Study shows young evangelical Christians defy cultural trend

Young evangelical Christians are defying America’s sexual liberalism despite predictions to the contrary, two Southern Baptist ethicists said in an op-ed based on a new study.

Some Americans outside conservative Christianity have forecast young evangelicals soon will reject the church’s standards and join the culture in its liberal views on such issues as same-sex “marriage,” premarital sex and gender identity, Russell D. Moore and Andrew Walker wrote July 9 in a piece on National Review Online. But research by a University of Texas sociologist indicates otherwise, Moore and Walker reported.

A study by Mark Regnerus, an author and associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas-Austin, suggests “churchgoing evangelical Christians are retaining orthodox views on biblical sexuality despite the shifts in broader American culture,” Moore and Walker wrote.

Moore is president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), and Walker is the ERLC’s director of policy studies.

Other results

Among the study’s findings, according to Moore and Walker, are:

• Only 11 percent of evangelicals between the ages of 18 and 39 say they support same-sex “marriage,” while a “solid majority” of self-identified atheists, agnostics, liberal Catholics and liberal Protestations back it.
• About 6 percent of evangelicals support abortion rights, while more than 70 percent of their nonbelieving peers agree with such rights.
• Only 5 percent of evangelicals believe cohabitation by unmarried couples is acceptable, but about 70 percent of those who are religiously unaffiliated or consider themselves “spiritual but not religious” agree with cohabitation.

The study’s results are both encouraging and unsurprising, given evangelicals’ identification with Christ, Moore and Walker wrote. The research suggests younger evangelicals “aren’t hewing to the culture’s expectation that they conform to its values,” they wrote.

“That’s a welcome reality, especially given the significant cultural pressures that young Christians face in today’s culture.”