Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilders Show taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And no, you do not hear depression in my voice. And yes, there's still a happy warrior joy in my voice, despite the election results last night in Virginia and New Jersey. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. And as always guys, we're just doing our duty, leaving the results up to God. Staying in the fight. We expected a lot of what happened last night and had the chance to do some election coverage together last night but, quick recap on the election results from last night. 

Tim Barton [00:00:42] Well, essentially democrats showed up and voted in democrat areas and largely the elections were primarily, of course, the big ones, New Jersey, Virginia, New York City, these were largely Democrat states, Democrat areas, so it's not surprising Democrats kind of pulled it out. There was a lot of questions about. You know what Christians might do and might show up and actually I'm super excited to get to the interview We have coming up with David not David Barton who's also with us but but David from Family Research Council who does a lot of work with George Barna, does a lot of research and Looking at some of what's happening inside of the church and specifically people that are frequent church attenders what they do and don't believe and oftentimes what their pastors have and have not been teaching. And I think, Dad, but I think we saw a lot of that when you look at places like Virginia, which is genuinely considered a well-churched area. And yet for them to vote for some of the candidates they voted for, I think it's probably pretty telling of maybe the way they've compartmentalized their faith and maybe what their worldview is or isn't in some cases. 

David Barton [00:01:54] Yeah, and this is a problem we face with Christians across the nation is the compartmentalization of faith. I profess to be a Christian, but I can't let that affect what I do at job or home or voting or anything else. I mean, we see that with people like Biden, Pelosi, who profess to being Christians. I'm not gonna say whether  they are or not, but if I did not know they were and judged them only by what they did, I would say there's no way they're a Christian. Well, I'll find out if they make heaven or not. That's not my call, but you can't compartmentalize faith and that's what we saw happen last night. I don't think there were any surprises in who won. I think there are disappointments in how big the margins of victory were in those areas that were already Democrat areas. 

Tim Barton [00:02:34] Well, and Dad, I think too, you know, even going back to your, your kind of parallel of maybe a president Biden or Nancy Pelosi, people that profess Christianity, and yet their fruit might not be fully reflective, but I would, I would give a counter and I'm saying this leading maybe into the interview because, I think for a lot of people that have very unbiblical worldviews, it's very reflective of the pastors they have and the teachings they've heard, where the best way to love Jesus is to allow illegal immigration, is to fund abortion, to fund transgender, which of course is totally unbiblical. And I think that's a lot of what we have seen in our culture. Again, a lot a reflection of a lack of biblical training, a lack biblical leadership. And this doesn't mean there aren't good pastors out there, but if we look at the, you know, 380,000 plus pastors, churches in America the majority of those pastors and churches are not holding the biblical integrity of positions, social issues etc. based on what the Bible teaches and I think the elections revealed that in a lot of ways we talked about last night uh doing coverage on flashpoint is that as you pointed out disappointing but not necessarily super surprising 

Rick Green [00:03:52] And just a good reminder of the work we have to do. That's why I think the guest today is going to be so great because it, you know, we used to do a lot more of this on the program. We'd often talked about polling and, and sort of where we are as a country. We still do it some, but it is a very valuable thing to do just to see what the landscape is because then we understand the times and we know what to do, we can, we can be better men of Issachar in that situation. So I think this will help to, to dive into some of those stats. Of course, last night, you know, recognize that, that there's a lot of work to do in the country, not just in you know, these kind of purple areas, these blue areas that we were surprised to have a Republican governor of Virginia the last time, but also in our red areas, in every community we got a lot of work to do. 

David Barton [00:04:31] You know, and within that context, I mean, before we get to the interview, one of the things the Bible does tell us is that we need to examine ourselves. We need to exam ourselves to see if we're in the faith. The Bible says judge yourself so you'll not be judged. It says, know the state of your flocks and self-examination is really, really good. But when you look in a mirror and see your hair all messed up, you're not supposed to walk away with it messed up. You're supposed to fix it and get things fixed. And so that's the good part of polls. If you look and see what the problem is and address that problem. That's what needs to be done. Not just see where we are, but see where we are and, all right, what do I need to do to get where I should be? And I think that's part of the value of what we'll see in this interview with David Closson. 

