Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Dr. Adam Rasmussen: Has Biblical Worldview Increased Since Kirk Assassination?

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Dr. Adam Rasmussen: Has Biblical Worldview Increased Since Kirk Assassination? · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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defending biblical Christianity, no topic, off limits.
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And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
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Hello, friends, family and Christ.
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God bless you.
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Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of World View Matters.
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I just want to thank one of our most loyal listeners and friends, Nina, from Charlottesville,
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Virginia.
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She always does the handwritten notes.
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God bless you for that.
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And she sent Ephesians 3, 20 now unto him who was able to do exceeding abundantly above
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all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.
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Of course, that's the Holy Spirit.
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Thank God.
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We have that deposit.
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We have sealed.
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We have that assurance.
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We have that.
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He will guide us into all truth.
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We are so blessed.
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God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
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So anyway, thank you for your prayers for this ministry and we're just moving through,
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moving through on all these great topics, a lot of great guests.
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Today is no different.
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We've got Adam Rasmussen back with us with the Cultural Research Center and over in Glendale,
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Arizona.
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They've got some great, great information on all the studies they do.
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We're going to talk about just a little bit of what they do and some recent findings that
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I found to be just very interesting in light of what happened last year after the assassination
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of Charlie Kirk.
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So I want to bring Adam and brother, good to see you again.
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Thanks for your time.
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Thank you, David.
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It's wonderful to be with you.
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Yeah.
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It's always a blessing.
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I love the conversations as you and I both.
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I think we are probably on the exact same page when it comes to worldview and how important
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that is and what telling signs we have in America and specifically in the Christian
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Church.
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So before we dive in to this recent research, could you speak to just what you sense?
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Are we changing our things, getting better?
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Are they getting worse?
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Have we bought them out?
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Could it get better?
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I mean, I love their most recent movie, a great awakening on the life of George Whitfield.
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That was that convicted me.
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And I'm just hoping things like that will reach Christians and maybe we'll see some change.
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But what's your take on where we're at right now, Adam?
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Well, I love that verse, your listener hand wrote to you and I agree that God can do far
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more than we could ever imagine and to have a revival, to have a renewal, to see people
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coming to know Jesus, that's why you and I are here.
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And one of the things that we absolutely agree on, David, is that worldview is a way
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to measure that.
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So what we've done at the Cultural Research Center for the last six years, excuse me, and
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George Barna, since 1994, is we've measured biblical worldview.
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And that is, what do people believe and how do they behave based on biblical commands and
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principles?
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And your question are things better or worse?
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They look about the same.
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Charlie Kirk was murdered on September 10th.
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He lived in Glendale.
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He had been on our campus at Arizona Christian University, many of our faculty and students
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knew him personally.
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I've heard him speak a couple of times.
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And that tragic event did bring out a lot of these anecdotal story and their good around
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our country.
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And we can talk about those.
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But as it comes to measuring biblical worldview, that is, what do people believe in?
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How do they behave based on scripture?
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That's the same.
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It's at 4% that was before the events that we're talking about and today.
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Gosh, just to hear you say that again, I know it's true, 4% the biblical worldview in
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America.
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Oh my goodness.
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But let's go back.
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But there's something in the at the beginning of this research that you guys did.
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It says although 12% of American adults had a biblical worldview in 1994, that number
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was half to 6% by 2020.
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And then 2023 it dropped to 4.
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And that's where it remains, 4%.
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But Adam, explain this from a, help me make sense of this.
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What happened in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination last September, there was widespread
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discussion about a possible eruption of spiritual renewal, revival, awakening if you want to
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use that word.
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I know there were pockets of excitement in there.
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I love what I saw take place on some college campuses where Christian football players,
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for example, were preaching the gospel and baptizing kids, college kids.
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And I love what the younger generation Gen Z all of a sudden was saying, hey, I'm an
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atheist, never went to church, but after this, I'm going to go check it out.
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But now where we at now, we're in 2026 and some of those kids did go to church and I call
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them kids because we're older, I'm allowed to do that.
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Some of those kids did go to church, yeah, yeah.
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Some of them did pick up a Bible, maybe, but did they find the right church and with
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they pick up a Bible, where did they start reading?
