It might have shocked many to hear a 2019 study’s finding that more than a third of Millennials approve of communism. But it shouldn’t. After all, a new survey informs that 43 percent of them have no problem with one of communism’s tenets: the creation of a world without God, churches, and the Bible.
Related to this, Millennials also believe that government “should continue to expand in reach, authority, power, and spending, in order to facilitate a more desirable way of living,” as the survey page puts it.
The Federalist reported on the research Friday:
The latest survey of the American Worldview Inventory [AWI] from Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center found 43 percent of millennials born between 1984 and 2002 said they “don’t know, care, or believe that God exists.” Only 57 percent said they were Christian.
Researchers found that belief declined between generations. Eighty-three percent of those in the Silent Generation (born 1927-1945), 79 percent of baby boomers (born 1946-1964), and 70 percent of Generation Xers (born 1965-1983) identified as Christian. Thirty-one percent, 28 percent, and 27 percent respectively said they “don’t know care or believe that God exists.”
Those who believed “you treat others as you want them to treat you” also rose with age, with 90 percent of those in the Silent Generation in agreement, 81 percent among baby boomers, 53 percent of Gen Xers, and 48 percent of millennials.
Those who said “you try to get even with people who have wronged you,” on the other hand, declined among older generations, with 38 percent of millennials, 33 percent of Gen Xers, 12 percent of baby boomers, and 10 percent of the Silent Generation in alignment.
The AWI is just the latest of many studies that have identified a pattern of declining Christian faith in America (a phenomenon besetting the entire West). Of course, people will always believe in something. As to this, the “dominant worldview of all four adult generations in the United States is Syncretism — the mash-up of various worldviews that provides each individual with a customized understanding of, and response to life,” the survey also relates.
“In total, 88% of Americans have Syncretism, rather than a substantively coherent and recognizable worldview such as postmodernism or secular humanism, as their dominant worldview,” the AWI continued. “A large majority of each generation relies on a syncretistic worldview when making their life choices. Overall, 89% of Millennials, 86% of Gen Xers, 83% of Boomers, and 86% of Builders [the Silent Generation] have a syncretistic worldview.”
Of course, “syncretism” is just a fancy word for, generally speaking, stumbling into a worldview constructed based on feelings (which are highly influenced by convenience). A person close to me has astutely called this “designer religion.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t Intelligent Design — and it’s not leading to an intelligently designed society. As you might’ve already guessed, the Cultural Research Center also found that Millennials’ godlessness correlates with an embrace of “leftist” political positions. For example, the survey relates that Millennials are more likely than their elders to believe, cue Karl Marx, that “[a]llowing people to own property facilitates economic injustice.”
Such passions are no surprise. As a Gallup survey once found, church attendance is one of the greatest predictors of voting patterns, with regular churchgoers breaking heavily for Republicans and those who rarely or never attend services skewing strongly Democrat.
This vindicates common sense and indicates a common mistake: The laissez-faire attitude many conservative and libertarian Americans take regarding culture.
It was epitomized well 200 years ago by Thomas Jefferson when he said, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Of course, when not worshipping God means worshipping government instead and embracing socialism, it certainly does pick your pocket (and Jefferson might take a different position were he alive and able to look back on the last 100 years of statist error).
Here’s the problem with this cultural libertarianism: As with Jefferson, many will say “I don’t care what people believe — what’s in their minds — as long as they don’t hurt others.” Yet as C.S. Lewis (I believe) pointed out, this is like considering a fleet of ships and stating, “I don’t care how they operate as long as they don’t crash into each other.” Of course, though, if they don’t operate correctly, they may not be able to avoid crashing into each other.
So it is with man. If people don’t operate correctly, if their minds are filled with disordered thoughts, they won’t be able to avoid hurting others. And thus are millions of Americans operating bizarrely and crashing the good ship America.
You can’t re-create a delectable delight if you forget the recipe. And Christian faith, like it or not, was a major part of the recipe that forged early America and the United States. This reflects why a different Founding Father, Benjamin Rush, warned, “The only foundation for … a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty.”
Forgetting virtue and its source, we’ve raised godless generations — and now they’re raising hell.
