Christian beliefs and values are disappearing from American life and the culture is filling the void with an individualism and moral relativism that even many Christians adhere to, new research shows.
The study by The Barna Group, “The End of Absolutes: America’s New Moral Code,” also finds that Americans, religious or not, share a concern about the nation’s moral situation.
“There is a tremendous amount of individualism in today’s society, and that’s reflected in the church too,” Barna President David Kinnaman commented in the May 25 report.
“While we wring our hands about secularism spreading through the culture, a majority of churchgoing Christians have embraced corrupt, me-centered theology,” he said.
Taking a hard view of moral truth
However, while the survey presents a picture of American moral views, a religion professor says researchers would have to turn the clock back decades, even centuries, to find a time when these trends weren’t at work to some degree.
Daniel Conkle
“You’d be going back a long, long way,” said Daniel Conkle, a professor of law and adjunct professor of religious studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind.
There was a “dominant Christian ethos” at the nation’s founding with a morality that directed society and political culture, Conkle said.
But practically since then, it’s been in decline. Immigration, beginning in the 1800s, has done its part by introducing a broad array of new religious perspectives on the American scene, he said.
In the mid-20th century another trend developed that continues today: Americans self-identifying as spiritual but not religious.
“Whether they identify as Christian or Jew, they don’t necessarily subscribe to all the formal doctrines of the church,” Conkle said. U.S. Catholics expressed this trend through their rejection of the church’s prohibition of contraception.
More recently, the rise of the nones — Americans with no religious affiliation — has accelerated the conditions reported by the Barna report, Conkle said.
Altogether, these trends throughout American history have undercut any one religion’s claim to absolute truth.
“We are now the most religiously diverse country in the world,” he said.
The fact that Millennials largely shun organized religion diminishes even more the notion of a faith-based American moral code.
“Those folks are to some extent secularized and take a hard view of moral truth,” Conkle said.
Pursuing the way of self
However, the belief in America’s moral decline is shared by 80 percent of U.S. adults, regardless of generation, Barna reported.
“A majority of Americans across age group, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status and political ideology expresses concern about the nation’s moral condition — eight in 10 overall,” Barna said.
Yet at the same time, 57 percent expressed a belief that “knowing what is right and wrong is a matter of personal experience.”
Also, 65 percent of American adults agreed that every culture must decide what is morally acceptable for itself, the Barna survey said.
“A sizeable number of Americans see morality as a matter of cultural consensus,” the report said.
And that goes for many Christians, too.
When presented with the statement, “The best way to find yourself is by looking within yourself,” 76 percent of Christians agreed.
There were similar breakdowns on not judging the life choices of others, on the primacy of personal fulfilment and other topics.
“Millions of Christians have grafted New Age dogma onto their spiritual person,” Kinnaman said in his remarks about the study. “When we peel back the layers, we find that many Christians are using the way of Jesus to pursue the way of self.”