Rick Green [00:05:11] David Closson and our special guest, stay with us folks, you're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Tim Barton [00:06:15]  Welcome back to the wall builder show. This is Tim Barton, joined with our special guest friend from Family Research Council, David Closson. David, thanks for being with us. 

David Closson [00:06:29] Tim it's a joy to be on the program. Thanks for having me. 

Tim Barton [00:06:31] Oh, our pleasure. And we are really excited to talk about some of the new insights that you have published that we were talking about the study a little bit. And I've had a chance to go through and read some of it. And as we would expect when you are analyzing and assessing culture. There's definitely some areas where you're just going, oh man. God help us, like this, this is a problem, but also on the WallBuilders program, we always want to be the Joshua's and Caleb's right?  Not that we're dishonest about the giants that live in the promised land, but recognizing hey our God's able to like conquer all these guys. Let's go get after it and we would love to know what are the things from this survey that stood out to you, right? Maybe what are some of the giants in the land that have to be conquered, and maybe what are some things that we should do to help maybe single out and conquer some of those giants? So big picture, first of all, David, tell us about this study that you released, and then maybe some of things that stood out to you from it. 

David Closson [00:07:31] Yeah, Tim, absolutely. And I think what's kind of the biggest picture thing to realize is the study that we released, is with George Barna, it's with the Family Research Council in partnership with the Cultural Research Center, which is based at Arizona Christian University and we wanted to know what do regular churchgoers believe?  And so a lot of statistics and polls that are cited, uh whether it's Gallup or Pew, it's usually based on self-identification. So, you know a pollster will ask a battery of questions And at the end of the interview, them, they might ask, you know, are you, are you a Christian? It might not, you might not have been to church since your mom dropped you off vacation Bible school in the early 1990s. And nevertheless, you're marked as a Christian. So again, that's not super helpful to knowing what are those core beliefs that those who actually go to church. And so this survey, what I think is helpful about it, it's a nationwide survey that looks at the regular, the beliefs of consistent regular church goers, now you have to attend church at least monthly to be, to even be included. And we found actually that 65% of folks in the survey were weekly churchgoers. So we really do think this gives us kind of the pulse on America's most devout. And we asked questions on basic theological questions. We asked questions about political and cultural issues. I'll just give you just a couple real quick, Tim, and then you can take it wherever you'd like to. But as far as encouragement, we did find that the vast majority of churchgoer's desire worldview training. You know, this is good news for ministries like WallBuilders and Family Research Council. The vast majority of regular churchgoers actually are craving this type of information. In fact, eighty percent of churchgoers want more training on religious freedom. Seventy six percent want more training on social and political responsibility. Sixty four percent want more training on human sexuality and sixty percent want more training, on abortion and the value of human life. So again, I found that really encouraging that there's a hunger in the pew for God's Word being brought to bear on the issues that we debate in the public square. 

Tim Barton [00:09:37] That is really, really encouraging. One of the things that we, so on our program, we've talked about this a lot, David, where as you look, some people might call it the Charlie Kirk effect where after his murder, right? A lot of people were looking for answers. They're looking for hope. They're trying to navigate the emotions they're dealing with. They were going to church, but honestly, and you, as someone doing the research, you can probably give me far better details than my generalized understanding. I would say the last couple of years, we have seen an increased hunger, especially from rising generations, looking for truth, looking for answers and looking for the very things you're identifying. I've also seen data and stats at point that the rising generation is the most frequent church attending generation of all the generations. And so this is maybe a little separate from the survey that you went into, and I do want to spend time going back and getting into the weeds a little bit on that, because I think there's a lot that could be encouraged, but maybe also where there could be challenges. And I think one of the areas where we think there could be challenges, Family Research Council has been on the forefront of encouraging and challenging pastors, for decades, to stand up to teach and preach boldly the truth of the Word of God and to offer this Biblical perspective and foundation. We feel probably a lot like you guys do that where we are now, it's for such a time as this that we are in this kingdom because people are needing this. My question is, maybe a little different than the survey, but I don't mind asking you because as someone who's been doing this a lot of the years, you probably will have some insight. One of the challenges, I think, is the encouragement is people are hungering for truth. The challenge is, we see a lot of pastors that have not yet found the courage and boldness to speak the truth. So in the midst of now they're being at hunger, which is wonderful, what do you think is maybe some of the answer, maybe number one, to help encourage pastors to speak more boldly, but also maybe secondly, where are areas, maybe like Family Research Council and WallBuilders that we would point people to, but what are other organizations, ministries? Where people can go to help find that discipleship if they're not finding it in their church. 

