God's Plan for Civil Government – Part 2 - Biblical Illiteracy

In January through April of 2012 I led a Bible Study on the Bible and Civil Government. It lasted 13 weeks. These lessons are being posted on a website: https://bibleandcivilgovernment.com.

The Lessons are a bit long for people to read on facebook, so the lessons are being posted on facebook in shorter pieces.

Part 2 - We Live in Time of Biblicsal Illiteracy

From Part # 1 - This study will start by demonstrating what we all know, that our land is living in a time of Biblical illiteracy.

Biblical Illiteracy – empirical proof.
Ignorance of the Bible was clearly demonstrated by multiple Barna Studies (http://www.barna.org/ ) an extract of one follows:

Defining Terms

For the purposes of the survey, a “biblical worldview” was defined as believing that

• absolute moral truth exists;
• the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches;
  Satan is considered to be a real being or force,
• not merely symbolic;
• a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or do good works;
• Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth;
• and God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.

In the research, anyone who held all of those beliefs was said to have a biblical worldview.

National Results

Overall, the current research revealed that only 9% of all American adults have a biblical worldview. Among the sixty subgroups of respondents that the survey explored was one defined by those who said they have made a personal to commitment to Jesus Christ that is important in their life today and that they are certain that they will go to Heaven after they die only because they confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their savior. Labeled “born again Christians,” the study discovered that they were twice as likely as the average adult to possess a biblical worldview. However, that meant that even among born again Christians, less than one out of every five (19%) had such an outlook on life.

The numbers were better for Baptists than for the whole sample, but not by much. Of the Baptists surveyed, 57 percent believed works play a part in salvation, and 45 percent believed Jesus was not sinless. Only 34 percent of Baptists thought Satan was a real being, while 51 percent believed Christians have the responsibility to witness to others. Sixty-six percent of Baptists considered the Bible to be totally accurate, 81 percent considered their religious faith to be important and 85 percent believed God is the all-powerful creator of the universe.

Barna defines "evangelicals" as a subset of "born again" believers - those who say their faith is very important in their lives, believe they have a responsibility to witness to non-Christians, acknowledge the existence of Satan, contend that eternal salvation is possible only through God's grace and not good deeds, believe that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth, and describe God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today.

Those who fit in such a category include only 8 percent of adults. Fourteen percent of Baptists qualified as evangelicals

The conclusion of the Barna Study was that we live in a time of Biblical illiteracy.

[Note:] - The Barna study(ies) demonstrate and list surveys that include many denominations. I have only included comments about Baptist (which I am) to avoid being accused of bashing other denominations. If you are not a Baptist you can lookup results for your denomination from the various Barna reports.

Next we will look at the results of a lack of knowledge.