Crisis: The Future Of Christianity In America

Lance: O boy, do we have a show today for those of you that have been keeping track of all the things that are going on in the world from the Davos Switzerland meetings that they’re having to the WHO takeover of the sovereignty of the United States to the shocking reversals happening down in Georgia, the runoffs going on. It looks like the mega posse is up and people are shocked at the voter turnout. And in Pennsylvania, I mean they’re having like all kinds of chaos now between Muhammad Oz and the guy that’s running against him who’s the McConnell favorite. There’s so much to cover but we have a special guest today who is going to help give us some data. We’re going to be grounded in the facts of what’s really going on and if you were depressed before, wait till you hear my guest. Well, kidding 

George Berna is one of the authorities that we have when it comes to giving us the Lay of the Land. Now, this is a man who is written, he’s almost a in like an institution and you just quote Berna. All he’s got to say is Berna says, that’s how big he is. He’s got more than 50 books addressing cultural trends, leadership, church dynamics, spiritual developments. His expertise isin giving the like a forensic analysis at the scene of a crime as to what really is going on. But there’s in the data, there’s great news that we can come out with. But before we go there, let me just say Zero Hedge came out with an article today. Which for those of us that are tracking 5,000 points that Dow has dropped. Which may not be important to you, but it’s significant. Because it’s an indicator of the economic high vitality of the marketplace.

5,000 drops since January. Zero hedge which is a great source for economic forecasting where I got a lot frankly of the data of what to expect with the ballots and what was coming up. These guys are just brilliant. They’re secular, incisive researchers. They’re saying that the recession that we’re entering into is going to dwarf what happened in 2008, which literally just rocked America. The housing market in every respect. It took us till Donald Trump’s presidency to get out of the impact of that. But then the trillions of dollars of irresponsible government spending Republican and Democrats since then has flooded the zone with debt and that money’s floating around. The world isn’t taking the dollars anymore and those dollars, this reason why you’ve seen these in crazy house prices.

Like in Texas here when people are coming up knock on your door, hey, I’ll pay a million dollars for your house. You’re playing with monopoly money now in some parts of the country. It’s scary, but what I’m recommending you do is that you look at, some advisers are telling me regardless of what your status is your economic health. You ought to be looking at least 20% of your net worth should be in some form of gold and silver that can leverage itself. Because that’ll stay in a stored vow you all over the world as the dollar kind of like goes whoo, like that. You peg your money into something which is going up not down. That’s why gold and silver is where people are going.

There’re various people that are doing this. We’ve researched and found Birch Gold to be the one place where our people are the most comfortable. They give a 21-page analysis of how to invest, why to invest, where to invest. I want you to get that free information. Go to “Lancewallnu.com/Birch”. “Lancewallnau.com/Birch”. I’ve had nothing but good reports from everyone that’s gone with them. They take time, they talk to you, they explain to you. Break it down for you what you need to do. I’m saying 20% or so of whatever your portfolio is whatever you’ve got you, put it there so you have peace of mind when the economy is fluctuating something is rising in value and gold and silver is stored value. Isn’t that right Mercedes Sparks.

Mercedes: Yes.

Lance: Mercedes is our cryptocurrency expert she’s always talking to me about Bitcoin if I had listened to her when she started talking, my gosh, would I be a rich man now. But oh no, I had to be questioning her like the baby boomer I am. I don’t understand this. How can you possibly have money in a digital currency and blockchain? And I can’t bite it. I can’t hold it. Where’s the gold? Where’s the silver? But she’s been right and so she’s been saying birch gold is a smart move, right.

Mercedes: Yeah, I think so and mainly like a balanced portfolio. Because at the end of the day, we’re not financial advisors, not financial advice we’re giving out. Lance isn’t giving out. But what we’re personally doing is about 20% of my portfolio is going to be gold and silver. Mainly silver too physical. Now the stock markets like you said drop in, so if you’ve got cash on the sidelines as other things to be thinking about, crypto something you’re thinking about, physical assets, buying businesses right now. So, there’s a lot of different ways you could be preparing for the coming financial storm. And even for the people who are out there that say, hey, I’m on a fixed income, I don’t have really that much money to be thrown around. I absolutely hear you and there’s even strategies you should be looking at as well.

