A Fragmented Spiritual American Landscape

America 2025

June 20, 2025

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Dr. George Barna

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 6/20/25. 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.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Friday edition of Stand and the Gap Today. And it’s also our monthly emphasis on biblical worldview, which we emphasize in every program, but today combining with it the central focus of culture and values where we share and apply the most current research measuring the attitudes of the American people, and I’m going to say against American people, against God’s standards of right and wrong. Now, those are my words, but our guest today again is Dr. George Barna. He’s the founder of the original Barna Research and now professor at Arizona Christian University and the director of research at the Cultural Research Center there at Arizona Christian University. And we’re so glad to have you back with us, George. I’m going to get right into it right now, but welcome aboard and thanks for spending the time and investing be with us again here.

George Barna:

Oh, thanks for having me back. I’m looking forward to talking with you guys

Sam Rohrer:

Today. George Isaac and I are looking forward to discussing with you, and I’m going to set up some of this as a halt for those who may be listening here perhaps the first time. But you and the folks at the Cultural Research Center issue reports, this is number seven. Report number seven came out just a short time ago, and you connect it to, and it’s a part of what you term the 2025 American Worldview Inventory. And you start with this in this particular report, you start with these words, quote, with the National Biblical Worldview incidents at 4% among adults. A new report from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University indicates that there is a substantial variance in that incidence across the 50 states. That’s how you begin it. And then in your report, you identify these variances by percentage and geographical location, and then you draw conclusions and we’ll get into some of the substance of that in the next three segments.

So I just set that up so everybody who’s listening, you know where we’re going to go today, but for the sake of putting this latest report in research into perspective, George, let’s lay down if we can, a little bit of the foundation and context again for those who may be joining us for the first time or perhaps have not been able to pick up every of the Friday programs prior. And if they’re like me, we tend to forget half what we hear anyway. So let this be a reminder in putting things in context. The question would be this, just to start with, what is the American Worldview Inventory and why? So what is the inventory and why do you and the cultural research center team at Arizona Christian believe that it’s important information upon which to focus, which you have been now for a whole lot more than 2025, but for a long time. Why is it important?

George Barna:

Yeah. Well, the American Worldview Inventory is an annual tracking study that we do, and what we’re primarily focused on through this tracking study is the incidents of worldview. No matter what a person’s worldview is, we happen to be particularly interested in those who have a biblical worldview. But that’s of course not the only worldview that exists. So we want to know what worldview do people have, how many of them have it, and what are the components of the worldview that individuals are buying into? So that means that we’re going to be studying their core beliefs and how those core beliefs translate into behavior. And we do this because everybody has a worldview. It develops by the age of 13, and it’s really the central determinant to who you become as a person. But worldview also determines what a culture becomes because the cumulative effect of everybody’s worldview, when you add them all together and you wind up with a culture well, it’s based on the decisions that people are making and those decisions flow through your worldview.

Every decision you make, every day goes through your worldview. And when you look at all 255 or 256 million adults in America, or close to 340 million people in total, we’ve all got a worldview. All the decisions we’re making flow through our individual worldviews. And the accumulation of that is what shapes our culture. And so for us, studying which worldview dominates helps to explain why we have the culture we do, why the nation is the way that it is, why people feel and behave the way they do and believe the way they do, but always keep in mind that you do what you believe. And so worldview is critical toward helping us understand who we are, where we’re going, how we’re going to get there, where determines success in our minds. And so to influence our culture if we don’t like it, if we want to transform it either in a little bit or in a major part, well then we’ve got to affect worldview. And each of us has been called by God to be agents of transformation. If we’re going to be effective at that, what we’ve got to be transforming is people’s worldview. And so that’s a longer answer to your question of what’s the American worldview inventory? It’s an annual assessment of worldview so that we can make a difference in this culture for Christ.

