Survey: Parents Rely on Personal Experience Over Biblical Guidance

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Although most parents say they are trying to improve their parenting skills, few look to the Bible or church for guidance, a new study shows.

A majority of parents (60 percent) heavily rely on their own experiences growing up for parenting guidance but only one-fifth say they receive a lot of guidance from sacred text such as the Bible or Koran, the latest study by LifeWay Research found. Even fewer parents (15 percent) look to church as a source of guidance for parenting.

The vast majority (96 percent) agree they consistently try to be better parents but more than 6 in 10 completely ignore parenting seminars and over half don’t care for books by religious parenting experts, according to the study.

“Parents claim they are trying hard to be better parents but they are not welcoming outside guidance or advice,” said Scott McConnell, associate director of LifeWay Research, the research arm of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“The only source of advice that a majority of parents use a lot is their own experience. It’s as if parents are collectively reverting to a popular toddler saying, ‘I will do it myself!’” said McConnell, co-author of a new book called The Parent Adventure.

Source

Survey – Americans Say Eternal Life Is Not Exclusively For Those Who Accept Christ

Most American religious believers, including most Christians, say eternal life is not exclusively for those who accept Christ as their savior, a new survey finds.

Of the 65% of people who held this open view of heaven’s gates, 80% named at least one non-Christian group — Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists or people with no religion at all — who may also be saved, according to a new survey released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

This means 52% of Christians do not agree with the doctrines many religions teach, particularly conservative denominations.

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, calls the findings “a theological crisis for American evangelicals. They represent at best a misunderstanding of the Gospel and at worst a repudiation of the Gospel.”

This survey on salvation is a follow-up to a highly controversial finding in Pew’s Religious Landscape survey, released earlier this year. It detailed the religious demographics, beliefs and behavior of 35,000 U.S. adults surveyed in 2007.

Pastors, theologians and Christian commentators complained that the Landscape Survey question on access to eternal life — which 70% said was open to many faiths — was too vague. “Did people mean only other religions that are similar to their own, like Baptists grudgingly admitting Lutherans might go to heaven?” said Pew research fellow Greg Smith.

So Pew revisited the topic in a new survey of 2,905 adults, conducted July 31-Aug. 10, with more specific questions. Smith says the new findings reinforce the original finding that “Americans really are thinking quite broadly.”

Christian believers who named at least one non-Christian faith that could lead to salvation included 34% of white evangelicals, even though evangelical doctrine stresses that salvation is possible only through Jesus.

via Source – USATODAY.com.