Like you for instance like a little silver coin Lance, that’s around $25 to $50. So, you could grab one of those one per month just something to set aside. So, that if the dollar collapses, like you had that word that Chris Reed gave recently up there with Rick at Morning Star. And so, he’s saying he saw what $50 bills being torn. So, you look at stuff like that and you’re like, is that something to be thinking about the dollar may at some point collapse. So, the name of the game is to be prepared. I think that’s the number one thing we want to tell people is don’t live in fear, but be prepared. That’s the big thing.

Lance: And remember this, the money is always moving, the money doesn’t leave the planet earth, it just moves into different governments, different pockets, different places. So, the money is there and smart strategy is still going to track where the money goes you tie into it. Also, we have Jonathan and Carl are here. These are our millennial producers over there at the Millennial Table. So, especially with George today I’m going to be interested in some of their thoughts because they represent, I think the demographic that George is studying. Which is teens, well you’re not teenagers anymore but you youngsters and your worldview. How’s those older folks little concern because we discipled you and we did do a good job. Evidently, I’ll find out. hey,look at the keyboard over here pee, pee.

You see that picture right there I’m having people all the time say, Lance when you going to get of music. Did you know that we not only deliver the news, we deliver prophetic analysis of global events, economic and political insights with music? It’s a very unique, it’s a unique combination of music. So, when things get heavy, we hit the keyboards and we sing some of the grand old themes that keep us floating. But right now, I want to talk too. I want to bring in the professor who is the most quoted Christian personality. I have a quote here somewhere. That but he is. I believe I was reading this correctly.

George Berna is the most quoted person in the Christian church today. Named by various media as one of the nation’s most influential Christian leaders because of his research and his incisive comment. So, welcome. George Berna, the professor, the doctor who will not stop it. We love having him on the show. He’s teaching at Arizona Christian University when he’s not writing and doing research projects and frequently speaking at conferences. George, welcome to the Lance Wallnau Show. We’re delighted to have you with us finally and hope this will be the first of many visits that you’re going to have with us.

You just completed some very exhaustive research on Worldview. Why is Worldview the thing you’re focusing on as opposed to conversions or other influence in politics. You look at Worldview as kind of like the nexus that tells you a lot about where things are going. For those that are new to the subject, why do you on biblical worldview.

George Berna: Well, first of all, let’s understand everybody has a Worldview. The question isn’t do you have one, its which one do you have? Because there are many different worldviews you can have. What difference does a world view make all the difference. Because a worldview basically is the intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and moral filter that we use to make sense of the world and to figure out how to respond to it. How we want to be positioned in life, what kind of impact we want to have. Every decision that we make every day of our life comes through our worldview. It influences every decision.

So, particularly for a program with an audience like yours, Lance, where you’re looking at what’s going on in the world and how do we change it so that it truly honors God. Well, that all comes back to worldview. If you don’t like the way the world is, it’s because of the decisions people are making. That’s what’s creating that environment out there that we’re living in and so if we want to be influential people, we need to have the same mindset as God of creation. That’s what’s known as a Biblical Worldview. It’s one of many different worldviews and what we find out of our research is that fewer and fewer people have a Biblical Worldview.

We know that a worldview develops. First, it starts develop when a child is 15 to 18 months of age and it’s almost fully formed by the age of 13. During the teens and 20s, it gets refined, it gets articulated better. We figure out how to apply it more effectively. But then in our mid to late 20s and beyond, we essentially become evangelist for that worldview that we’ve landed on. So, worldview is absolutely critical. We know that in America today, only percent of adults have a biblical worldview. We know that only 37% of pastors of Christian churches across the country have a Biblical Worldview. Only 2% of the parents raising those preteenagers have a Biblical Worldview. So, it is really a crisis in America.

