A prominent Christian researcher is warning that we are on the precipice of Christian invisibility in this nation, as new research shows that preteens are rejecting beliefs associated with a biblical ...
Former pastor here, I think your interpretation of the data is probably inaccurate.
The issue isn’t pastors struggling to adhere to their own beliefs, the problem is these aren’t very good questions from a theological perspective. They’re very narrow and don’t reflect the complexities of real life.
I suppose the problem is that someone thought those survey questions would provide the information they were looking for. If you’re looking to illustrate lack of buy-in, you do like you said, ask the most narrow and fundamentalist questions you can. This is especially true if you’re asking ten- to twelve-year-olds these “basic principal” questions. This would also help to illustrate a divergence of the youth group from the parent group, who are more capable of parsing and answering the questions.
I think it’d be safe to say that, if you asked those same questions of similar age populations even forty years ago, you’d see a similar divergence between adult and preteen answers.
Former pastor here, I think your interpretation of the data is probably inaccurate.
The issue isn’t pastors struggling to adhere to their own beliefs, the problem is these aren’t very good questions from a theological perspective. They’re very narrow and don’t reflect the complexities of real life.
I suppose the problem is that someone thought those survey questions would provide the information they were looking for. If you’re looking to illustrate lack of buy-in, you do like you said, ask the most narrow and fundamentalist questions you can. This is especially true if you’re asking ten- to twelve-year-olds these “basic principal” questions. This would also help to illustrate a divergence of the youth group from the parent group, who are more capable of parsing and answering the questions.
I think it’d be safe to say that, if you asked those same questions of similar age populations even forty years ago, you’d see a similar divergence between adult and preteen answers.