The Christian Worldview and the Moral Revolution – Part 1

David Closson, Director of Christian Ethics and Biblical Worldview for the Family Research Council, a pro-life activist, researcher, speaker, author of the recent book, Life after Roe: Equipping Christians in the Fight for Life Today, spoke in several lectures at the Christian Worldview Conference sponsored by the Maryland Family Institute on April 18 in Mt. Airy, Maryland on the moral revolution that has overtaken the West and the lack of clarity that many people, even regular churchgoers, have on its incompatibility with worldview advanced in the Bible.

Worldview Development and Prevalence

Clossen observed that George Barna of Barna Research Group says that an individual’s worldview and attitudes “begins to develop around fifteen to eighteen months of age … and is pretty much in place by age thirteen.” The teen years and the college years are also important, but by that time your idea of “what’s right, what’s wrong, [and] who determines that, it’s pretty much in place.” He said that Barna’s research (2021) has shown that “51 percent of American adults” think that they have “a Biblical worldview.” But after extensive research, including a 54-question survey, Barna found that only 6 percent did. The full list of questions does not appear to be publicly available, but Closson did present “seven cornerstones of a Biblical worldview” which Barna has identified which make it overwhelmingly likely that one has a Biblical worldview. These cornerstones are:

1. “God is the all-powerful and all-knowing perfectly just ruler of the universe” – 58 percent of churchgoers said that this was true.
2. “People are born into sin.”
3. All who turn to Christ in faith and repentance will go to heaven when they die.
4. The Bible is the inspired Word of God, with no errors.
5. Some moral precepts are absolutely true for all people at all times.
6. Knowing and loving God with all one’s heart, mind, soul, and strength is the meaning of life – he added that young men today are looking for meaning and purpose – 40 percent of young men are now attending church at least monthly.
7. “Consistent obedience to God” is the decisive indicator of a successful life.

Closson said that the Barna Research Group’s understanding of a Biblical worldview is essentially what C.S. Lewis called “mere Christianity.” While the figures presented above measured the American public as a whole, later research (2023) among Evangelicals shows that 81 percent believe that they have a Biblical worldview, whereas only 21 percent do. This means that only one in five persons in the average Evangelical church “has a consistent Biblical worldview.”

Adherence to a Biblical worldview was also assessed by age. Older people are more likely to think that they have a Biblical worldview. And it is indeed more likely that they have a Biblical worldview, Barna found. For Closson’s own generation, the Millennials, 44 percent believe that they have a Biblical worldview, whereas only 4 percent do. For Gen Z, the figure is even lower – 2 percent. Broken down ideologically, Closson said that about three fourths of conservatives believe that they have a Biblical worldview, whereas only 16 percent do.

After these surveys were conducted at the beginning of this decade, Closson was interested in what churchgoers believe and do. He found from the research of churchgoers’ opinions that 88 percent believe it is important to have a Biblical worldview. Another 80 percent of churchgoers believed it was important “to have training in social and political responsibilities.” Another 71 percent thought it was important to have training on pro-life and LGBT issues (i.e., nearly three out of four churchgoers). He said that 55 percent of churchgoers believe that the Bible is “clear and decisive on the definition of marriage.” On transgenderism, however, about half said it is “morally acceptable,” while 20 percent believed “that the Bible doesn’t address it.”

With the lack of clarity that many churchgoers have, even in Evangelical churches, regarding basic elements of the Bible’s teaching, it is not surprising that there is a similar lack of clarity on the major issues presented by the moral revolution of the last two to three generations. Closson considered first the issues of abortion, and then the issues of marriage and sexuality.

The Biblical Worldview and Attitudes about Abortion

Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade , the pro-life issue “has not gone away, if anything, it has become more urgent.” More abortions have been performed per year since the overturning of Roe vs. Wade than before. While “hundreds of Planned Parenthood Clinics have closed over the past couple of years,” the numbers of abortions have continued to rise. This is in significant measure due to the prevalence of abortion pills. The Comstock Act of 1873 prohibits the transport of abortion related items through the mail or by common carriers across state lines. However, the Trump Administration has indicated that it will not enforce this legal provision.