Speaker 3:

And George, you’ve been reporting on this, studying this for many years. I’m thinking all the way back in the 1900’s when I was a very young child in the 1900’s, my dad would quote studies that you were doing and reporting. And I’m wondering how this number, you’re looking at a report right now that the national Biblical Worldview incidents is at 4% among adults in America. How has this changed over the time that you’ve been studying it?

George Barna:

Well, when I started doing this, Isaac, it was back in the early 1990s, and then Chuck Colson and I, he was a mentor of mine and we got to talking about worldview and he asked me to do a study for him about what is the worldview of America? How do we know that? What do we do about it? At that point in the mid 1990s when Chuck and I were working on that, biblical worldview was at about a 12% incidence. So it was three times greater than it is today, and what we’ve seen is that it’s on the decline, but that decline is now faster than it was back in the 1980s or 1990s. When I first started doing this, it was 6% just five years ago. We’re down to 4%. As we’re studying teenagers and younger children, we project that that decline will continue.

It’ll go even lower than the 4% we’re at now. And one of the important trends that we’re seeing is that the younger a person is the less likely they are to have a biblical worldview. And because we know the biblical worldview is pretty much shaped and stays what it is for life by the age of 13, that’s why we have started looking at younger people and we’re concerned about this. What this means is that biblical illiteracy is rising in America. What it means is that our willingness to take God at his word is on a significant and steep decline and a major insight into this. The key thing is you’re unlikely to be become, to be or become a disciple of Jesus Christ without a biblical worldview. And therefore, not only is the low incidence of biblical worldview troubling because we know the number of disciples can’t exceed that number, but the fact that biblical worldview is declining means we’re probably going to continue to see a declining number of genuine disciples of Christ

Sam Rohrer:

As well. And ladies and gentlemen, think about that. Perhaps some of the, what we’ve already shared is alarming. It ought to be when you think 4% biblical world review among adults, that ought to be alarming. But we’re getting now into the actual report. Number seven when we come back and we’re going to talk about some of the findings, some of the differences, state to state, top to bottom. We’ll look at some of those and we’ll move through the program. If you’re just joining us, welcome aboard. Today is our monthly focus on biblical worldview culture and values where we share breaking research produced by the Cultural research center at Arizona. Christian University led their director of research by Dr. George Barna, well-known to our audience and most people who are concerned in truth about truth in this country. But George, getting into now to the actual report report number seven, it is, if you’re listening, ladies, gentlemen would want to find it.

You can find it@culturalresearchcenter.com or Arizona christian.edu. You can find it there, but it’s identified as number seven, release date, July 11. Now, okay, from your research in the report, George, you say this, while there may be few surprises in the data regarding the ranking of states or the actual incidents level, some states of some states, the identity of the 10 states with the highest in the 10 with the lowest incidents levels probably will not raise many eyebrows. However, you’re going to say, when the incidence level of each state is used to project the total number of integrated disciples in each state based on the most recent consensus bureau population counts per state, some surprises emerge. Now that’s your quote. So you set it up and I’d just like to kind of walk down through in the balance of the program and just talk about some of the surprises as an example. Let’s start with this one. You cite first state to state surprises that you found, and I’m going to say, what are some of the surprises? And if you could put in there as well, were they really surprises? Were they surprises to you? Why are they surprises? Okay,

George Barna:

Well, sure. And I mean this is taking objective information and place in a subjective lens in front of it. It’s surprising to me. I do so much research. It’s like, well, I didn’t expect that in spite of all the things that we’ve learned. So the first one that jumped out at me has to do with Texas. Now, Texas has an image of being a state with a lot of Christians, a state that’s predominantly conservative, very red, a state that is known for its spirituality, some of its impactful churches and church leaders. And yet when we look at the worldview across the state of Texas, the proportion of people who have a biblical worldview ranks Texas 30th. 30th. I mean, that’s well below the halfway mark, especially since we could only actually measure 45 states. There were five states that were too small. We didn’t have enough data for those five, but so 30th out of 45, not very impressive.