Lance: Well, alright so when you talk about the only 37% of pastors, that’s going to shock a lot of people. Because we expect that the pastors at least are biblically literate. So, where is the biggest aha for you in terms of pastors what don’t they believe that you would think a Christian pastor would believe? What’s the big deviation there.

George Berna: Yeah, Lance when we study worldview we ask people 54 different questions,not only about what they believe but about how they apply those beliefs in their life. Because a worldview is a combination of beliefs and behavior. You do what you believe. So, a lot of people tell me they believe something but then their actions betray that. They don’t really believe it. They know that’s the right thing to say. So, as we look at pastors, what we know is that there are a lot of different beliefs and behaviors we’re studying but the areas in which their weakest are the area of Bible, truth, and morality.

Meaning that we find that believe the Bible is a good and helpful book. They don’t necessarily believe that all of it’s true. They don’t necessarily believe that there is such a thing as absolute moral truth. They are often likely to believe that an individual has to look inward and determine what their feelings are saying to them. And we also know that when it comes to moral choices, that pastors don’t always make the right choices in terms of sexuality in terms of life and death,in terms of all kinds of relational choices that they have to make.

Lance: So, when we talk about for instance, the role of the scripture in the Bible. There might be some argument I can see where someone says a translation is off here off there. It’s been transcribed etcetera. But are you saying that there’s like 70% of pastors don’t think that the scriptures that they’re handling like the book right here? That they would say that this is a combination of man and God or is evidence that you’re saying that they don’t really believe that the Bible is a trustworthy guide for doctrine?

George Berna: Yes and no I quiver because I’m a numbers guy with the 63%. 63% of Christian pastors do not have a Biblical Worldview. Now, remember because we’re asking many different questions. You don’t have to get them all in constant or in harmony with biblical teaching. But the way that we look at it is at least four out of every 5 belief-oriented questions and at least 4 out of every 5 behavioral questions should be in harmony with the scriptures. So, that doesn’t necessarily mean that 63% of pastors reject the Bible as God‘s true, inherent, reliable, relevant word to humanity, but a large share of them do. I think it’s about 4 out of 10 them do. So, and you also have to look at different types of churches. Evangelical churches, you’ve got 51% of pastors who have a Biblical Worldview.

So, a little bit higher than the national norm, but not nearly as high as you would expect with churches where they claim as part of their doctrine that the Bible is the true word of God. So, yeah, it gets a little bit confusing but the key element here is that we can always trust pastors or churches or parents or pretty much anything to be biblically in sync. What we do have to do is throw out our assumptions and be wise consumers actually know what does our church teach? What does it believe? What’s happening particularly in the children’s ministries? Because when we looked at the different pastors across the country, we found that only 12% of pastors and youth pastors have a Biblical Worldview. So, it’s even worse among those who we’re entrusting our children to. So, we’ve got to be very cautious and wise.

Lance: Wow. So, if I’m hearing you correctly then as you go down from pastor to the children’s church and to the teens. It just decreases in terms of that, and where would that like I know this is hard to do because it’s I’m asking specific data. But there’s a spectrum of it. But so, would that mean that a lot of teenagers are being taught that sexual purity, sexual fidelity, sexual that the definition of sexual practice etcetera, is one man, one woman, and you wait till marriage to have sex? Would that be something which you’re saying teen ministries are not getting?

George Berna: Teen and children. Yeah. In fact, that’s something that we look at in the survey and so we do know that a large majority of children’s pastor and youth pastors do not teach. It’s one man, one woman. A large majority of children’s and youth pastors do not teach that you should wait until you’re married to have sexual intercourse with someone. What they would teach is that if you feel as if you love that person, if you feel as if you would like to be with that person for a prolonged period of time and sexual activity together would make you happy, Godwould want that for you. That’s the kind of teaching that’s going on.

