radio time. But as you’ve gone through this and you’ve released this now, what would be your call to action for churches and Christian individuals that are listening to us even right now, from the insights that you’ve gathered now from this research? What is the result? What’s the call to action here?

George Barna:   Well, Isaac, I guess to me the big picture is every day those of us who love Jesus are involved in an act of spiritual war. And so you can look at the election, every election, any election as one of those battles that takes place in the larger spiritual war that’s happening. So who are you in Christ? Do you trust him enough to believe that he can use you as a warrior for his cause or are you scared? Are you timid? Are you worried that you can’t serve him? Well, that’s not the mindset of a warrior for Christ. And here what we’re talking about is something that is in my mind at least, pretty simple to engage in, and that’s do your homework, vote, talk to other people about it, encourage them to vote in an appropriate manner. What we’re talking about here is your future rights and opportunities being jeopardized by your refusal to not vote.

George Barna:   I was born in New York City, and so when I grew up there, we always had the expression say, Hey, you don’t have to like it, you just have to deal with it. And that’s kind of the way that I think about politics. Do I like the major party candidates? Not particularly, but one of them is going to fill the Oval Office for the next four years. One of them is going to be in some ways the most powerful person on the planet for the next four years. And so if I have an opportunity to choose that person, not by myself, but alongside all my peers, why would I abdicate that opportunity, that responsibility, that privilege, that right, that many of my forefathers died to not only win for me, but to protect for me? How dare I turn my back on that and on their sacrifice for me?

George Barna:   And so for churches, I would say it’s no different for a church. It too has a responsibility to encourage people to vote. That in and of itself could change the election because based on that research study, we can identify that there would literally be millions of churchgoing Christians who would turn out to vote if they simply heard their pastor from the pulpit say, you have a responsibility to vote. You have a responsibility to vote intelligently, do your homework and cast your ballot appropriately. Churches can distribute voting guides. Churches can put out white papers about the connection between what the Bible teaches and different public policies. Churches can put out papers or teaching or hold groups, do all kinds of things to inform congregants about what the candidates stand for. You don’t have to support a particular candidate, endorse a candidate, but inform the people. And most importantly, just keep going back to the scriptures, help people know what the Bible says about the issues that’s so critical.

George Barna:   A lot of this, Isaac, I think comes back to this whole concept of there are seven mountains of culture. This is kind of a movement within the Christian Church in America today that we are called to have influence on every dimension of culture. And to better understand that what this movement has done is said, if you want to understand what influences our lives, there are seven mountains or seven dimensions of our culture that have influence on people’s lives. And those dimensions are faith, family, government and public policy, schools and education business, the arts and entertainment media, and then the news and information media. And so if you want to serve Christ well, understand those seven dimensions of our culture, figure out what you can do to influence them because they’re devoted to influencing you. You’ve got to be a wise consumer of what those seven arenas are doing.

George Barna:   But you also are called by Christ to take his truth into each of those seven dimensions, and one of those you’ll notice is government and public policy. And one of the best ways for you to have that kind of influence is to understand what’s going on in that arena and then to vote when you get the opportunity to do so. I know I’m being long-winded here. I apologize, but let me just finally say an answer to your question there that it’s important too, I think, to go back and as you study the scriptures, it’s helpful to look at what does the Bible say about different public policy options, about the issues about abortion, about crime, about the economy, about immigration and border control, all of those things. They’re all discussed in the Bible. Do you know what the Bible says about them? But also take the time to study great leaders in the Bible.

George Barna:   Joseph, great leader in the Bible. Why is he a great leader? Because he got involved in government. He worked as the right hand man for Pharaoh, and he had the opportunity to use government to save the lives of millions of people through the policies that he put in place to prepare the people for the coming famine. Look at what he did. Also involved in government. Look at Esther who became a queen, and through her role as Queen, she was able to make a big difference using her influence to save the Jews during the time of her rule. These are people of faith who took their faith into the public arena and said, I’m not going to divorce what the Bible teaches from what I do in the world, from my job, from my arena of influence. I’m going to take God’s truths and I’m going to enable them to become real in the lives of thousands, hundreds of thousands in a couple cases, millions of people and those people’s lives, those people are better off today because people of God took God’s truth into that arena. You can do the same thing, maybe not at the same level that they did, but at whatever level of responsibility God has given to you, make a commitment to be his man, to be his woman, to be his child wherever he’s placed you to make a big difference.

Isaac Crockett:   George, well said, what a great challenge. Thank you so much for this research you’re doing. Thank you for releasing it to us and for being on this program to talk about it. Please go look up cultural Research Center, George Barna, look at this research, read it, understand it, share it with people, pray for our nation, and go out and encourage people to make a difference by voting and by helping others and by doing all we can to the glory of God and for the sake of his kingdom. Thank you again, Dr. George Barna. Thank you for listening today. Please pray for us here at the American Pastors Network and all of our ministries, and until next time, I hope that you will stand in the gap for the Lord wherever you are today.