Why is that surprising? Well, because of the things I said, it’s known as being Christian, conservative, spiritual. Why is it known as conservative? Well, if you look at the state legislature, 60% of the elected legislators are Republicans. In fact, their congressional delegation, 70% of those both in the house and in the Senate are from the GOP, and they tend to be more conservative. In fact, some of them are leading conservatives, tech crews and others. Then we look at how could this have happened? I think a lot of that is because of the in-state and out-of-state migration that’s happening there since 2000, just the turn of this particular century, 25 years ago, more than 9 million people have moved into Texas from other states and close to that, many have also moved out of Texas. I mean, there’s been a net in migration, but nevertheless, there’s been a big flux in terms of their population.

And so what we see happening is that there are more liberals moving into Texas than many people would’ve assumed. And in fact, when you look at some of the major cities in the state like Austin, the state capitol or Houston, one of the two biggest cities in the state, what you find is that liberals are flocking to those places and becoming a very considerable part of that population. So it’s that kind of fluidity with their population that’s changing the worldview profile of the state. But so many people say, oh, well, let’s look to Texas, see what they’re doing. It’s a big conservative, influential state. Well, it may not be as spiritually conservative as we’ve been led. Another thing that we might look at, even apart from Texas, would have to do with California. Here again, a state that’s kind of the opposite in terms of the image of Texas.

We look at it as being very liberal or progressive, radical Marxist. And I think all of those things are true. I spend most of my time living there. I get it. It’s interesting. But what we know is that when we look at all the states in the country, California has more people with a biblical worldview than any other state. Now, you could make the argument, well, it’s because it has such a massive population. It’s by far the biggest state population wise. But even so, to have the largest number, more than 1.4 million, almost one and a half million people with a biblical worldview, more than 300,000 people, more than the next closest state, just personally, I didn’t expect that. Maybe I live here. And you don’t often sense that. And so those to me were really interesting things. We could also look at this in terms of regions and if we were to look at that Pacific region, the area of the country where California is, but so is Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and Alaska, you put those five states together, they comprise that Pacific region.

And what you find is that cumulatively that region has a higher incidence of biblical worldview than the Midwestern states. I mean, that kind of blew my mind a bit because we think of the Midwest as being very traditional, very slow to change, very reliable, very consistent, very Christian. And yet again, largely I think because a lot of the mobility, population mobility that’s taking place, but also because of a radical change in our churches and our families across the country, we’re seeing that maybe some of those traditional ideas that we have about which areas are most conservative, most liberal, which areas are more likely to believe and entrust and live according to the Bible and those which aren’t. Maybe that’s changing. And then one last thing I’ll throw out there for consideration, and that’s New England. Now we all know New England is liberal. I mean, it’s off the charts liberal. We did find, of course, that of the nine divisions, that the census Bureau studies population in that division is by far the lowest in terms of biblical worldview, less than people living there worldview. But I historical significance spiritually for America of what New England represents historically, it’s still kind of shocking to me. It’s really saddening to me to see what’s happened to New England spiritually.

Speaker 3:

I agree with that, George. I love studying church history, especially American church history, and I’ve just recently been reading a lot of things from the 16 hundreds through the 18 hundreds of the proliferation of churches and how it really founded our country the way it is. And it is sad to see it going that way. Hey, I would like to get your top 10, like the Dave Letterman, David Letterman, when he used to do the top 10 on his late night show. Could we get the George Barna, a top 10 of the 10 states with the highest biblical worldview and the 10 states with the lowest? And then any information or surprises you want to go through on those for us?

George Barna:

Sure. Well, the highest, statistically speaking, were Alabama number one, Mississippi, virtually identical at number two. Then there was a three percentage point drop to the third place, which was South Carolina, about another percentage drop down to Arkansas at 9%. In fifth place you have Montana at 8% Virginian, sixth place, 7.1%, Idaho, seventh place at 7%. Eighth place, we’ve got a tie between Oklahoma and Tennessee, 6.7%. And then you get North Carolina at about 6.3%. Now the bottom states from the bottom coming back up bottom by far, Rhode Island, less than one quarter, frankly, it was less than one 10th of one percentage point of people living in Rhode Island have a biblical worldview. Others on the bottom 10, Maine, Nebraska, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, you see a flow there in terms of where they’re located. Then we get to 39th place was New Mexico, 38 was New Hampshire, 37, Louisiana. 36 was New York.

