This is the third chapter from Gary Miller’s Reaching America: God’s message has not changed but our culture has. The first two chapters titled Awake, Alive, and Multiplying, and What Is Different were the two prior posts.
In a 2018 study, 35 percent of Americans surveyed identified themselves as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular, up from 30% five years earlier. When only youth are polled, this percentage grows even higher. In the past few years this group, known as the “Nones,” has caught the attention of many.
A poll released in March 2023 conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and funded by the Wall Street Journal, confirmed the importance of religion dropped during the past 25 years from 62 percent to 39 percent, now calling it important. Likewise, while 59 percent said having children was important 25 years ago, now just 30 percent do. For the first time in our nation’s history, over 65 percent of children from the ages of 7 to 17 have never been to a church, synagogue, or mosque.
What is causing this sudden surge of indifference toward religion? While many factors influence this, there is one piece of the puzzle we should not ignore: These were not individuals who were indoctrinated with a godless worldview as children and are now living out what they were taught. A majority, 78 percent, grew up in religious homes but later in life chose to abandon their parent’s beliefs. This is a shocking statistic. How did this occur?
Shifting Worldviews
For many of these, their worldview changed during college. Exposed to teachings that conflicted with their religious upbringing, they abandoned faith, finding answers in science and logic. Truth for them is in what is seen, not in the mystical realms of the invisible. These individuals, known as modernists, say they want facts and verifiable scientific proof. Since the existence of God can’t be proved in the laboratory, they remain skeptical of miracles, supernatural explanations, or any unverifiable religious claims. Of course, many evolutionary claims are unverifiable as well, but the modernist remains convinced that science itself will eventually provide answers for questions of origin that are not yet demonstrable.
In the late 1900s, in reaction to the failures of modernism to produce utopia, another viewpoint arose that has been termed “postmodernism.” For the postmodernist, truth itself is the in question. In the halls of higher education, scholars are encouraged to question everything. They are suspicious of absolutes and ponder whether anyone can be certain of anything. Consequently, statements like “That may be true for you but not for me” are increasingly common. According to the postmodernist, each of us has the privilege of developing and embracing our own truth. As illogical as this worldview may appear, its popularity is increasing, and we are seeing the results on many fronts. Of course, anyone who does not believe in absolutes will have little respect for the Word of God. Proclamations of judgement to come typically have little impact on an individual embracing a postmodern worldview.
Both modernism and postmodernism have had a huge effect on the receptiveness of the American public to the Gospel. Like a powerful vaccine, these worldviews have inoculated our culture, creating an inherent resistance to the Gospel. But this does not mean that people with a modern or a postmodern worldview have lost all interest in spiritual things. They might think that is the case, but God is still working with them. He has placed a desire to worship in every human heart – a longing that is deep and not easily discarded.
Throughout history, people have tried unsuccessfully to satisfy this inner longing for God with other things. Augustine, a fifth-century theologian who had tried pleasure and various other distractions, finally concluded, “Our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.” Blaise Pascal, centuries later, said there is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man that cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.(3) Americans today have an abundance of things to cram into this inner hole, but they sense thar something is still missing. They know their lives are not complete and are on a passionate pursuit for wholeness.
In 2019, David Zahl coined a new word in the title of his book Seculosity. Zahl argues that Americans, attempting to fill the void left by the abandonment of religion, are turning to all sorts of everyday activities to replace it. Careers, political involvement, technology, saving the environment, or even the perfect diet are pursued with passion and intensity, just as a devoted religious worshiper seeks after his god. “Our religion,” he says, “is that which we reply on not just for meaning or hope but enoughness,”(4) Today we see people who are extremely passionate about the purity and perfection of the food they eat or the national park they hike in, but ignore the One who created it all.
Filling the Hole
The enabler of this cultural wave is affluence. We have the wealth to procure just about anything one could wish for, and possessions are a way for men to seek fulfillment. In fact, America is famous for overindulgence. Though America represents only 4 percent of the world’s population, it consumes over 26 percent of its products!(5). With an educational system promoting skepticism, a society awash in material goods, and a worldview that says present pleasure is all that really matters, it’s no wonder we have a challenge.
Yes, I think there is an even more seductive obstacle facing seekers today: electronic entertainment.
Electronic Pacifiers
One of the primary purposes of entertainment is to distract us from reality. Constant amusement diverts people away from God’s call, even as it shapes their views and values. Pacifiers were never meant to provide nourishment. Rather, they just distract the child, sidetrack his concern, and offer a temporary placebo to divert him from his discomfort. Electronic devices do the same in our culture. When pain, loneliness, or any kind of anxiety rears its head, out comes the electronic pacifier. When serious thoughts about life or death threaten, the mind can be diverted by some funny video, movie, or online shopping, and reality is forgotten. Imagine how this can hinder the work of the Spirit in a person’s life. The Lord begins to convict him of sin, but a few swipes of the electronic pacifier puts the focus somewhere else, away from the uncomfortable call of the Spirit. Few things dull spiritual desire like constant access to mind-numbing entertainment.
Describing the last days, the Apostle Paul predicted that “men shall be lovers of their own selves,” (I Tim 3:2) describing this persistent pursuit after fun as “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” (I Tim 3:4) Written almost 2000 years before the electronic entertainment craze we are observing today, Paul could not have written a more accurate description of our time.
Are There Any Serious Seekers Left?
With a growing number of American checking out of religion and amusing themselves to death, why bother? How are Christ Followers to compete with all this? How are we to interest someone in a quiet two-hour church service that calls the listener to make difficult, self-sacrificing choices? Is evangelism in America today an act of futility?
In 2006, Christian Aid Ministries launched a program called Billboard Evangelism. The goal was to place Gospel billboards along major highways throughout the United States. It was a bold approach. A phone number was provided, and volunteers prepared to answer calls from potential seekers responding to these Gospel messages. But would anyone actually call?
The answer is yes. In spite of all our affluence and our many distractions from our shifted world views, be they from politics, economics, academics, lock-downs, earthquakes, tornadoes, wars, supply chain issues, you name it; spiritual interest is still alive in America. As of 2019, the billboard program has received over 700,000 calls. While many of these callers just wanted to argue or share their displeasure with the sign’s message, an estimated 30 percent are genuine seekers. There is obviously still a tremendous amount of spiritual interest. So, why then, do we see so little Kingdom fruit harvested?
Perhaps the next question begging to be asked is: Do They Really Want What We Have? Read the next post for that answer.
EndNotes
(3) Blaise, Pascal, Blaise Pascal’s Pensees, Penguin Books, NY,1966, Pg 75
(4) David Zahl, Seculosity, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2019, p. xiv.