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If they started reading in Leviticus, I'm not sure how long they'll stick with it.
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So share your thoughts on that because there were some exciting things happening.
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There were some signs that this could be a catalyst, but I'm not sure we are seeing that
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now in 2026, your thoughts.
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Yeah, I would like to talk about three data points that are very interesting that look
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good.
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And then after that, I'll answer why we haven't seen the uptick yet.
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But I mean, when we look at people and Bible sales, for example, they're at the all-time
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high, 21% up, okay?
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And last year, it was the highest it's been in 2024, 12% over the last year.
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So we see this trend of people buying Bibles, downloading Christian music, streaming, different
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things, more than ever, okay?
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So that's good, right?
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And then people going to church, we saw pockets, especially in areas like Pennsylvania, Ohio,
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Michigan, Illinois, Colorado, and then thirdly, turning point, USA, went from the pre-assassination
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baseline of roughly 800 college chapters to now over 3,500.
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So these are good, these are good things.
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But if your listeners and viewers want to look at this Federalist article that George
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Barna and I were interviewed for in September of 2025, we predicted what would happen today.
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And in it, I basically said that if this generation is going to understand Jesus Christ
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as proclaimed in scriptures, a lot of questions are going to need to be answered.
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And they have a need to ask these questions in a safe place.
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And it takes a while to get through those questions, which is what, here's the word, the
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Cypleship is.
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And then Marna in that same article said that most churches are not prepared for the surge
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of individuals coming in with clear and deep questions about purpose and meaning and
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spirituality and eternity and evil, big questions in life.
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So it's going to take some time, David, and people need to be discipled up.
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Yeah, let's talk about churches being prepared for a moment.
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We've got operations that you have to put in Eric quotes churches in America.
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We've got seeker sensitive churches.
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We've got big CEO corporate entertaining churches.
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And then we've got some smaller churches and not that all big churches are bad.
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I'm not saying that.
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But the remnant of true Bible believing churches that seem to get the importance of sharing
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the gospel and discipleship, I hate to say, but I believe it's true that it's such a minority
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and that it's not an exaggeration, I don't believe.
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So what kind of churches are these young people, kids, or even adults?
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Some adults were really affected by Charlie Kirk's assassination, too.
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And I think that woke a lot of people up generally, even in the church, people that were
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just playing church, maybe one foot in the world, one foot in Christianity, well, you
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can't live that way.
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You've got to make a commitment.
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So then the question goes, what church did they end up going to or checking out?
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And if more people flock to some of these churches as we heard, numbers went up.
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Same thing that happened after 9, 11, 2001, six months later, it tapered off.
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But were these churches prepared?
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And I think you just answered that.
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Not all churches were prepared because they don't understand how to disciple and really
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answer those tough questions about evil in the world about gender ideology, about life
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and in the womb, about marriage, family, God being creator and all that.
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Take to that Adam before we dive back into the research.
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Right.
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And going to church doesn't make you a Christian.
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I mean, true.
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Having, you know, being in a church building does not make you a Christian any more than
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sitting in a garage makes you a car, okay?
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And just attending church or even listening to a sermon, a lot of sermons are not focused
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on the gospel, which has to do with sin, a holy God, repentance, and faith in Jesus Christ
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alone for salvation.
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So I've always defined ministry as relationships around the Bible.
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It doesn't matter if it's a mom and dad teaching their children or a group of neighbors gathering
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in a home or a youth group or a church.
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If it's not centered on the Bible with Jesus Christ himself, the center character, the
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triune God and the rescue of people, how are people going to be saved?
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What is the value proposition of these churches?
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It has to come back to what we do that the rest of the world doesn't, which is to proclaim
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the gospel.
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And the gospel is not going to change.
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Yeah.
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Amen.
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Okay.
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Before we get to your research, I want to ask you about these three segments, three categories
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I should say, but other research came out from the gallop, which was really interesting
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and what we're talking about, that the poll found a sharp rise in young men calling religion
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very important.
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And they called it a sharp rise, 42% of men under 30, now profess that religion is very
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important to them.
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I know your answer, and yet we just talked about some of the issues.
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Well, yes, it's very important, but how do you define religion?
