Reviewing its own data from 2022 to 2026, the Cultural Research Center compared three surveys in which Generation Z was asked about Christianity and faith, church attendance and Bible reading, and personal beliefs about issues such as marriage and capitalism.
Gen Z is generally defined as people born between 1997 and 2012. That generation is known for only 1% holding a biblical worldview while attending school, raising a family, and voting.
Among the CRC findings, Gen Z showed a 10-point increase in those who agree they were created by God but are sinners in need of salvation. That number jumped from 40% to 50% since 2022.
That positive jump is countered by a liberal view on same-sex marriage. A huge jump, 18 percent, consider one man-one woman marriage a personal choice.
Another alarming negative jump was young adults who prefer socialism to capitalism, which jumped from 22% to 39%.
Describing the survey’s mixed results, Dr. George Barna told “The Core” program it’s not wrong to hope for a spiritual revival to break out among young people, but the spiritual climate in America is mixed and complicated.
“We have some positive movement,” he observed, “but we also have some counterbalancing negative movement.”
Barna, who became a household name for polling and research, is director of the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University.
Looking over the entire Gen Z survey, which includes 32 total indicators, Barna said professional researchers who study people for a living look at more than what a person states or claims in a poll.
“We know that you do what you believe,” Barna told show host Walker Wildmon.
That relates to Gen Z and religious faith, Barna said, because occasionally reading a Bible doesn’t matter if your worldview hasn’t shifted greatly, too. Unless your personal behavior changes, which Barna calls a “foundational shift,” people tend to drift back to previous behaviors and habits that are more comfortable.
“I think that's what we're seeing here in America, where we've seen a small, positive shift in Bible reading among young adults,” he advised.
That slight shift hasn’t resulted in a jump in Sunday morning church attendance, for example, he advised.
The survey numbers showed a five-percent jump in young adults who said they are attending church more often than before, but the number of “never” attendees remained unchanged over four years.
Asked about discussing hot-button topics with a Gen Z person, Barna recommended the “Socratic” method of posing questions that make a person think rather than arguing.
Calling your Gen Z family member an “idiot” for supporting socialist Zohran Mamdani, for example, he cautioned, is not how you win them over.
“Rather than accusing them of stuff right off the bat, it's gonna take longer to get to the conclusion,” Barna advised. “It's gonna be done in that relational context, where we're able to trade on the trust factor that hopefully we've built with them.”
