They Don't Know What They Believe

I went to graduate school in North Carolina, and I remember one particular conversation I was having with a religious guy. He was talking about the end of the world coming, and the signs of it, and we was quoting Revelations, with its dragons and plagues ... and then, I realized, he was actually talking about Nostradamus! Somewhere in the middle of the conversation he had derailed and switched tracks, and now he was talking about the signs of this-and-that, but it wasn't the Bible any more...

AlterNet has an interesting article up this morning about the sad fact that many of our most passionately devout Americans don't really know very much about their religion.

It's been a rough season for the Christian right. Even for an eschatological movement, these are dark days. First came former Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives David Kuo's public admission that evangelicals were often derided as "nuts" and "goofy" within the inner sanctums of the Bush administration. Then, weeks before losing their shotgun seat in the 109th Congress, the booming voice of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard, was silenced in a scandal involving a gay hooker, massage oils, methamphetamine, and a string of Denver hotel rooms booked under false names.

But even before all that hit the fundamentalist fan, the movement was contending with a quieter, more systemic crisis: functional Biblical illiteracy among the flock. That's right, religious conservatives aren't so religious, after all. The Christian Right Goes Back to Bible Boot Camp

This is a hard thing to discuss, because there are a lot of good-hearted, well-intending people out there who go to church and try to live a good life, and I don't have anything really against that. But the church leaders have gotten wound up in political issues, they've gotten used to living high on the hog, and they use the numbers of their flocks to do serious damage to the ability of our society to live in harmony. So, for those poor salt-of-the-earth people who trust their leaders and believe what they're told, I say, I'm sorry it's turning out like this. But the rest of us have to stop playing along.

This alarm was sounded by George Barna, chief pollster and CEO of the Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif.-based Christian polling and communications outfit. In August of 2005, Barna reported that less than ten percent of born-again Christians held what he termed a "Biblical worldview." Based on his survey, very few grasped the nuances of scripture or believed in "Absolute Truth" any more than their secular counterparts; the "Body of Christ" had been infected with the virus of relativism, a wasting disease.

"Although most people own a Bible and know some of its content," reported Barna, "our research found that most [professed evangelicals] have little idea how to integrate core biblical principles to form a unified and meaningful response to the challenges and opportunities of life."

The prolific Barna dashed off a book in response to this worrying discovery. Entitled "Think Like Jesus" -- and marketed as "one of those books that really ticks off Satan" -- it quickly sold out in Barna's online bookstore. A second edition of "Think Like Jesus" soon went to press to further aggravate the Lord of Darkness.

The Lord of Darkness is spitting fire, but Mammon is happy.

Barna's poll and subsequent call to think like Jesus caught the attention of Dr. James Dobson, patriarch of the two most important religious right groups, the $140-million-a-year Focus on the Family, and its more politically minded spin-off, the D.C.-based Family Research Council. Dobson called Barna's report on Christian America's disappearing Biblical worldview "very distressing news" and felt that it warranted a muscular response, one befitting the massive resources at his disposal. The result is Focus on the Family's "The Truth Project: An In-Depth Christian Worldview Experience," a slick and intensive two-day training conference that kicked-off a North American tour last month at a megachurch outside Atlanta. It has since visited sell-out audiences in six cities; there are already 10 events planned for 2007.

Man, the way these guys come up with names: "The Truth Project." They could call it ... oh, never mind, sometimes this is just too easy. You hate to make fun of people who don't know any better, but it is hard to stomach the exploiters.

I can hardly wait till these folks find out what Jesus really said. Man, they are going to be embarrassed.