I’ll tell you, Isaac, there were a few that popped out at me as being interesting because I didn’t expect them. Montana being fifth highest in the country and Idaho being eighth highest in the country. You don’t normally think of the mountain states as deeply biblical states, but maybe that’s got to change. Virginia coming in sixth because of the political turbulence in the state, some of the people that they’ve elected in the last three or four elections. To me that was a little bit surprising. And then at the other end of the scale, finding Louisiana in 37th place out of 45 states being in the bottom 10 being well below the national average, that was surprising to me. Now, I just returned last night from New Orleans, and I’ll tell you some of the things that go on there, make your hair stand on end. But nevertheless, there are still some surprises to be found

Sam Rohrer:

Here. George, that’s excellent. Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to get ahold of the report, it’s interesting to really to read through, but you can find it on the website of cultural research center.com and look for American Worldview Inventory. This is report number seven, and all the ones we’ve dealt with back to the beginning of the year are all listed there together and you can find it. It really truly is interesting. We come back, we’re going to talk now with we’re a little further into analysis of what this all means. Well, welcome back here to Stand in the Gap. Today we’re actually unveiling in talking with Dr. George Barnett, our guest today, the latest research report, number seven. And again, if you’re just tuning in with us, cultural research center dot com’s, the site you can go to find this report. And all of those that have come out this year so far, and actually in the past as well, they’re all there.

But from a research perspective, a lot of you listening to me, some of you may be involved in research. I was at one point. I use a lot of research. Now we like to have Dr. George Barna on because we think that accurate research, which is frankly hard to come by, is valuable if you know what to and how to use it. But knowing the what, I’m going to put it that way, what of the research, not just what we actually reviewed a little bit in the last segment, it was more of the what? The specifics of the statistics by themselves. If that’s the only place you go, it tells a story but doesn’t tell the whole story. And so you have to ask the question of why. And that gets into the analysis. How can this information help inform and improve life and living? Because if you can’t use the information you find, what good is it? So regarding the why, for instance, I have some questions that come up this, like for instance, why do we have such an abysmal 4% of all American adults who hold a biblical worldview? And Isaac, you dealt with that a little bit in the first segment. Why are there 10 top states with a measurable biblical worldview? Even though as George you mentioned there are some that were so small at the bottom that you couldn’t hardly even measure them. Why is that disparity in one single nation so enormous?

Why is this disparity and was it always this way? Those are questions. Why do the numbers continue to decrease? George, which you mentioned at the beginning started at around 12, went down to six, it’s now down to four, and the younger generations, it’s moving even faster. Okay, listen, jump. You get the idea. Asking the right questions will give good answers. We’re hopefully going to ask them right questions here, George, why do we now have only 4% of all American adults with a biblical worldview? And why does the overall trend remain downward? And actually, as you said, accelerating based on our discussion that we’ve had in earlier programs and today, why is this happening?

George Barna:

Well, yeah, and I love the fact that you’re going there, Sam. One of the things I always teach my students is it’s one thing to be able to find, discover, and then talk about the absolute numbers as we’ve been doing. But the key thing of all research is to be able to answer the question. So what? So 4% have a biblical worldview, who cares? What difference does it make? I got to put food on the table. So I mean, there are all kinds of things like that we have to look at. So why do we have these low numbers? I think part of it goes back to something I heard pastor from the Cleveland area, Alistair Begg, pretty well-known conservative pastor last year. He was speaking at a conference and I wrote down what he said. I thought it was so helpful and so appropriate to this particular question.

