Conservative Christian pollster George Barna told Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and “Washington Watch” listeners on Tuesday that “spiritual deficiency” in the United States was to blame for its “collapse.”
During a conversation about conservative evangelicals’ influence on national politics, Perkins said that he perceived that the most important thing for like-minded churches to be doing was not necessarily to be discussing political issues, but to be “developing the biblical worldview” in the United States.
“If we develop the biblical worldview, helping them become integrated disciples, the pieces fall in place, do they not?” Perkins asked Barna.
“Absolutely,” Barna replied. “That’s why one of the things I’m advocating is that America has a profound spiritual deficiency and that’s what’s produced the worldview crisis that’s responsible for the collapse of American society in many ways. If we clean up that worldview issue, everything else is going to fall into place. That’s really the key domino on the board. And so if we get that right, we’re going to fix a lot of things at once.”
“It really does start with our children,” Barna said. “We know that a worldview, no matter which one it is, a person’s worldview is going to start developing at 15 to 18 months of age, and it will be almost fully formed by the time they reach the age of 13, might be reshaped and refined a little bit during the teens and 20s.”
“By the time they hit 30, and what we found is that most people will die believing what they believe at age 13. So we really do have to invest heavily in our children, be very intentional and strategic about that,” Barna said. “It’s got to come from the family, as well as the church. But we have to pay attention to the fact that the culture of America is the biggest shaper of people’s worldview right now. So, we’ve got to turn that around us..”
At the 2017 Values Voter Summit, Barna portrayed the 2016 election as a “Christians vs. non-Christians election” and declared, “God did a miracle for us.”
