A majority of Americans — 58% — believe moral absolutes are determined by individuals, which seems to completely miss the point.
The American Worldview Inventory survey from the faith-based Barna Group found that, of the 2,000 adults polled, some even identified as Christians.
From the analysis:
[R]ecognition of God as the source of truth doesn’t necessarily translate into recognizing an absolute moral standard for everyday life. Despite 72% of Evangelicals identifying God as the source of truth, 46% reject absolute moral truth while 48% accept it. Similarly, 69% of born-again Christians point to God as the source of truth, but only 43% embrace a standard of absolute moral truth. Among Pentecostals, 70% point to God as the source of truth, but only 31% recognize absolute moral truth.
Those who are most likely to embrace the idea of absolute truth are political conservatives (42%), Republicans (42%), college graduates (39%) and people 50 years and older (37%). By comparison, the people most likely to reject absolute truth are those in the LGBT community (73%), political liberals (67%), and Democrats (63%).
The most stunning numbers, though, came from those who said they attend evangelical churches. Forty-six percent of those respondents rejected moral absolutes while 48% accepted the existence of absolute truth.
“We’re living in an America increasingly unmoored from its founding in biblical truth,” said Len Munsil, president of Arizona Christian University, whose Cultural Research Center conducted the January study. “Even in the most basic questions of life, like how we make moral choices, we’re choosing to lean completely on our own understanding to decide what’s right and wrong.”
“We are created by God to live according to His unchanging moral standards,” he continued. “He created these boundaries for our good and we ignore them at our peril. There’s no way as individuals, or as a nation, that we can live life well, that we can flourish, that we can live with hope, without God’s moral framework for our lives.”