Chris Lange, FISM News
State of the Bible Report on Thursday released the second chapter of its 2023 annual survey on trends in Christianity. As with the first chapter of the 2023 study, the latest installment shows that while Christianity has declined in the U.S., it is far from dead.
Chapter 2 begins with a focus on the unique role a mother’s faith plays in her child’s decision to follow Christ. Researcher and Bible Report co-author John Farquhar Plake stressed that this focus does not discount the importance of fathers in children’s religious upbringing but explained that a previous study conducted by Barna Group found that “Practicing Christians in their teen years consistently identify mothers” as their primary source of spiritual guidance and the “managers of faith formation.”
Results from the State of the Bible Report survey showed that three in five (61%) adults said that they still practice the religious faith they were taught in their homes. The percentage of respondents who identified as Christians and said that they still follow the faith of their mothers’ was 77%.
Broken down by denominations, 62% of Protestants and 57% of Catholics practice the same faith of their childhood while 68% of respondents in the “Other Christian” category said they did. Mothers’ influence applies to other beliefs as well, as 63% of those who identified as atheist, agnostic, and/or none (no religious faith) said that their religious belief system was also passed onto them by their mothers.
FAITH ‘SEEKERS’ OUTNUMBER THOSE WHO REJECT FAITH
Farquhar noted that while believers have long focused on reaching the lost with the Gospel, and rightly so, recent decades have also brought about an awareness of “seekers” — those who may not have a deep understanding of the Gospel but who are nonetheless “curious” about God.
Nearly one in four Americans (24%) say they’re not Christians and are “not interested in exploring” Christian faith. However, nearly one-third of the population (31%) indicated “some level of seeking,” ranging from “starting to explore” Christianity to believing in God. This category of “seekers” also includes people who identify as Christians but who acknowledge that they lack any “meaningful faith commitment.”
COMMITMENT TO CHRIST
Fewer than half of Americans (45%) reported some level of commitment to following Christ, while just 12% affirmed that “Christ is the most important relationship in my life.”
Twenty percent said that they consider themselves to be Christians but agreed that “my faith is not a significant part of my life.”
DEFINITION OF GOD
Farquhar noted that “[w]hile the traditional definition of God still has a healthy majority, the numbers are slipping slightly.” He explained that the notion that God merely represents a “state of higher consciousness” is gaining momentum in the U.S.
The 2023 data shows that 58% agreed with the statement that “God is the all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect creator of the universe who rules the world today,” falling three percentage points in the same number of years.
Meanwhile, respondents who agreed with the statement: “God represents a state of higher consciousness that a person may reach” rose from 10% in 2021 to 15% in 2023.
Perhaps a few years of egregious human misbehavior have made people less apt to say “Everyone is god,” but the idea of God as a “state of higher consciousness” is rising fast.
CHANGING FAITH
While switching from one faith to another may have gotten a bad rap over the years, the State of the Bible study found that those who chose to follow a Christian denomination that differed from that of their youth were actually more engaged in Scripture than those who did not switch.
“This holds true in each major denominational group,” the report stated. In fact, in terms of beliefs about the inerrancy of Scripture, the importance of religious faith in one’s life, and an interest in learning more about Jesus and the Bible, the results showed “substantial increases among those whose faith has changed.”
“This trend held true across the various Christian groups — Catholic, Evangelical, Mainline, Historically Black Protestant. It didn’t matter which Christian tradition they had come from or moved to — the process of moving itself seemed to boost the vitality of their faith,” the report stated.
Editor’s Biblical Analysis
Men of God, this is not acceptable. The Scriptures are clear that men are to be the head of the household (Ephesians 5:22-33, Col. 3:18, Gen. 3:16, 1 Cor. 11:3, 1 Peter 3:1). Most importantly, fathers are called to lead their wives and children in the ways of Yahweh (Eph. 6:4, Gen. 18:19, Prov. 22:6).
It is certainly a wonderful thing when a mother helps lead her children in the ways of Yahweh, as women of Christ are called to do (Titus 2:1-15). However, if a child sees his or her mother as their “primary source of spiritual guidance” or their “manager of faith formation,” then their father is failing to obey The Word.
Of course, there are cases when the father has died or is disabled to the point of no longer being able to fulfill this role. However, it is more common that the father is alive but failing miserably to fulfill his Biblical obligation to bring his children “up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).
Men of God, we must do better. Not only should we raise our own children and lead them in the ways of righteousness for His name’s sake, but we must also hold each other accountable to do the same. Our future depends on it.
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. – Proverbs 22:6