Important researcher and evangelical Christian, George Barna, has written: ?The Christian body in America is immersed in a crisis of biblical illiteracy. How else can you describe matters when most churchgoing adults reject the accuracy of the Bible, reject the existence of Satan, claim that Jesus sinned, see no need to evangelize, believe that good works are one of the keys to persuading God to forgive their sins, and describe their commitment to Christianity as moderate or even less firm?? Consider additional evidence Barna has surfaced of widespread biblical illiteracy in America:

Larycia Hawkins, tenured associate professor of political science at Wheaton College in Illinois, has taught at Wheaton since 2007, but, through her recent comments about Islam, has created a firestorm at this evangelical college. . . In December, Wheaton suspended her and placed her on administrative leave because her ?theological statements seemed inconsistent with Wheaton College?s doctrinal convictions.? The College explained that ?While Islam and Christianity are both monotheistic, we believe there are fundamental differences between the two faiths, including what they teach about God?s revelation to humanity, the nature of God, the path to salvation, and the life of prayer.?

On 1 December 2015, at the opening of a three-day meeting in Washington to discuss the ethics and use of gene editing, David Baltimore of the California Institute of Technology perceptively declared, ?Over the years the unthinkable has become conceivable and today we are close to being able to alter human heredity.? This meeting, called the International Summit on Human Gene Editing, was convened by the national academies of three nations?the United States, Great Britain and China. The primary focus of this meeting was to discuss whether gene editing should be used to make heritable changes to the human gene line.

Much of American culture still accepts the manger at Christmas. We still see manger scenes in church, on front lawns and on Christmas cards. But in our increasingly secular, commercial, and sexually liberated society, we keep the horizontal message of the manger but often eliminate the vertical message entirely. We like the shepherds and their lambs, but are uncomfortable with God, miracles and the incarnation. In short, the biblical worldview about Christmas is rapidly losing market share to a more secular, materialistic one that is horizontally comfortable but vertically challenged.

The Scientific Revolution of the 16th-century changed humanity?s perspective and understanding of the physical universe. At the end of the Scientific Revolution (the 17th century), Sir Isaac Newton synthesized the work of others (e.g., Galileo, Kepler, Brahe, etc.) with his own original thinking, and produced a compressive understanding of the laws of the physical world (e.g., inertia, gravity, etc.). . . But on 25 November 1915, Albert Einstein published a theory that challenged this understanding of the physical world.

In the United States, capital punishment remains legal in 31 states and in the federal civilian and military legal systems (for specific crimes). The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution has been understood as the key section of the Constitution governing capital punishment, and it has been interpreted to apply to murders committed by mentally competent adults.

More than 90% of presidents and prime ministers are men, as are nearly all corporate executives. In some areas of culture, men arguably dominate (e.g., finance, technology, film, sports). But that reality is changing?and rather rapidly. In fact, although men cluster at the top of worldwide culture, they also cluster at the bottom. Men are far more likely to be in jail, be estranged from their children or to commit suicide.

We live in a technological age in which science dominates our thinking and offers solutions to many of our fundamental problems. We depend on science and hold this discipline of human knowledge higher than we hold others (e.g., history, literature). At the end of the Scientific Revolution (the 17th century), Sir Isaac Newton synthesized the work of others with his own original thinking, and produced a compressive understanding of the laws of the physical world. We owe him much [. . .]

In the early days of December in 1983, I received a call in my office from my father in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He shared with me the tragedy of my 23-year-old brother?s suicide. My brother knew Jesus as His Savior, but struggled much of his life with severe depression. At the low point in one of those cycles of depression, he took his life. As a family, we asked the typical questions: ?Why? What could we have done to prevent this? Why did we not see the signs? Why did we miss them?? Guilt, questioning, doubt in God?s goodness and grace naturally followed. These were some of the most difficult days of my life. But those days drove me to a deeper exploration of God?s goodness and His grace.

The role of evangelical Protestant Christianity in the development of America has been profound. The linkage between the First Great Awakening and the decision for independence from Great Britain is incontrovertible. Consequently, the desire for both political liberty and religious liberty energized the independence movement (see Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution). Evangelical Christianity therefore maintained its location at American culture?s center until the waves of immigration began in the late 19th and into the early 20th centuries, when Protestant evangelicalism competed with Roman Catholicism and Judaism for the cultural center. Into the 20th century, especially after the immigration laws were changed in the 1960s, new religious faiths entered American culture, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, among others.