From here:
A new nationwide survey conducted by The Barna Group shows that 6 well-known Bible stories are accepted as literal truth by an average of 2 out of 3 adults. Surprisingly, the most significant Bible story of all — “the story of Jesus Christ rising from the dead, after being crucified and buried” — is also the most widely embraced. 3 out of 4 adults (75%) say they interpret that narrative literally, while only 1 out of 5 (19%) say they don’t take that story literally.
Considering this is the central tenant of the gospel, this has a lot of implications for both churches (where’s that missing 25% on Sunday?) and for watchdoggies (pretending the sky is falling when 3/4 of their neighbors believe in the resurrection is a bit hysterical).
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7 Comments(+Add)
Three quarters of the population believe the resurrection of Jesus Christ? It depends upon what we mean when we say “believe”. Answering in the affirmative in a survey is light years from spiritual faith.
God told Judah they drew nigh with their lips (survey) but their hearts were far from him. I don’t know which neighborhood Barna lives in.
Sure, I agree with what you said, but if you’re starting with a mission field where everyone believes that Jesus lived, died and lived again, that’s a plus.
Confront them as Jesus did in John 6. Let’s see how many stick around. Lots of people like the “stories”.
As for the other 25% if they are actually born again saints, they are the church, and the church exists wherever two or more of them meet.
As for the watchdoggies, the concern is for what is called the church meeting inside the circus maximus.
They are denominational sects that ignore the resurrection.
One good thing about post-modern relativism, it separates the wheat and chaff. All things work together…..
Demons believe…and shudder.
I would have to say that a poll like this is suspect and can be very leading. Did you know that 85% of all statistics are inaccurate (plus or minus 3%)
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It costs nothing for someone to give nodding acknowledgement to Jesus so I would put zero weight on a poll like this.
A belief that is not accompanied by a re-orienting of one’s life is no belief at all. Polls like this are responsible for terms like “unchurched” and so on… They tend to create a mode of thinking that millions people are literally on the cusp of flooding churches if only the churches would get their messages right.
Numbers like this are completely baseless.
In John 6, Jesus ‘confronted’ a groups of folks looking for a political messiah who could feed his people and confront the Romans…
I’m not sure how this fits into the discussion, Chris…
Interesting that “numbers like this are completely baseless”, but that the numbers from Willow Creek were universally accepted, and those infatuated with the watchdoggies POV have accepted Chris R’s “informal survey”.
So which numbers get in and which are out?
Chris L,
You’ll have to bear with CHris P, he’s only interested in the Jesus that is “no respecter of persons” which means he’s really got to pick and choose which scripture to refer to, so he’s really limited in what he can cite.