Reviving family as ‘the foundational social institution created and ordained by God’

OPINION:

One of the most surprising findings from the America’s Values Study by Dr. George Barna is the stunning consensus around the importance of family to the overwhelming majority of Americans.

No matter their age, demographics or political affiliation, a full 80% of American adults consider family to be a core value — by far the highest-rated of 48 unique values measured in the study.

In fact, 61% of Americans identified family as a value they would be willing to fight for or even die to protect or preserve.

Happiness ranks second, identified as a core value by seven out of 10 Americans — but with only 35% of Americans saying they would fight for or die to protect it. Other hot-button contemporary issues — justice, personal freedom, tolerance and economic equality — lag behind.

According to Dr. Barna, a veteran researcher who’s spent four decades measuring trends in American faith and culture, family remains the dominant lens through which we understand life. It is a constant, foundational element of how we define ourselves as Americans that connects us with our history, enriches how we live our everyday lives and carries our future promise.

Americans deeply value family. But this unity quickly dissipates when the discussion turns to how family should be defined. And this raises the question of whether the family can remain a core American value when its definition in the broader culture is contested and no longer reflects God’s design and purpose.

As Dr. Barna explains, Americans may agree about the importance of family, but we want to define family on our own terms and are willing to fight and sacrifice to enjoy a robust family experience of our choosing.

Today, we are witnessing the definition of family locked in a battle of worldviews.

The effort to redefine the family has been going on for quite some time. For example, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (in)famously called for “Abolition of the family!” in the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

Today, redefinition takes different forms. Consider arguments against childbearing in the heat of climate-change hysteria. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a few years ago put it this way: “Our planet is going to hit disaster if we don’t turn this ship around and so it’s basically like, there’s a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult. And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question, you know, ’Is it okay to still have children?’”

Social engineers, progressives and secular intellectuals have long taken aim at reconstituting the family — “from Plato, to Rousseau to B.F. Skinner to Hillary Clinton,” as Nancy Pearcey points out in “Total Truth.” And today, we see it in debates over transgenderism, gender fluidity and in falling birth rates.

From a biblical worldview perspective, family is the foundational social institution created and ordained by God. It provides the rich context for human flourishing and full expression of human nature. The foundation of the family is the marriage relationship between husband and wife. And from there arises the context for raising children. We see these in Genesis 1: 27-28 — when God creates human beings as male and female in His image, then commands them to be fruitful and multiply.

God places children in families for nurturing and discipline, and to learn and apply God’s truth (i.e., the biblical worldview) as they grow. It’s where they learn about God’s love and also to love others through family relationships. It’s also where children develop their faith and learn to be disciples of Jesus.

But with the loss of biblical truth in America — Dr. Barna reports that a mere 4% of U.S. adults have a biblical worldview — what’s to stop us from redefining the family?

Sadly, lost in all this redefinition is the stable, deeply shared understanding and experience of family from a biblical worldview perspective — an understanding that has formed the bedrock of human experience for millennia and has anchored American society since before its founding.

And no matter how much we say we value family, the family today is on shaky ground and in desperate need of revival that only God’s truth can accomplish.

The challenge is to move beyond sentimentality and cultural pressure, and to winsomely and courageously work to restore God’s good and glorious intention for the family.

• Tracy F. Munsil, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, Publisher of Arizona Christian University Press and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University. The America’s Values Study: A National Survey of Core Values in the United States 2022 and other worldview research from Dr. George Barna, Director of Research at the Cultural Research Center, is available on center’s website at: www.culturalresearchcenter.com.