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What do they mean by that?
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Your thoughts on that survey, Adam.
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I'm slightly more confident in finding good material if they're going to choose the word
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religion over spirituality, because that might tip the hat towards more traditional things.
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And in America, by and large, it would be Christianity.
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However, that's not what we measure.
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What we measure at the Cultural Research Center is biblical worldview.
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So not just religion, not just quote Christianity.
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We want to measure what are the beliefs and behaviors squared against basic doctrine
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in Scripture.
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And what we found is 4% of adults in America have an integrated worldview, it's cohesive,
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it lines up with the Bible.
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And then David, this is an interesting segment.
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We call these emerging followers.
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So I would assume if people are latching on to Jesus and faith in Jesus of some sort,
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they may have salvation actually, they may believe in Him alone, but they've got huge
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gaps in their understanding.
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There's about 10% of adults in America right now that would fit in that category.
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The sad thing is it's down, it's been half in the last decade.
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So it used to be about 20% of Americans.
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Now it's 10% or about 25 million Americans would be in what we would call emerging followers.
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And I think this is probably, if you and I are going to talk about people going to Christian
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or biblical churches on the wake of a Charlie Kirk in that incident, they're probably in
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that category where they have some faith, but it needs to be matured.
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It needs to be grounded in Scripture through all of what God has to say.
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Isn't that what Jesus told us to do to make disciples?
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And then the rest, the 85% or so are world citizens.
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And that group is outpacing the church really right now.
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But we want to see that turn around, we want to see that turn around.
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That's not going to take much work, right?
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I'm kidding.
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So we've got integrated disciples, emergent followers and world citizens.
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And I think the one that is interesting is the word emergent.
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Years ago, this was in the 80s, 90s, I don't know if you remember hearing about the emergent
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church.
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Well, that was a movement that was getting away from the inerrancy of Scripture and
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the true traditional biblical worldview and maybe more progressive and maybe reinterpreting
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certain doctrines that I'm thinking, wow, when I hear emergent followers, to me, that
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doesn't sound good.
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But you define each one of those, I understand integrated disciples, I understand world
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citizens.
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Is it too simplistic to say worldly of the world?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And thanks for differentiating that the emergent church is not something we hear a ton
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about anymore.
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That's kind of a language of the 90s, but DA Carson has a wonderful book on that about
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being conversant with the emerging church.
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And that is not what we mean at all.
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What we mean are probably true blue believers in Jesus, but very immature probably in their
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understanding of a genesis to revelation, understanding of Scripture.
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So we're always coming back to what does the Bible say?
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So you've got the integrated disciples where they have a pretty cohesive world view.
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They're emergent.
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They're not quite there yet.
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That's about 10%.
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And then these world citizens, I think you and I may have talked about this before, David.
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These are synchrotists.
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What that means is that very subjective and they'll take a little bit of Jesus when he
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talks about love, but they reject him when he talks about judgment.
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And they'll take a little bit of karma and a little bit of maybe Marxism or whatever's
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in the world.
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They are world citizens.
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They can call themselves Christians, but based on what the Bible says, they're more like
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you said, worldly or their world view is actually coming from what's in the world, the
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prince of the power of the air, things like that.
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Yes.
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So let's go back to an explanation of that in the research that says in 2020, I believe
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that segment was 69% and then it jumped to 85% of US adults in the world citizen category.
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I mean, you do this all the time.
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You work with numbers and all these surveys.
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That seems like a pretty huge jump for five or six years, no?
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It is.
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And COVID did us no good.
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And we were told by these mandates that we cannot be in church together and many people,
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they just have a conditioned response that, you know, authority says something.
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We're going to do that.
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Everybody else is doing that.
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I don't want to rock the boat on a Christian.
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I need to be nice and all that.
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Well, when people are separated, it's almost like a fire, right?
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If you separate all the logs, it won't take long for it to die out.
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Christianity is a team sport.
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There are a lot of one and others in there.
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And so we saw a 33% decrease in just 18 months.
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We went from 6% to 4% and we haven't recovered from that yet.
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So there's a quote in here that's pretty sobering.
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And I believe it was Dr. Barna who said, the fate of our nation hangs in the balance.