He said, expositional preaching gives way to inspirational talks, which then give way to therapeutic endeavors. And so as I’ve thought about what I’ve seen in churches, what I’ve experienced in churches and what we’ve measured through the research to be taking place in churches, what we talk with pastors about, what are they preaching about? How are they preaching about it? What do they want coming out of that? This particular quote rings true with me, that we’ve moved from exegetical or expositional teaching to inspirational teaching to therapeutical events, therapeutic events that we’re holding in our churches. Now add to that, that we’re living in a culture that frankly is spiritually aggressive. Now, a lot of people say, well, there’s not much faith activity taking place in American culture. I beg to differ. We live in the midst of spiritual war every moment of every day of our lives.

And I would posit that the reason that we have a declining biblical worldview is that we’re not paying attention to this war. We’re not fighting back as followers of Christ. We’re not really biblically oriented. And so what’s happening is we’re giving up our beliefs on truth, on God, on sin, on salvation, on purpose, success, morals, all these things that the Bible talks about in order to help us figure out how can you thrive in life. We’re not looking to the Bible for that guidance. We’re looking to the culture. We’re looking primarily, frankly, to the media, and we find that that is what’s having the greatest impact on our worldview. We’re trusting the media to tell us what truth is more than we’re trusting the Bible. We’re trusting the media to talk to us about sin and purpose and success and morality more than we’re trusting the Bible.

And so you put all of that together. What are Christians looking for? Our research is showing. We’re looking for comfort. We’re looking for popularity. We want a life where there’s no conflict. We’re completely unprepared to defend the Bible because we don’t know what it teaches, and we don’t see ourselves as having that responsibility to defend the Bible. And we haven’t made the commitment to promote God’s word to the culture to deal with these kinds of issues. It’s not only happening because of bad preaching, but it’s also happening partly because our families, our parents don’t understand that they have the dominant responsibility to be teaching the Bible to their children, to be raising them up, to know the word of God, to live the word of God, to be sharing and spreading and modeling the word of God. Parents aren’t doing it in their lives. They’re not preparing their children to do it.

And that’s why we’ve got all of these abysmal numbers across the states. One of the points I make in the report is, look, I’m worried that Alabama and Mississippi who are at the top of the list, 12 and a half percent of their people have a biblical worldview more than three times the national average. Those churches, those families may read that and sit back and say, ah, we got it made. Look at us. We’re king of the hill. We figured it out. Hey, 12% means that seven out of every eight people, even in our best states, Alabama and Mississippi, seven out of eight people there do not have a biblical worldview. So we’re failing miserably even where we think we’re succeeding.

Speaker 3:

George, when my kids were younger, my older kids used to love to blow these big giant bubbles, and my youngest son would come up and he would try to pop them all. And I think you’re popping a lot of bubbles right now. Or you could say stepping on people’s toes because these facts that you’re throwing out are very powerful. I would like to go back to the top 10 and the low 10 that you were talking about. And just curious what you’re seeing behind the research here, the numbers. Why do you think that some of these states, your Alabama’s and Mississippi and South Carolinas, comparing them to your Rhode Island and Maine and Nebraska, which really surprises me, why is there such a huge difference? I mean, especially look at the difference between Alabama and Rhode Island with statistically no biblical worldview at all, hardly in Rhode Island. I’m just wanting to know what you’re seeing in the research, why there’s this disparity between states.

George Barna:

Well, I think part of it has to do with the influence of the culture. We’ve talked about what that is, but you look at our traditions, our values, our expectations, those are radically influenced by the culture. You look at the media that are attended to in those different kinds of states, Rhode Island, as I’ve studied it, pays attention to very different media than people in Mississippi and Alabama do. And so they’re getting a different spin on reality. See, one of the things we don’t think about very much is that most of us don’t experience most of what we think defines the country. We rely upon the media to tell us what’s going on, whether that’s in politics, in relationships, in athletics, in faith related issues and global issues in the economy. Most of us just know our own very small, limited slice of reality. And it’s often quite different than what we hear about through the media.

