Rasing Our Children in the Declining Christianity of Americam (Part One)

Have you ever gone to buy a book on raising children? And if so, have you seen just how many there are? Back when my kids were little, the most popular book of the day was one that Dr. Spock wrote. He was an American pediatrician whose book, Baby and Childcare became a best seller in 1946. According to the New York Times, it sold 50 million books by 1998, second only to the Bible.

As of more recent years, many more secular books have been and are being written today. Some titles include: Godless Parents Are Doing A Better Job, My Kid Will Be Raised Without Religion, and Why I Am Not Raising My Children To Be Religous.

The list of these books is endless. And more and more are written all the time. They are leading many unsuspecting parents away from the Bible.

Where did we go wrong in the belief system that taught us that parents teaching their kids about God in their homes was no longer normal? When did it become ok to not say prayers in school or pledge our allegiance to a flag that had become our nations symbol of freedom? When did it become fine for our schools to teach evolution and not creationism? When? When? When?

How has these kinds of belief systems in this country been able to sneak up on us? Or have they really done that?  Why have we allowed the truth of the bible be traded for a lie?

Did you know that one in five people do not believe in the story in the Bible concerning Christ's birth? And that figure is declining as well. Source: 5 facts about Christmas in America | Pew Research Center

Take note of the following:

The other day we came across an article in Advertising Age that blew us away. The article was discussing marketing and religion, but what impacted us so profoundly were some figures from the American Religious Identification Survey by the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society & Culture at Trinity College.

According to that survey, 15% of Americans now say they have “no religion” which is up from 8% in 1990.

It is important to realize that not all of those 46 percent are unbelievers. According to a survey by Bohan Advertising/Marketing, the Barna Group and the United Methodist Church, 62 percent of Americans in that age group consider themselves to be “spiritual”, and 43 percent of them have prayed to some higher power in the last 2 months.

But what it does mean is that almost half of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 do not identify themselves with any particular religion.

And when you look at more recent poll numbers for Christianity in particular, the numbers become even more staggering.

Another new survey by the Barna group reveals that less than 1 percent of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 23 hold a Biblical worldview. This new poll data clearly demonstrates that the youngest adults in America are clearly rejecting traditional evangelical Christian teaching.

The Barna survey defined “a Biblical worldview” as holding all of the following six key beliefs:

1) Believing that absolute moral truth exists.
2) Believing that the Bible is completely accurate in all of the principles it teaches.
3) Believing that Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic.
4) Believing that a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or by doing good works.
5) Believing that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth.
6) Believing that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.

So what do all of these poll numbers mean?

They mean that evangelical Christianity has totally lost almost an entire generation of American young people.

Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor recently published an article about the “coming evangelical collapse” that they believe is coming. They openly predict that “within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants.”

 source: The Decline of Christianity in America

If our belief in the God of the Bible and all it entails is declining in this country, what is to become of us? Where are we headed? Is there any hope for our families?

Please come back tomorrow for more on this crucial and very important subject.

 Cartoon of the day

Thanks for coming by today Friends. I am so happy that you did. Until tomorrow, may God richly bless you and those you love!