Barriers

We can recognize that there are barriers that keep people from receiving the gospel in their lives. Through conversation and perhaps other means, when these barriers are revealed, we can take the necessary steps - and live a compelling life - in order to remove barriers. In sales, we used to call it, “overcoming objections” - and we can pray and speak in order that those barriers can be addressed and eliminated. The Bible says in 2nd Corinthians 4:

³ And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. ⁴ In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. ⁵ For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. ⁶ For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

In 2018, there was a group of 50 so-called “evangelicals” who met at Wheaton College in Chicago to discuss the negative impact that then-President Trump was having on the evangelical movement. The head of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton at the time was an attendee. A few months after, Franklin Graham, the late evangelist’s son, moved documents about the ministry of Graham to the Billy Graham Archive and Research Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.

That actually was a historical point made by The Christian Post at the beginning of a recent story about a survey conducted by the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton. I appreciate the Post making that point, because I think it may contribute to the credibility of a survey that has been making the rounds.

The article said, regarding a survey of Gen Z adults:

According to the research provided to Religion News Service, 48% of respondents said they agree with the statement “Christians’ support of Trump has made me less likely to go to church.”

19% “strongly” agreed.

Rick Richardson is a professor at Wheaton College and the lead researcher of the study; he is quoted here:

“We realized that spiritual interest among Gen Z young adults is quite high but engagement with churches has decreased over time,” Richardson said. “There has been an upturn recently mainly among men and often with more traditional denominations like Catholicism.”

He added, “We wanted to understand the spiritual motivators and demotivators of young adults ages 18 to 28, and among many other factors, we found response to Trump [has] been one.”

Richardson said he was surprised by several of the study’s findings, including that “young adults are more positive toward churches and toward engagement in churches than we expected.”

He also noted, “We also found that factors included political, moral and social media demotivators like the political partisanship of many churches…”

But, you have to dig just a bit deeper, as Richardson and noted Christian researcher Ryan Burge did in that RNS article; they write:

Is this connection between Christians and the Trump administration having a deleterious impact on the attendance of Gen Z Christians, though?

The answer from this data is: Not really. Or at least there’s no evidence that young Christians who don’t go to church that often are staying away because of the association with Republican politics. The data indicates that 38% of young Christians who go to church every week say Christians’ support for Trump has been a barrier to them attending more often. For those Christians who never attend, it’s 40%.

So, it’s not fair to use this data to make the claim that young Christians would be flocking back into the church if the church would drop politics. However, the other way to interpret this data is that about 40% of young adult Christians see the church’s association with Trump as an impediment to them becoming more involved with their faith community.

So, what do you make of all this? Let’s go back to my original point - we have to look for ways to remove barriers to people coming to know Jesus. There has been an oversized connection drawn in the mainstream media between Trump and evangelicals. Yes, the overwhelming majority of white evangelicals have supported Trump. Black evangelicals don’t seem to be a category that researchers want to spend a lot of time on, unfortunately. Trump has made consistent and substantive overtures toward the evangelical community and has surrounded himself with people who represent that perspective.

But, can we really say that Trump represents the evangelical community? I think that is quite a stretch, even though the media drives that narrative. And, should the Church pull back on political involvement because, you know, the gospel?

I answer “no” to both. Again, our call is to speak truth - through our words and our actions. Certainly, the Bible should inform the policy decisions we make, including the selection of leaders. There are plenty of churches that host liberal or progressive candidates and preach a “social gospel” that doesn’t line up with Scripture. And, there doesn’t seem to be the degree of pushback. So, people will choose churches based on the theology a church embraces.

Again, it’s not about Trump. Or any politician. Or, really anybody in the pews. Plain and simple, it’s about Jesus - and we should be intent on showing Him to people. We are flawed individuals, “sinners saved by grace,” but because we have experienced the grace of God and have new life in Christ, that gives us the credibility and the opportunity to overcome any barrier to faith, so that people might come to know Him.