David Closson [00:11:46] Yeah, Tim, what an important question. And your intuitions are born out in the data. And I do think Charlie Kirk's assassination has supercharged some of these trends, but the trends have been moving this direction for about five years. You're absolutely right. Gen Z is now the most church generations of the youngest adult demographic, followed actually by millennials, the next oldest adult demographic. Fox News had a report just last week, actually. That, that showed that Christian music streaming is up over 50%, downloads of religious or spirituality apps, kind of in the Apple play store, up over 79% in the last five years. And so one of our big kind of ,you know, here at FRC, we are thrilled that there seems to be a hunger for the things of God and yet our concern is, okay, if people are pouring into our churches, either they're returning to church for the first time in a long time. Maybe they're coming in through those doors for the first time. What are they going to receive from the pulpit? Again, in this survey, we looked at the seven cornerstones of the biblical worldview, these seven most fundamental beliefs, one of them being the doctrine of God, and we found actually only 61% of regular churchgoers have what you would call an orthodox doctrine of God. Understanding that God is the all powerful, all knowing, perfect, just Creator of the universe. And so to your point... 

Tim Barton [00:13:10] Hey David, Hang on, hang on  a second. What was that percentage? 

David Closson [00:13:16] 61%, which is down from 68% two years ago when we first did the study. 

Tim Barton [00:13:22] So that's obviously it's more than half, but like that's not that far above half. 39% of people that are attending church aren't even sure who God is. And to your point, this isn't people that like went on Easter or Christmas. These are frequent church attenders who aren't even set in their understanding or belief of who God. 

David Closson [00:13:45] You know, Tim, if I can really blow your mind, one of the options that we gave people again, we listed five or six options that people would choose. One the options was that God refers to the total realization of personal human potential or a state of higher consciousness that a person may reach now, I really don't know what that means it's informed by Eastern mysticism, new age, 17% chose that. Of regular churchgoers, it was 12% two years ago. So even that's up five points in the last two years. 

Tim Barton [00:14:19] David, this is so interesting because growing up, for me, I've always been in church. My grandfather was a pastor. I've been around the ministry. And every now and then, there's people you meet in church and you're like, you know, these people are kind of weird. They're kind of crazy. And interestingly enough, it seems like your dad is pointing out that, yeah, there are a lot of people that are showing up in church that don't have that biblical foundation. One of the things I saw in the study, even the idea of defining marriage or what a family looks like. The fact that there was that much confusion, and one of the things, David, this is kind of a side note because I would love you to maybe reveal more of what y'all found on some of those topics. But one of things that I've kind of settled on, and I would your thoughts on this, is it seems like that culture in general, but even Christians, they are confused on issues that are not confusing in scripture because pastors have failed to teach the clarity of scripture on issues. So whatever issues we're dealing with in culture right now. It's a reflection of what the church has not been teaching for the last several decades. Because if we were teaching the last several decades, and this is kind of my premise of understanding, or at least my thought behind this, is if pastors would have been talking about these issues, we shouldn't have confusion on these issues. But it seems like in my mind, and I would love to know if your data gives any indication of this, or if you've seen something that, or maybe even your gut intuition with how much you study and research this, if it seems the things we're battling in culture, they've been neglected from pulpits, and that's why they've become bigger issues? Because obviously we know there's a spiritual component to this as well, we believe that there's God, there's also a devil, whatever God is doing, the devil opposes, like I get all of that. But it certainly seems like there's been a lot of neglect from the pulpit in addressing some of these issues, which is why maybe there is confusion of who God is, or what family is, or what marriage is, or whatever else. What are your thoughts behind that? 