Lance: Wow. So, is there in all the data that you come across, is there a way of reversing any of that in terms of, is there a bright spot there anywhere? For instance, I know that I’ve been told that the pro-life movement has actually a lot of millennials that are kind of repulsed at the eye. As much as you see them as activists with the pro-choice and progresses. That there’s a high number of millennials that are not pleased at all with the thought of terminating life at 9 months or 8 months pregnancy. Are there any trends that you’re seeing that are in line with ultimately what we would hope would be a Christian worldview or Christian values if not worldview in in youth?

George Berna: Yeah, and let me say a couple things. First of all, you use the term Christian worldview which millions of people do. We don’t use that. We specifically say Biblical Worldview. And the reason for that is that in our testing what we found is that in the United States today the term Christian no longer means a connection with Jesus Christ. What it now means is good people. Well-meaning people. People with good intentions. And so, when somebody says they have a Christian worldview what we discovered is that by and large what that means is that they have a worldview wherein they’re trying to be a good person. But not necessarily a person who knows the scriptures, embraces the scriptures, is trying to live out biblical principles consistently. So, we’re very careful about that term.

In terms of, is there a hope? Yes, there’s a lot of hope because we know that when we look at the United States population, we’ve got about 15 million adults who have a Biblical Worldview. A lot of them are grandparents, a lot of them are individuals that we call sage cons. These are spiritually active governance engaged conservative Christians. You say why would you bring that into the conversation? Because we found that sage cons who by definition are the kind of people who believe that their faith is supposed to invade every element of their life. Politics, finance, family, education, community service. All of these things and more. They believe that their faith is not just a set of beliefs. It’s meant to be a set of practices influenced by those beliefs that we get directly from the Bible. Sage Cons are actually more likely than pastors in America to have a biblical worldview.

So, there are these pockets of people across the country who get it and who want to be able to share that with other individuals and raise up true disciples of Jesus. So yes, there is hope. I would say that we just may have to look in different places for it than we expected.

Lance: Alright, so when you say 8% of the adult population, I know that I can only expect so much of you to just off the top of your head cab numbers. But can you give me a ballpark as to what you mean by adult population is at $200 million?

George Berna: Yeah, the adult population in America right now is $255 million.

Lance: $255 million. So, if it’s 8 of the population and it’s around like 20 million or so.

George Berna: Yeah. That’s how many Sage Cons there are.

Lance: Yeah, Sage Cons.

George Berna: Right. Yes.

Lance: Well, that’s a good number. I mean, if I have 20 million and you know what, my theory on that is, is that the Sage Cons are news consumers. They’re not just interested in the church. Matter of fact, their church affiliation may be variable but they listen to news. They’re probably in the Tucker Carlson monologue audience every night. They’re the ones that I know anyway, they’re listening to war room with Steve Bannon. They’re probably heavily politically engaged. Probably some 90% of them are literate regarding the conservative movement with Donald Trump and what he represented. So, 20 million adults that are informed and mobilized and caring can be a substantial influence in evangelical circles. I’m sure if they’re properly mobilized. But there is no organization for say consist there. They’re just kind of a ubiquitous mass that we I mean we don’t have a Sage Con database anywhere, do we?

George Berna: No, but I’m working with an organization right now to try to put that together for the very kind of purposes that you’re thinking about.

Lance: Well, I knew if anyone was up to it, it’d be George Berna. That’s why I want to bring it up. That’s glad. Well, Mercedes, what kind of a question do you have for our guest?

Mercedes: Yeah, I was wondering. So, if the biblical worldview is not the dominant worldview, what is the dominant worldview among the other 240 million people out there. What is that?

George Berna: Yeah, it’s actually an interesting phenomenon. When we started doing this research, we’re the only ones that have ever done a national survey trying to figure out what is the dominant world view of Americans. We were expecting that post modernism and secular humanism and Marxism. All of these things that we hear about a lot would be the dominant world views. We found that lot to be the case. The dominant world view to out to be something called synchronism. Synchronism simply means that people are picking and choosing elements from many different worldviews. They’re not willing to limit themselves to a particular worldview. Whether it’s Biblical Worldview, Marxism, Easter Mysticism, post modernism, whatever it is.

