Some 60 per cent of Americans believe religious beliefs are a matter of personal opinion and not about “objective truth”, according to the findings of a recent survey.
Conducted by LifeWay Research for Ligonier Ministries’ State of Theology report, the survey of some 3,000 American adults found that just 30 per cent disagreed with the statement “Religious belief is a matter of personal opinion; it is not about objective truth” while 10 per cent said they weren’t sure.
Evangelical Christians were the only group in which a majority disagreed with the statement – 62 per cent versus 32 per cent agreed – while among “regular churchgoers” generally, 45 per cent agreed with the statement and 49 per cent disagreed.
The data is among the latest to be released from the survey which was carried out from 24th April to 4th May this year.
Chris Larson, president and CEO of Ligonier Ministries, said the findings showed that many Americans appeared to think “religious beliefs are on the same level as whether someone likes one sports team over another or prefers to live by the coast instead of in the mountains”.
“This presents an urgent challenge to Christians who understand that people’s eternal destinies are at stake,” he said. “The Bible declares the objective truth of who God is and what He has done, supremely through Jesus Christ. The idea that Christian beliefs are simply personal opinions cannot be reconciled with the facts of history recorded in the Bible.”
