Psalm 119:160  “The sum of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous rules endures forever.”

Donald Trump will be sworn in as America’s 47^th President on January 20, 2025. The main drivers that led to his decisive victory were significant increases in 6 demographics: 1) the Hispanic vote, 2) Black men’s vote, 3) the Young vote, 4) the Working-Class vote, 5) the Parental vote, and 6) the Religious vote.

What about the Religious demographic? How did Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, and “Nones” (those with no religious affiliation, including atheists and agnostics) – vote in the 2024 Presidential election?

In all 3 major religious groups – White Evangelicals, Protestants, and Catholics – Donald Trump grew his support. Only the “nones” – those with no religious affiliation – increased their vote for Kamala Harris and the Democrats. But what demographic makes up these “nones”? It is mainly Generation Z (ages 18-29).

Ryan P. Burge, Political Science Professor at Eastern Illinois University, analyzed America’s 2021 religious landscape: “While the Silent Generation (over age 77) are 72% Christian and 18% none, only 36% of Gen Z’ers (ages 18-29) claim to be Christian while 48% claim to be ‘nones’. They are the first generation in history where nones outnumber Christians.” Now, let’s go inside Generation Z and break it down further.

In Pew Research Center’s January 2024 Report ‘Religious ‘Nones’ in America: Who They Are and What They Believe,’ they broke down their data for gender, ethnicity, and education:

1) Gender: “Nones” overall are roughly split between men (51%) and women (47%). The populations of atheists and agnostics include far more men than women. The same is not true for people whose religion is “nothing in particular.” There is no gender difference with nones.

2) Ethnicity: “White adults make up larger shares of U.S. atheists (77%) and agnostics (69%) than of people whose religion is “nothing in particular” (57%). Just 2% of self-described atheists and 4% of agnostics are Black.” There are many more “nones” in White America than in Black.

3) Education: “Atheists and agnostics are more likely to have a college degree than religious Americans. Among “nones,” atheists and agnostics have more education than claiming ‘nothing in particular.’”

It is this third category – education – that is the most troubling. How can it be that the more educated our Gen Z’ers become, the more they reject Jesus Christ? This goes directly against God’s promises.

This week’s verse proclaims that if someone wants to know what is true, they must start with Bible study. In fact, Jesus goes even further to say that He – the Living Bible – is truth: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6), and “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). How is this possible?

In his book ‘Religious Literacy,’ Stephen Prothero, the head of Boston University’s Religion Department, explains why American education abandoned the Bible for secular humanistic teaching.

“America was once a religiously literate nation. Religious literacy and basic literacy went hand in hand. The Bible was the first book read by early Americans. They learned to read by reading the Bible. Then, 6 links in the chain of religious education grew America’s biblical knowledgeable: 1) Churches, 2) Schools, 3) Households, 4) Sunday schools, 5) Colleges and universities, and 6) Bible and tract societies.

However, the breaking of the chain of biblical knowledge in the 1960’s did not get broken by secularists (as conservative Christians claim), or by Supreme Court rulings that outlawed devotional Bible reading and prayers in public schools. It was internal to Christianity! Bible courses started to go away in the mid-19th century due to the debate over which Bible translation to read! Christians – not secularists – did this.

Another change was in the churches. They started focusing on loving Jesus rather than on listening to Him. The Bible became a source of authority rather than a book you actually read. Sermons were more about ordinary life and less about biblical narratives. Sunday schools focused more on morality than on learning and thinking. America became a nation of forgetters and at the same time a nation of evangelicals.

Evangelicalism became the dominant religious impulse in the early 19th century, replacing Puritanism. Puritans understood God through a combination of the head and the heart. They were keen on religious learning and reason. Evangelicals were suspicious of the mind. Focusing on experience and emotion, they slowly turned Americans away from religious learning.”

To address religious illiteracy in America, Prothero gives this advice: “We need to have courses about the Bible and world religions in middle schools and high schools, and I think they should be mandatory, with an opt-out provision. One course would cover the 5 or 7 great religions. The other would be about the Bible.

Students would learn the basic stories and characters, but also about the uses of the Bible in world and American history, in literature, and in politics. I think few students would opt out of these courses.”

As our Gen Z’ers, who now have very minimal Biblical knowledge, move towards “nones,” they vote  overwhelmingly for today’s Democratic Party, who directly opposes biblical values by promoting: 1) abortion on demand for any reason, 2) systemic racism, 3) destruction of the traditional, biblical family structure, 4) same-sex marriage, and 5) transgender surgeries for children.

Can we not see the direct correlation between our young adult’s lack of biblical instruction and their 2024 voting for the Democratic Party?

As our verse this week explains, the only remedy to our youngest generation’s rejection of God is they be taught His truth – the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God loves Gen Z’ers. We as Christians must teach them.

“The Evidence of Faith’s Substance” _ Article #633