So, what we found is that most people actually have some elements of postmodernism that they buy into. They have some elements of Marxism that they buy into. They have some elements of Biblical theism or a Biblical Worldview that they buy into. And what they do is they take all these desperate elements and they blend them together into unique worldview that they feel comfortable with. Now, when we examine the totality of that particular worldview for an individual, we often find that there are contradictory elements embedded within it. It’s like you can’t believe this element from post modernism because it contradicts this element from Biblical theism and they both contradict this element from Eastern Mysticism.

How do you reconcile that? And we found that most people say, I never thought about that and I’m not really worried about it. So, they just go on with what makes them comfortable with what enables them to keep moving forward rather than having to do the more difficult work of trying to think through narrative if you will. The big picture of how life really works and choosing one particular narrative.

Lance: Where is the role of academia in all this? Because you’re teaching in a university and it strikes me that a considerable amount of the reshaping of American thinking is happening amongst college-aged students and kids that are in schools. And they’re getting discipled to a great extent by the rabbis that are in the classroom. I know isn’t necessarily what your data’s measuring but what’s your sense viscerally on the influence of academia on the changing synchronism in American beliefs?

George Berna: Yeah, actually that is something we’ve been focusing on and here at Arizona Christian University. When I came here my first project, I was given was to develop a worldview evaluation tool for all of our students. So, every student at Arizona Christian University every year takes the same inventory to determine what their worldview is. Because as professors we need to understand are we moving them closer to consistent biblical truth. And that helps us to know where we’re doing it well, where we’re falling short. We can make changes in our academic regimen accordingly. But we’re the only university in the world as far as I know that does that. But you’re exactly right, Marxists are having a heyday and particularly in State cities across the nation beating up young students who have never thought about these things. Their parents never thought about these things. Obviously, their pastors aren’t thinking about these things.

And so yes, they’re being beaten up to think about here’s the proper way to think about it. You want to pass my course? This is how you’ll think about it. And so, they’re buying into all of these errant world views that are being thrust upon them. Arizona Christian University is a worldview development school. We’re very upfront about that and the worldview that you’re going to be taught is the appropriate one is a Biblical Worldview. But in the course of that, you’ll be taught what these other worldviews say. Because when you’re given arguments from students or professors or pastors or teachers from elsewhere, the media. I mean, the biggest teacher of worldview in America today is arts and entertainment media.

I know that from the research. I’ve been watching that, tracking that for over 20 years. And here’s an interesting thing. What we’re finding is that today’s young children are not relying upon their parents to teach them a worldview. Now they’re searching desperately for a worldview to latch on to, because remember what a worldview is it’s your decision-making filter. You’re making decisions all the time and so you need to develop that worldview as quickly as possible. Children look at their parents. They hear their parents say one thing but do another thing. So, the clue that they have is my parents are just as confused as I am, and so they’re looking elsewhere for consistency.

When they watch a movie, when they play a video game, when they listen to pop music, when they watch a television series, they’re given a consistent worldview message. So, that’s where they’re being trained is primarily through the media and then schools are complimenting that with what they’re teaching.

Lance: I see an opportunity here when I was looking at an Elon Musk tweet recently where it’s progressive tweets that he had. One was a graph which showed him as a centrist and the right well I’ll to do it opposite here for TV. The right wing is over here and he’s here and then he’s still a centrist. But his point is that the left keeps on moving further and further and further to the left,which makes a centrist look like a conservative. He’s saying, he hasn’t moved and you’ve got Joe Rogan popular iconic podcasters that we track within our industry. And they’re similarly, they’re centrist but the left is continuing to move in such a way that they’re finding themselves looking more conservative. Is it possible that the radicalizing of the universities and even the entertainment culture itself being under the influence of thought leader that are coming out of these gates of influence than realizing they’re not keeping pace really where America is historically?