And so I think when you look at places like the ones that have the very low percentages, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, et cetera, what you find is that, yeah, I mean these people are full bore, forgive me, but CNN fanatics, they think that the sun rises and sets based on what the anchors on CNN tell people. Well, it doesn’t. In fact, it’s been proven over the last five years in particular that so much of what CNN said was happening, for instance, in politics, which is a big thing for them, that so much of what they’ve said was happening was not happening, that it was a lie, that there were half truths, no truths, misinformation, deception being given to the people through unquote news reporting. Well, I mean that has an impact on what people think and believe and how they live. And then you look at some of those areas as well, and you’ve got less population mobility, fewer people are moving into New England that are moving out of it.

People don’t want to live in the harsh winters. They don’t want the taxes that they’ve got up there. There’s a lot of things that make it less compelling to live in New England than it might say in the southern states where you’ve got different kind of weather, different kind of churches, relationships, lifestyles, all kinds of things. So that’s impacted this as well. And then of course, along with all of this, you’ve got people’s faith perspectives. And what you find is, as I look at this list of states where the biblical worldview is by and large rejected, those are states where the Bible is rejected, where Jesus is rejected, where the Christian faith is considered to be old school, outdated, irrelevant, unscientific, impractical. And so you put that all together and I think that helps to describe partly why we have this differential.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, George and that Isaac, great questions there, ladies and gentlemen. Alright, so this is just some of the analysis. There’s a whole lot more that can brought out of it. In the end, we have to ask the question already been brought up, but what difference does it make? Alright, what difference does knowing this information, what will difference it make in your life? Well, as we go into our final segment, again, thank you all for being with us today. Just a reminder, this program can be found on our website, stand in the gap radio.com, as well as on our app stand in the gap, as well as all of our archive programs on both TV and radio, this one and our weekend program intermittent. And with this program, daily program, you can also find a transcript available that is there for you can read along with and listen at the same time because there are many times statements are made, quotes are given, that kind of thing that you simply can’t write down, but you can find it there in the transcript.

I want you to know about that to take advantage of it. And then as well, if you want to get the actual report itself from which these monthly programs on culture and research, biblical worldview, the information that we’re talking about today, you can find on George’s website at the Arizona Christian University site cultural research center.com. With that established, let me get into it because I need to talk about how we are going to conclude this. And I said to ask that question, George, you referenced it earlier. We’ve talked about it about on this program before, and it’s a simple question that ought to be asked. I think at the end of every sermon, at the end of everything I read and look at and say, all right, now what difference does it make? And I’m just going to say from my own perspective, if you’re listening ladies and gentlemen, it’s just idea.

If I get done going reading something or going to a source and I walk away saying, so what or what difference does it make? I don’t go back. At least I try not to go back. It’s a waste of time. But when there is truth, we should never, ever walk away saying, it’s a waste of my time, truth, biblical truth always has a reason for being otherwise God wouldn’t have put it in the Bible. And if it is there, it’s there for us. So that being the case, George, in simple terms, what difference does this report, and I’m going to link together the other American worldview inventory research, make, what difference does it make? And I’m going to ask this in a very pointed way, particularly maybe this way. What difference would you desire that it make? Because Isaac and I were talking before we went on the program, to some extent, you’ve been a purveyor of truth for a long time. Information you’ve put out has been true. It has been gripping. And yet as the measurements are, the trend of people with biblical worldview is downward the opposite of what you want. But it makes me think of the Old Testament prophets who went out and God said, go out and be a watchman on the wall and let it up to me. For the people who respond, you just do your job. I don’t know how you think about it and feel about it. What difference does it make?

George Barna:

Wow, that could be a long discussion. I know we’ve only got a few minutes. Let me try to focus here. For me, what we’re really talking about is this spiritual war that I alluded to earlier and my conclusion, I don’t know that it’s right, but studying things from a lot of different angles. For more than four decades, I’ve concluded that the paucity of biblical worldview in America is because the attack on the worldview of Americans is one of the central Satanic strategic tactics that are being used to debilitate the Christian body in America. And so what that winds up looking like is worldview by default rather than intentionality. So we know that everybody has a worldview. Everybody’s worldview is the basis of all their decisions. Everybody’s worldview is developed by the age of 13, starts at 15 to 18 months of age, continues for that 12 year period of time, and then they pretty much live and die the rest of their life with that same worldview they had at the age of 13.

