It is almost never that I get excited--as opposed to agitated--by anything written in the OpinionJournal pages of The Wall Street Journal. This dynamic is almost absolute if it is written by the self-confessed "Sunday school teacher" Dale Buss. However, since most of you know my antithesis for all "ghost worshipping"--which has occasioned the slaughter of more humans over the march of history than any other cause or issue, even Nationalism--whether it be fundamentalist Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormon, Moonies, etc., you will surely understand why I rejoice at the news the Gawdly Mr. Buss so sadly reports and grieves over in the column excerpted below:
About one-third of American teenagers claim they're "born again" believers, according to data gathered over the past few years by Barna Research Group, the gold standard in data about the U.S. Protestant church, and 88% of teens say they are Christians. About 60% believe that "the Bible is totally accurate in all of its teachings." And 56% feel that their religious faith is very important in their life.
Yet, Barna says, slightly more than half of all U.S. teens also believe that Jesus committed sins while he was on earth. About 60% agree that enough good works will earn them a place in heaven, in part reflecting a Catholic view, but also flouting Protestantism's central theme of salvation only by grace. About two-thirds say that Satan is just a symbol of evil, not really a living being. Only 6% of all teens believe that there are moral absolutes--and, most troubling to evangelical leaders, only 9% of self-described born-again teens believe that moral truth is absolute.
"When you ask even Christian kids, 'How can you say A is true as well as B, which is the antithesis of A?,' their typical response is, 'I'm not sure how it works, but it works for me,'" says George Barna, president of the Ventura, Calif.-based research company. "It's personal, pragmatic and fairly superficial."
Some commentators produce even more startling statistics on the doctrinal drift of America's youth. Ninety-one percent of born-again teenagers surveyed a few years ago proclaimed that there is no such thing as absolute truth, says the Rev. Josh McDowell, a Dallas-based evangelist and author. More alarmingly, that number had risen quickly and steadily from just 52% of committed Christian kids in 1992 who denied the existence of absolute truth. A slight majority of professing Christian kids, Mr. McDowell says, also now say that the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ never occurred.
"There's a greater disconnect now than ever in the history of the church in America between what a Christian young person says they are and what they actually believe," says Mr. McDowell, who has ministered mainly to youth for more than 30 years. "Christianity is based on truth; Jesus said, 'I am the truth.' But you have an overwhelming majority even of Christian kids saying there is no absolute truth."