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The national divide is an indication of the spiritual battle for the soul of America.
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What was he talking about the national divide?
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Well, I think it's pretty clear that we have people constantly getting shoved to one side
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or the other of the political spectrum instead of having more representative values that
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we can share together, values, not interests.
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It got their own personal interests like Francis Schaeffer said, personal peace and affluence.
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But what we need to do is come back together on values that we find to be important, such
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as faith, religious liberty, freedom of speech, honoring people that are different than we
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are, those kind of things.
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And unfortunately, if you take the Bible and the basics of loving God and love your neighbor
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out of the equation, all that you're left with is yourself and your team.
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And that's not what Jesus called us to.
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He called us to love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, to love our neighbors
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as ourselves.
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And the founding fathers understood this.
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Thomas Jefferson, who was not a Christian, but he had what was known as the Jefferson Bible,
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right?
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He took all of the writings of Jesus and he called them the most sublime ethic ever given
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to us.
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And if we don't have the Bible and if we don't have faith in things that are eternal,
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we're just going to continue to be divided.
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And one other thing, David, is we would maintain at the Cultural Research Center that all
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of the physical symptoms we see of children being born out of weblock, of the divorce rate,
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of people dropping out of college, of abortion, of, you know, people more and more evaporating
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from the, what we call the demographic, middle class, all of these things and the shrinking
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of respect and honor towards one another.
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All of these physical symptoms are part of a spiritual problem.
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Right down the middle, we've abandoned the gospel.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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We're seeing as spiritual at its core because if you abandon God as creator, then you
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got to do whatever you want when it comes to marriage, family, gender, civil society and
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how you do government throughout, you know, God as any kind of authority.
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But I want to talk to you about something else that Dr. Barnett said, after all the years
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of research and all the numbers and the declining biblical worldview and the news that just
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doesn't seem to be good, it appears that Dr. Barnett is still an optimist and I want
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to quote him and get your response at him.
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He said, the fact that we have not plumbed new depths since then, hopefully suggests that
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we have bottomed out and are in line to experience positive growth in biblical thought and action.
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So apparently Dr. Barnett rejects the argument that further decline is inevitable and perhaps
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even irreversible.
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Ah, I'm having a hard time keeping up with with his optimism, but Adam, go ahead, help
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me.
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Right.
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So we don't believe in cause, cause, effect.
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We don't believe that.
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We believe in agent cause, effect that as human beings, we have been given free will,
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we can make a choice and God is on his throne and he has changed culture before.
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The way God changes culture is God changes the church and the church changes culture.
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So we've even seen this.
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We started this in 1994 with 12%, the construct hasn't changed.
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We've been measuring the same thing, okay, and it went down pretty rapidly to 7%, but
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then there was an uptick in 2000 to 10%, there was an uptick again to 11% in 2005.
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We've seen this in the great awakenings.
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We've seen this before and I got to say this, David.
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The gospel is not going to change.
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God's offer for redemption of individuals, families, churches, societies, nations, cultures
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is the same and it's always the same.
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There's a little story about this ship that sent a message to a light it saw at sea.
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Change your course 15 degrees.
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The light came back and said, no, you change your course 15 degrees.
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And then the ship said, I am a warship.
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Change your course 15 degrees.
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And then the other message came back, I am a lighthouse, make your decision.
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And God's word is not going to change.
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God is not going to change.
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But what needs to change is you and me.
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We have to say Jesus, you died to take away the sins of the world, you sent your spirit
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to revive the church.
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Amen.
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I'm not Lord.
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You are.
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And if we can do that, we can see pockets happen.
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Can I tell you a little bit about something we've seen at ACU?
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Well, yeah, I was on a Christian.
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I was just going to ask you about that because I'm seeing this 833% increase by the students
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there in developing a biblical world.
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That's fascinating.
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How can we do that around the country?
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Go ahead Adam.
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Yeah, I'm glad we're talking about it because we're kind of numbers freaks a little
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bit.
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If you go to culturalresearchcenter.com, you can plumb the depths there.
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We've got all kinds of topics on family and the elections and church attendance and pastors
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and all of that.
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So we practice what we preach.