In the 2023 survey of Evangelical churchgoers, 53 percent identified as pro-life, while 22 percent identified as pro-choice, the remaining 25 percent didn’t know. One in five women attending church have had an abortion. “55 percent of churchgoers said that the Bible identifies a point at which human life begins, 21 percent said that the Bible does not.” 15 percent of churchgoers thought that “the Bible was unclear or ambiguous” about abortion. Of those who thought the Bible does identify a beginning of life, 52 percent thought life begins at conception, 8 percent thought it was when the baby begins breathing after birth, 7 percent thought it was viability, 6 percent said “six month after fertilization, but before viability,” and 12 percent didn’t know. From these figures it is clear that Evangelical churches are not as monolithic about abortion as is commonly believed. Yet despite the intense, hostile reaction to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, only 44 percent of Evangelical churchgoers reported hearing a sermon that dealt with or touched on abortion in the year after the decision.

The most common pro-abortion argument today is personhood theory, the doctrine that unborn children are human beings but not persons. He referred to Margaret Kamitsuka’s 2019 book Abortion and the Christian Tradition__.__ The book maintains that “the fetus is an unavoidably developmental human being evolving incrementally toward born personhood.” She further said that “until or close to” birth, “the fetus is not a person, and the fetus is not a non-person.” The point seems to be that pro-abortion advocates cannot easily describe unborn children in a way that is both accurate and compatible with abortion. A similar argument has been made by Peter Singer of Princeton University, who proposed a variety of criteria (self-awareness, rationality and autonomy, seeing oneself as a subject, and sentience) by which personhood can be judged.

Closson observed that these criteria call into question the personhood of Alzheimer’s’ patients, or persons rendered unconscious by illness or accidents. He said that Christians must reject the concept of “human non-person.” All humans are made in the image of God, “have moral standing,” and “deserve legal protection.” We have biology to demonstrate that unborn children are new human individuals; to deny that they are persons destroys human equality. It sets up a subjective judgment, which does not necessarily end at birth (as it does not for Peter Singer), about which some humans are more developed, and perhaps more sophisticated, and thus more valuable, than others.

But does the Bible indicate the personhood of unborn children, Closson asked. He said that Genesis 1 teaches that all people are made in the image of God, and therefore “have value and dignity.” Also, there is a prohibition against shedding innocent blood. (Gen. 9:5-6, Ex. 20:13, Deut. 5:17). There are also the manslayer laws which prescribe what should happen if one man accidently kills another (Num. 35:9-34, Deut. 19:1-13). These indicate that one should “take care” to protect human life.

Support for the personhood of the unborn is found in both testaments. A key passage is Psalm 139, which says of God that

“You formed my inward parts, you knit me together in my mother’s womb, I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made, how wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well, my frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book was written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.”

Closson said that the context of this passage in Psalm 139 is the presence of God. Thus “God is personally involved in the development of every unborn child.” It was not an impersonal organism, but David himself, who was being formed in his mother’s womb. Finally, he pointed to Lk. 1:39-45 (really the strongest proof that the Bible teaches the personhood of the unborn), in which John the Baptist leaps for joy in the womb of Elizabeth at the arrival of Mary, early in her pregnancy with Jesus. The “leaping activity of John the Baptist” shows a personal response to Mary’s arrival by the fetus in Elizabeth’s womb, clearly indicating his personhood. Additionally, Elizabeth, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, declared that Mary was the mother (not would be the mother) of the Lord. The Lord Jesus was already in Mary’s womb, at this point just a few weeks after Mary’s miraculous conception, clearly indicating that Mary was already bearing a person, who was still a zygote or an embryo.

Closson observed that everything he said about the Bible demonstrating the personhood of unborn children “would have been uncontroversial for about 1,900 years of church history.” Yet he noted, however, that Joe Scarborough of MSNBC denounced the overturning of Roe v. Wade as contrary to Christian tradition until the 1980s (virtually the opposite of the truth). On the other hand, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Franscisco was denounced by the mass media for denying communion to pro-abortion congresswoman and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Yet the Christian church has in fact been explicitly opposed to abortion since the early Christian era, beginning with the Didache, or The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations, which dates to the first or second centuries. Its opposition to abortion (“you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born”) was well supported by Tertullian, Augustine, and other early church fathers. This position was then taken by John Calvin during the Protestant Reformation, who referred to abortion as “a monstrous crime.”

The change in the mainline Protestant denominations to adapt theological liberalism meant that the Scriptures were no longer understood as authoritative. In particular, supernaturalism was minimized or set aside. In this case, as applied to the infallibility of Scripture, anti-supernaturalism meant the Bible was treated less as a revelation from God, and more as a collection of human documents. Therefore, the Biblical sexual and life ethics were over time abandoned by these churches in the twentieth century.

Closson’s comments on how the moral revolution has impacted sexual morality, and the resulting confusion, even among committed Christians, will be reviewed in a subsequent article.

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