And yet, who’s talking about this? Who’s measuring it? I could identify for you. There are a list of market research companies in America. There are more than 3000 of them cumulatively. They spend tens and tens of billions of dollars every year measuring things that people are willing to pay for. What kind of information, Hey, what kind of shoes do you like? Gee, which is your favorite restaurant? What celebrity do you enjoy the most? Those things are meaningless compared to what is your worldview, because that’s going to determine who you become, how you live, what kind of influence you’re trying to have, all these things and more what’s going to happen to you eternally in your mind, in your heart and your soul. And so you ask, what difference do I want this to make? I want to get this on our radar. I want people to understand that worldview matters.

Whether you pay attention to it or not, you’ve got one, whether you know what it is or not. It’s determining the choices you make, whether it matters to you overtly or not. It determines the type of influence, if any, that you’re trying to have. And if you consider yourself to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, it’s the thing that you need to be confronting in other people’s lives because they’re not going to become disciples of Jesus until they get their beliefs, right, because their beliefs determine their behavior. And a disciple of Jesus is someone who imitates Christ himself. You’re not going to imitate Christ if you don’t believe the things that he believed. And so worldview is so critical here. Parents have to recognize their responsibility as a worldview catalyst for their household, their children, their grandchildren, for their community, their culture, their church. You can’t give what you don’t have.

And so we’ve really got to be focused on worldview. Pastor, shame on you for not measuring this. Shame on you for not teaching about this. Shame on you for not mentioning this every single week for not building your ministries around this. This is what you exist to do in this model of church that we’ve created. And so, Sam, you asked me what difference do I want it to make? All the difference it can because if we don’t get worldview right, we’re not going to get anything else. And if we don’t get the rest of it right, because we didn’t get worldview right, man, it’s going to be ugly. Come the day of judgment.

Speaker 3:

Amen. George, I’ve enjoyed the conversation we’re having. I wish we had twice as much time to get into some final questions here, but as you just said, if we don’t get this right, we don’t have anything, what can God-fearing people do? It feels like we’re at a tipping point. You said just right before COVID, we were at 6% biblical worldview. Now we’re at 4%. Back in the nineties, we were at 12%. We see this dropping. What can God-fearing people do?

George Barna:

Well, yeah, again, I wrote that book, raising Spiritual Champions. To partly answer that question, I think it’s such a critical question, but there’s a much deeper discussion that has to take place and has to look at all the different aspects of it. Are we serious about being disciples? I would say Americans are not, because if we were, we’d think differently, we’d behave differently, we’d pray differently. Everything we do would be different than it is today. Based on my measurements. Families are not prioritizing this. Churches aren’t prioritizing it. Seminaries and Bible colleges aren’t prioritizing it. Our political system certainly doesn’t. Our media don’t, our educational institutions, we’re losing ground in every one of those dimensions, and so I think we’ve got to sit back and say, okay, well, just doing more of the same thing and doing it harder and faster and more intensely probably isn’t going to gain mush ground because all that does is fit the definition of insanity. We’ve got to completely rethink the model which we’re going by and think through, okay, if your worldview is your foundation for life, because it’s the basis of every decision that you make, how can we then start as Deuteronomy six commands us to do? How can we start in our households every single day, every act that we make looking at our worldview and trying to get it right so that we can truly love God with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul.

Sam Rohrer:

Dr. George Barna, thank you so much for being with Isaac and I today, ladies and gentlemen. Obviously this question, there’s no makeover in life. Only one life will soon be passed. Only what’s done for Christ will last. What are you doing? I’m asking to my own self, Lord, am I doing what you say is most important Biblical worldview, fearing God, keeping his commandments, the time is short. May you all go out and do.