There may not be a strong Biblical Worldview but there’s a sense of what normal looks like and that that normal is becoming attacked to a great many Americans. I think it feeds to a spiritual moment when Americans maybe don’t know what it is that their Biblical roots are departing from. But they’re uncomfortable with the direction of things are moving in, and therefore there’s an openness to reexamine what are the core beliefs that we have. I think socialism is an example where a lot of students that romanticize the idea of Marxism and Socialism. The moment they come to a place like I guess Arizona Christian University. You guys start to drill down on that and the aha is actually there’s greater economic freedom, greater opportunity, greater progress for humanity when people are free to be able to use their skills and own the products of their own creativity. Versus someone else owning it and governing them. Is what I’m saying making sense from a from the academic world the data you’re looking at?

George Berna: It is and let me put it back in a spiritual context as well because we’ve been studying this. How does discipleship work effectively in a culture such as ours today? And what we’ve discovered is that we’ve transitioned as a culture away from what churches typically do,which is the transmission of information to now a culture where it’s about relationships more than information. So, if I can build a relationship with someone who may think completely different things than me but they trust me because they know that I honor them, I respect them, I care about them, I want to continue a relationship with them.

Over the course of multiple, I have the opportunity to bring up some of these very kinds of issues. And without taking out my Bible and hitting them over the head with them saying let me tell you the only right way to think. If instead I can take a Socratic approach or someone say this is the approach that Jesus took, where he asked people questions. Paul did this all the time, so particularly Acts 17 when he went to Mars Hill in Athens. He was meeting with the philosophers of the day who believe very different things much like our culture today. And he didn’t just say,you guys are a bunch of idiots if you believe that. He said, well, tell me why you believe that and then they told him and then he said, that’s interesting. Here’s what I believe and the philosophers there said, ‘Wow. We haven’t heard that. We don’t understand it. Can you come back and we’ll talk some more about it.’

Those kinds of Socratic biological moments are what give us the opportunity to bring the scripture back to the forefront in our culture. Not necessarily saying, I believe it because that’s what the Bible says but giving the underlying reasons for why the Bible teaches us this. Knowing that from a biblical perspective for instance, success is consistent obedience to God. Why? Why would that make a person successful and being able to roll that out for somebody rather than simply saying, yeah, success is whatever makes me happy because we know that doesn’t work.

Lance: Okay, so you use the word Socratic. Break that out. I think I know what you mean by that but what is the Socratic method?

George Berna: Yeah, Socrates was considered a great teacher, not just because he knew a lot but he was able to persuade a lot of students to believe the right things. Because his method was asking them questions. They would bring up a topic and he would ask them, ‘What do you think about this topic?’ And all the students would get up and pontificate a little bit and say, ‘Well, that’s in Interesting that Bill over here thinks this. Let’s dive a little deeper into that. What brought you there, Bill?’ And Bill would pontificate a little more and how proud that the teacher is using him as a as an example. And then Socrates would begin to ask a series of questions about, okay, this is what you think. This is how you got there. Let me ask you about the support structure under that particular belief.

Socrates would continue to ask questions and generally what you find is that Bill or other students or other people haven’t thought very deeply about why they believe, what they believe.So, when you begin to ask questions about that, their whole belief system begins to unravel.Which then gives us the opportunity through questions and dialogue talking back and forth about what are the options, what are the implications, what are the applications to begin to put that belief system back together so that it actually makes sense. That’s what a Socratic approach is. Question after question after question and people eventually come to answers because of the questions.

Lance: I’m loving everything that George is saying here in the conversation we’re having but I think what I’m going to do is I’m going to hold off on the whole conversations. I don’t want to rush this. George if you don’t mind, we’ll keep you for tomorrow, we’ll do part two of this powerful dialogue about what’s really happening in America. what we need to know about that and then what we can do to make a difference. It’s the awakening that is taking place with George Berna giving us the details from his latest research. Don’t miss tomorrow.

Closing: Thanks for listening to this Lance Wallnau broadcast. If you enjoyed today’s show,make sure to subscribe and share the episode. See you tomorrow.

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