According to a 2017 Pew Research poll, 45% of millennial members of one of the country’s most conservative religious groups — those born between 1981 and 1996 — favor same-sex marriage, compared to 23% of Evangelicals born before 1981.
Now, according to data compiled by author and political scientist Ryan Burge, the average 50-year-old Catholic or mainline denomination Protestant has parents and children who are fairly politically independent, while atheists of all ages tend to lean Democrat. In short, his research shows that each successive generation of Evangelicals is getting more liberal.
Alex McFarland of American Family Radio's "Exploring the Word" program says younger Evangelicals have not been taught that their faith and their vote should have a biblical connection.
"Most people that have come up through youth ministry or have been won to Christ in the last 10 years, they've been in churches that either were utterly silent on political issues, or they were discipled under the false dichotomy of either you are a Christian living for heaven, or you're invested in the world trying to save America," McFarland submits.
He says Christians should bring their faith into the voting booth – not be married to any political party or candidate, but inform their vote on biblical issues.
"We've had a quarter-century of ministers that have really in some ways dumbed down what it means to be a disciple," the apologist laments. "There's not always the integration of scripture in one's life, much less principled positions about government and culture."
McFarland goes on to note that one rarely sees a kid go off to college and slowly become more conservative. The law of entropy, he says, applies to matters of faith as well as to physics: Left to its own, a Christian's faith will naturally descend into the chaos of liberalism.
"The world drifts leftward for the same reason that gardens get weeds, water goes stagnant, and leaky roofs eventually fall in," he concludes. "It's just letting things run their course rather than working to make things better."
