A national survey of churchgoing Americans shows rising ignorance about how the Bible applies to contemporary social issues, even as churchgoers seek more teaching on these issues from their local churches. These data suggest both a warning and an encouragement. Sadly, many churches are apparently failing to adequately equip their members. However, it also appears that, when churches rise to the challenge, that teaching will be well received.

The newly released study was conducted in July 2025 by Family Research Council Senior Research Fellow George Barna, who is also a professor and director of research in the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. The survey, conducted for FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview, surveyed 1,000 American adults who attend Christian worship services at least once a month, following a similar study conducted in 2023.

In the intervening two years, the survey showed “people becoming more confused, less informed, and therefore not really thinking like Jesus,” described George Barna on “Washington Watch.” For instance, “We’re losing ground in the abortion battle,” he said, “where we’ve got more and more Christians who either don’t care, or they’re certainly not well informed about what the Bible teaches about it, because we find that fewer of them are calling themselves pro-life.”

Between 2023 and 2025, the percentage of churchgoers who believe that the Bible offered “clear and decisive” teaching on five contemporary social issues dropped precipitously, according to the new survey. These included marriage (decline of 10%), homosexuality (decline of 16%), transgenderism (decline of 12%), religious liberty (decline of 10%), and abortion (decline of 14%).

To Barna, these results suggest that many churchgoers are being taught by contemporary American culture, rather than the church. “The culture really seems to be taking a good hit on people’s minds and hearts,” he said. “Those who are consistently attending church — they’re confused by these things.”

Furthermore, it seems that churchgoers see no problem combining cultural ideas with Christian ones. For instance, only 61% of churchgoers affirmed a Christian view of God, while many preferred definitions of God consistent with new age mysticism (17%), agnosticism (11%), polytheism (4%), and pantheism (3%). On the human condition, only 31% of churchgoers affirmed that every person is born into sin, while others believed that people become good and bad through life choices (32%), are born good but corrupted by society (10%), are neither good nor bad (7%), or are divine (15%).

“Some of the responses would say that there’s this syncretistic faith that’s developing, that people are merging cultural trends with their faith,” observed FRC President Tony Perkins. “But when pressed, it doesn’t appear that they can point to any kind of biblical foundation for their views. … It’s good that people are going back into church … after COVID, but are they getting the word of God?”

“That’s a large part of the problem,” Barna responded. “People may go to church, but it doesn’t seem like they’re coming out with anything that’s moving them either toward a biblical worldview or toward biblical discipleship.” In other words, many people may attend a church but never hear or learn what God’s word teaches on everything from theology to ethics.

Pastors need not offer a formal seminary lecture every Sunday, but basic teaching on the gospel, the nature of God, and Christian discipleship should be standard fare. In other research, Barna has found that “sin is rarely talked about in sermons,” featuring in only 3% of sermons in a given year because pastors “don’t want to deal with those things. What we are providing people, more often than not, is self-help lessons.”

While “self-help” can benefit certain people in certain contexts, it plays very little role in Christianity. The whole point of the gospel is that our lives are ruined by sin, so that we need a savior — help from another. The whole point of the indwelling Holy Spirit is that we cannot live righteous lives in the flesh, but that God gradually enables us to do so through his power.

Besides a lack of biblical teaching, Barna also observed a lack of biblical discipleship. In an upcoming book, he will explain how “only about 3% of adults … meet Jesus’s six criteria for what makes somebody a real disciple of his.” Making disciples of all nations is the great commission Jesus gave to his followers (Matthew 28:19).

“The problem,” he continued, “is that we reproduce who we are. And so the church today is sending people out into the world saying, ‘You’ve got to be active, you’ve got to be participants. Go make disciples.’ They can only reproduce who they are.”

Barna distilled the essence of the problem many churches face: “We’re reproducing attenders, but we’re not reproducing disciples of Jesus.”

Such an unsatisfactory assessment should signal alarm bells for the churches to whom it applies. The job description of a pastor is “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood … so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:12-14). If pastors are teaching their flock neither what the Bible says nor what it looks like to live as a disciple of Jesus, they aren’t meeting their divine job description.

But many pastors will wonder, will their church members accept such teaching? There are two responses to this. First, pastors should obey God’s word in faith, believing Jesus’s promise that he will build his church (Matthew 16:18), especially when it contradicts worldly wisdom. Church growth comes through divine power, not through culturally popular programs or techniques (1 Corinthians 1:17).

Second, according to the 2025 Barna survey, many churchgoers are eager for more teaching from God’s word, especially how it relates to contemporary social issues. A full 55% of churchgoers said it was “very” desirable for their church to offer more instruction on a biblical worldview of religious freedom (another 33% said it was “somewhat” desirable).

Majorities of churchgoers also desired more teaching on a Christian’s social and political responsibility (“very” desirable to 38%, “somewhat” desirable to another 38%), human sexuality (“very” desirable to 29%, “somewhat” desirable to 35%), abortion and the value of life (“very” desirable to 28%, “somewhat” desirable to 32%), and euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (“very” desirable to 25%, “somewhat” desirable to 29%).

This does not imply that pastors should base what they teach on opinion polls. Pastors should base their teaching on the word of God. But when surveys confirm that the people in their church are hungry for what God’s word tells them to teach, that should encourage them to do so all the more.

“The issue here may be one of boldness,” reflected Barna. “Pastors and church leaders tend to gauge the success of their church based on attendance, giving, number of programs, number of staff, people in square footage. Jesus didn’t die for any of that.” Instead, he urged pastors to “stand up and say, ‘All right, look, you may not like it. It may be uncomfortable, but this is what it takes to be a follower of Christ. If you’re here, we believe you want to be a follower of Christ. Here’s the recipe that Jesus gave us for that.’”

“That’s how Jesus called people,” Perkins agreed. “He said, ‘Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me’ [Matthew 16:24]. He didn’t candy-coat it. He said, ‘There’s a cost to following me.’ … That’s the way forward, I think — just challenging people.” Here is the challenge to pastors; let them now challenge their congregations.