Recent Threads

[waddi at umich.edu]

Could you please send a specific link for where on the Barna website 
you found this?  Thanks!


Quoting "Volokh, Eugene" <VOLOKH at law.ucla.edu>:

> 	I should note that the study defined "Biblical worldview" quite
> narrowly; I couldn't find the exact text, but the Barna site reports
> that "For the purposes of the research, a biblical worldview was defined
> as believing that absolute moral truths exist; that such truth is
> defined by the Bible; and firm belief in six specific religious views.
> Those views were that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life; God is the
> all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe and He stills rules
> it today; salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned; Satan is
> real; a Christian has a responsibility to share their faith in Christ
> with other people; and the Bible is accurate in all of its teachings."
> I am surely no expert on Christian theology, but I take it that many
> people who think they have a Biblical worldview -- and obviously,
> according to the study, about 90% of those who see themselves as solid
> evangelical Christians -- may differ on some matters, such as the
> reality of Satan.  Or am I mistaken?
>
> 	Eugene
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> 	From: religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu
> [mailto:religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of James Manning
> 	Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 5:03 PM
> 	To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
> 	Subject: RE: Recent Threads
>
>
> 	Thanks very much to all for your comments. I read and save them
> all as part of my undergraduate studies, while completing my senior
> thesis on evangelical Christian participants in conservative politics.
>
> 	I wanted to note that 7-14% having no religious affiliation, as
> reported at UC Berkely, and the 10.8% figure at Baylor is kind of
> cutting around the edges a much larger issue.
>
> 	A recent study by the Barna Research Group reports that "only
> nine percent of self proclaiming born again Christians hold a Biblical
> worldview." While at the same time, evangelical leaders like David
> Wheaton, Josh McDowell, and Brannon Howse are reporting an attrition
> rate of anywhere from 50-70% of evangelical Christian youth after they
> leave their parents' households.
>
> 	This touches on one of the premises of my research.
> Specifically, that there is the lack of competitiveness of ideas (that
> originate in rigorously literal exegesis of scripture) in the modern
> market of largely secular ideas. And that an attempt to overcome this
> competitive failure is one of the driving forces behind evangelical
> Christian political movements and legislation, that ultimately wind up
> as policy under discussion in forums like this Email list.
>
> 	On a separate subject, I am finding that while Christian
> Reconstructionists are indeed a very small portion of conservative
> Christians, they are growing rapidly as intellectual leaders among
> evangelicals, through entities such as Wall Builders and the Discovery
> Institute.
>
> 	Further, I am discovering that, while there is a wide and
> growing exegetical gulf between dominionist/reconstructionists like
> David Barton, D James Kennedy, and Hank Hanegraaff and those that assert
> Darbyite premillineal dispensationalism (Tim LaHaye, Pat Robertson, John
> Hagee, et al), evangelical conservatives have absolutely no problem
> showing up on the same side of the ballot box. That comes in spite of
> escatological doctrines that are otherwise diametrically opposed to each
> other.
>
> 	As an undergraduate, I do not mind so much that discussion tends
> to stray at times. But I was surprised when the traffic on the list got
> so lively and elevated that nobody noted the passing of Rev. D. James
> Kennedy.
>
> 	James Manning
> 	Murray State University senior
> 	Memphis, Tennessee
>
> 	*******************
> 	excerpts from the thread follow below...
>
> 	Douglas Laycock <laycockd at umich.edu> wrote
>
> 	Michael Hout and Claude Fischer at Berkely report a number of
> studies with similar results, showing that people reporting no religious
> preference doubled from 7% to 14% in the 90s.  Why More Americans Have
> No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations, 67 Am. Soc. Rev. 165
> (2002).
>
> 	Quoting Newsom Michael <mnewsom at law.howard.edu>:
>
> 	I wonder if there is a "surge" of people reporting no religion.
> The Baylor study -- an extraordinary piece of social science work --
> that came out a year ago shows that 89.2% of Americans have a religious
> affiliation, and of the remaining 10.8%, the study characterizes them as
> "persons without a religious preference, denomination, or place of
> worship."
>
> 	Douglas Laycock <laycockd at umich.edu> wrote
>
> 	It's not a reaction to the Christian Reconstructionists, who are
> numerically trivial.  But many of the folks having the reaction can't
> tell the difference between the conservative values voters and the
> Christian Reconstructionists.
>
>
>
> 	________________________________
>
> 	Luggage? GPS? Comic books?
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> _on_mail&p=graduation+gifts&cs=bz>  at Yahoo! Search.
>
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