David Closson [00:16:08] No, no, I agree with you, Tim, and I think there are a lot of pastors and again, I'm never someone who wants to beat up on pastors, those with preaching and teaching discipleship opportunities. But I talked to enough and I've been around long enough to know, especially come election time, that there is a fear to speak on what might be perceived as political issues. And I think as Christians, we need to be honest, you know, there are some issues that the Bible does not directly address. Now, I do think the Bible gives us principles for all of life. But you know, the issue of immigration, I think Christians can agree to disagree on maybe the best approach to that issue on the issue of abortion. However, there is a thus saith the Lord. There is a chapter in a verse. We don't need to guess what God's opinion is. We have Psalm 139 verse 13 through 16. We have Luke chapter 1 verse 39 through 45, homosexuality. Again, we don't need to guess God's Opinion. We have Romans 1. We have 1st Corinthians 6:9 we have 1 Timothy 1:10. We have of course Genesis 19. And so I do think for fear of being perceived as political, there are those who have not been teaching or catechizing on this and that's reflected to him in the data on the confusion on marriage family and the biggest alarm in this data, this particular survey we're talking about is that support for abortion in the last two years has gone up by 12 or 15 points, actually, in the church and again as someone who, I'm a new father, my first book came out a few months ago on the life issue that is just unbelievably discouraging when you see the the the incidence of pro-choice identification going up and pro-life identification actually going down a little bit. 

Tim Barton [00:17:51] And again, this is for the frequent church attenders. The regular church attenders are becoming more pro-abortion in the last couple of years, which is staggering. And I'm glad you pointed out, this was one of the most shocking parts because that was one my questions, right? To you, what was the craziest part? But certainly, the idea that you are faithfully attending church and you become more pro abortion as you faithfully attend church, which again, I think there's probably lots of factors. It's maybe an indication of a lot of cultural influence, and there's a lot of times that we know when forming a biblical worldview there's, a lot, of components to it. And if we're listening to the world more than we're listening to The Word, it can make a difference. But sometimes we also know, and to your point, we're not trying to be overly critical of pastors in general. But we know that there are some people, Jesus warned about, right, people that look like sheep, in reality are ravenous wolves. You've got to be careful. There's a lot of people that would profess to be spiritual leaders or pastors that are not teaching the entirety or the truth of the word of God. And so, David, let me go back because I wanna be respectful of your time. I'm so grateful and I feel like I can talk to you for hours about some of these topics, but I wanna circle back to the thought of if... If maybe they're in a church that is not giving really good worldview foundation and teaching, what are some good worldview tools? What are some good ministries you might recommend? And I definitely want to hear more about your book that you've written and where people can find that because I'm sure you've given some really great thoughts and apologetics on the life issue and how to think through strategically, et cetera. So worldview, where can people go to get trained? Are there any groups or ministries? And again, I mentioned earlier, obviously Family Research Council. We are very supportive of people coming to you guys. Depending on the issues at WallBuilders, we have some good stuff on Christian foundation, basic inalienable rights, Bill of Rights, et cetera. But for biblical foundational stuff, what are good worldview places people can go and who can they follow? 

David Closson [00:19:47] Yeah, great question, Tim. And besides WallBuilders, besides FRC, and of course, as FRC we do have a Center for Biblical Worldview that I get to lead. You can check that out at frc.org/worldview. I have a whole list of resources actually on that site on life, religious freedom, sexuality, marriage. For high school and college students, I'm a big fan of Summit Ministries. I'm graduate of that program myself. The Colson Center produces some significant resources, helpful video resources. They have the Colson Fellows Program that I highly recommend as well. Even just podcast, Dr. Moller, he's the president of Southern Seminary. He has a daily podcast that looks at the news and events of the day from a Christian worldview listen to that every morning. Dear friend of mine, Andrew Walker, professor at Southern Seminary him, two pastors and a political operative. They have a weekly podcast called the Bully Pulpit, that looks at kind of, again, the news of the last week from a Christian conservative and politically conservative perspective. So those would all be resources that I think would very, it would be very helpful and the title of my book, I appreciate you asking me about it. Came out just a couple of months ago. It's called "Life After Roe" and the subtitle is "Equipping Christians in the Fight for Life Today", published by B and H Academic, which is the academic outlet of Lifeway Christian resources. But I did write in a way that I don't think is overly academic, but does look at the life issue from a theological, Biblical, historical, and a current events perspective. 