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Every student at ACU does a student worldview inventory.
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It's very similar to what we're doing across the nation with a few changes on things
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that we want at this age, at this particular place.
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And we've just released our first five-year longitudinal study.
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So what this means is they've done this for five years and you're right.
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Students come in basically the same as their peers.
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They are Christians because we have what people call a covenantal school where every faculty
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member, every employee, every student says, I want to follow Jesus, okay?
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Thank you.
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But they're pretty much the same as their peers.
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By the time they graduate, they've had 833 percent growth in biblical worldview.
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Here's one more stat.
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They are 28 times more likely to have a biblical worldview than those aged 21 to 24.
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And your question is, how do we do it?
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It's very simple.
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It's what it says in Deuteronomy 6, Ephesians 6, we just make all of life about Jesus in
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the classroom when we, you know, in student life through all the sports.
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And we really dive into those big questions about who am I, what's important in life.
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We look at Western civilization, we do all of those things from an intellectually rigorous
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place.
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And that's what needs to happen.
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There's one other thing people can do.
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All of our research is free.
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But if somebody wants to take this worldview inventory for themselves, they can do that.
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And it's on our website.
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And I think it's like $10.
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It's not expensive.
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But if people want to see, okay, how does my small group or how does my family or how
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does my church?
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Or if there's a K-12 teacher or administrator out there, we've articulated it to 4th, 8th
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and 12th grade students.
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So it can come right alongside what they're doing with their state testing at those Christian
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schools.
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Okay.
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That's another thing people can do just to see, okay, here's a gap in my understanding.
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I'll talk to my pastor or my mentor and we're going to, we're going to work on that.
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So that's brand new.
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Thanks for letting me put that out there for sure.
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That's great.
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Again, the website culturalresearchcenter.com, I love what you guys do.
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I want to just share the end of this article, the description there about the research
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at the end, if we lose another generation to secular humanism, postmodernism, Eastern
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mysticism, Marxism and all the other unbiblical philosophies of life, we will lose America
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itself.
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So you guys say in this parents, grandparents, teachers and pastors need to get on top
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of this now.
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So Adam in the last two minutes, just speak to, for example, parents of young children
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and hopefully there's some pastors watching to them.
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Sure, their grandparents watching, what can we and they do about the young people in their
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own sphere of influence?
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Well, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his mind.
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What we have to do, as it says in Deuteronomy 6, hero is hero, the Lord you've got, the
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Lord is one, these words should be on your heart.
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So that's the first thing, pastors, parents, teachers, we have to ask, am I living this
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myself because more is caught than taught, right?
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People will see that hypocrisy.
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So we have to start with ourselves and every day keep coming back to the Lord and growing,
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but then each one needs to teach one.
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We need to be serious about this.
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I can't think of anything more serious in our lives than to love God and love others
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and to share the gospel.
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It's not about your job, it's not about your occupation, it's about your preoccupation.
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Like, everything else is details.
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The reason we are here is to grow in Christ's likeness and have other people join us.
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This is pre-life, that is life.
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So what we want to do is get people ready to meet Jesus.
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Paul said in Colossians, I work at this with all of my might.
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So be of good cheer, turn back to the Lord, have that strength, and let's bring whoever
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we can.
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It's a wonderful life.
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Do that.
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It's great.
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Amen.
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I love that.
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Time is short, friends, and we don't know how much time each of us has.
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Nothing's guaranteed, but we do know the urgency of the gospel message, and there are
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people that aren't going to be in a good place unless they hear, unless they have seeds
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planted or seeds watered of the gospel.
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I just, that's another reason I love that movie, a great awakening.
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The passion and the commitment and the boldest and the intentionality, George Wilhat and
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his work ethic, I could go on and on, but really inspiring, friends, that's, we need to
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be about the gospel ourselves and about the Word of God so that we can then, it'll, it'll
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be outflow.
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It'll be a natural outflow from our heart, out of the abundance, out of the abundance
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of the heart, the mouth speaks, and getting all excited here, Adam.
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Hey, thanks so much for your time today, Lord willing, we'll do this again in the near
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future.
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Appreciate all the work you do, brother.
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Thank you.
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God bless you, friends, and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.