Tim Barton [00:21:17] And David, where is the best place for people to go to find that book? 

David Closson [00:21:20] Yeah, you can go just wherever books are sold. Amazon, you could look directly at B&H's website. It's wherever books sold. 

Tim Barton [00:21:29] Well, David, as you mentioned, and actually a lot of your suggestions, I'm like, yeah, those guys, so much respect, appreciate so much who they are and what they do. But as you mentioned, at FRC, you guys have so many resources, and you get to lead that, which is incredible. David, we are so grateful that the study that we've been talking about that you and George Barna helped do together, we will have that linked in our program. We'll have it in our show notes. And people can, if you're listening right now, you weren't able to write it all down. Check the show notes, we'll have stuff there for you. But David, we are so grateful for the work that you've done, again, helping us like the Joshuas and Calebs going to the Promised Land, help us identify what are the giants that we need to target so that we can really go and take over this land. And be the stewards God's called us to be. So David, thank you for all your work and thank you being with us today. 

David Closson [00:22:16] Oh, God bless you. Thank you so much again for having me. 

Tim Barton [00:22:18] My pleasure. We'll be right back in a moment with David Barton and Rick Green. 

Rick Green [00:23:28] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to David and of course to George Barna and just the opportunity to dive into these things and, uh, Tim, this is, you know, I mean, we, we kind of, we kind of know this. We've talked about these things a lot on the program and just a lack of understanding of Biblical positions that people have. What's the, what the answer? What's the what's, the turnaround point that we can push for. 

Tim Barton [00:23:49] Yeah, I think where this study is so special, even though there's a lot of really sad implications and realities from it, is this is showing what the frequent church attenders believe. So that this isn't just like what Christians in general in America believe, because we talk about how poor the Biblical worldview is among people that identify as Christians. But these are the people that over 60% of these people in this study are in church every single week, and so it really is a reflection of either, pastors are not teaching what the Bible says, or pastors are not being as clear as they think they are. And of course, again, we talked about at the beginning of the program, you can kind of see some of this in the election results. But it does show that a lot of the poor worldview in Christianity, specifically those inside the church, is evident. And so the answer is pastors have to be the ones to help lead in this area. Now, Dad, one of the things that you have talked about a lot too, and I know we're almost out of time, but I'm gonna toss this to you, is there does come a time when you can't blame your pastor for not knowing The Bible yourself.

David Barton [00:24:55] Yeah, exactly right. I was going to say, you know, even if I had a transgender, pro-abortion, murdering, actively murdering pastor, killing people every weekend, that does not excuse me for not doing what's right because I am individually accountable to God for knowing His Word. He told His disciples to get in His Word, to study His Word. If He said, if you continue in My word, you're My disciples indeed. And so it's not on the pastor. We need pastors, we need shepherds to help guide the flock, but we can't make it all about them. We have to look in the mirror ourselves as well. 

Tim Barton [00:25:30] Yeah. And Dad, to echo that, I would say it's not just on the pastor, which I know is what you meant, but to clarify there, the Bible says in James that not many of you should assume to be teachers knowing that you will receive a higher degree of judgment, a higher standard, because if you're going to lead people, there is a responsibility that you lead them well. And unfortunately now, again, caveat, there's a lot of really good pastors. We have a lot really good friends that are pastors, but unfortunately the majority of pastors have not been leading well when it comes to discipling in biblical truth, not just telling people Jesus loves them. Which is interesting too. Jesus never said, go into all the world and tell people I love them. No, He said, Go into all of the world to make disciples. And we have not seen the leadership needed for pastors to do that. However, Dad, again, to your point is at some level, it doesn't matter if your pastor is discipling you or not. If you've been a Christian for more than a couple of years, you need to be a disciple yourself in the Word, you to be pursuing truth and seeking growth. 

Rick Green [00:26:30] It's true for every single one of us. That's why we need to be saturated in God's word. We need to get getting discipled and we need to be doing the discipling and then we will see better elections in all of these areas across the country. Thanks so much for listening. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Link:

https://churchleaders.com/state-of-the-church/2207444-barna-young-adults-lead-church-attendance.html