Americans Belief About Easter

A few Sundays back our pastor asked us to think about our Christian cause. I had never though of my service to Christ from a cause perspective, but as I meditated on Andy's words I realized that I did have a cause: the deity of Christ. I have long recognized that Satan's attack on Christendom had shifted from trying to deny the existence of Jesus to denying the deity of Jesus. Instead of saying there never was a man called Jesus, Satan is now leading mankind to acknowledge the existence of Jesus but not as God incarnate: not the messiah, our savior. My cause is to fight against this Satanic doctrine with every ounce of Christian strength I have.

To this end, let us take a look at America and the "Easter" season we are about to celebrate. A recent study by the Barna Group explored how Americans define the Easter holiday. Barna researchers asked a nationwide representative sampling of American adults how they would describe what Easter means to them, personally. The results indicated that most Americans consider Easter to be a religious holiday, but substantially fewer Americans identify the resurrection of Jesus as the underlying meaning for Easter. When a people can be lead to separate the resurrection of Jesus from the Easter celebration it is quite evident that Satan's attack on the deity of Jesus is meeting with success.

In general, most American recognize Easter as a religious holiday but only a minority of Americans relate Jesus to Easter. In the survey,

* 67% of Americans mention some type of religious element;

* 42% of Americans said that the meaning of Easter was the resurrection of Jesus; and

* 2% of Americans said that they would describe Easter as the most important holiday of their faith.

A few Americans have absolutely no idea what Easter is all about. In fact,

* 2% of Americans said that Easter is about the "birth of Christ";

* 2% indicated it was about the "rebirth of Jesus";

* 1% said it is a celebration of "the second coming of Jesus"; and

* 3% described Easter as a celebration of spring or a pagan holiday.

Most disturbing is the impact time is having on our understanding of Christ's sacrifice for us. The survey revealed an increasingly secular attitude in the younger generations. The 3 main generations response to viewing Easter as a religious holiday was as follows:

* 73% of the Boomer generation (ages 45 to 63);

* 66% of the Busters (ages 26 to 44); and

* 58% of the Mosaics (ages 18 to 25).

Those who identify Easter explicitly as a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus were:

* 73% of evangelicals;

* 60% of large church attendees;

* 55% of born again Christians;

* 54% of active churchgoers;

* 54% of upscale adults;

* 51% of Protestants; and

* 37% of Catholics.

Yet, of all these "Christians" only 2% said that they would describe Easter as the most important holiday of their faith. How in the world can you be a Christian and not consider the resurrection of Jesus as the most important event in the history of mankind?

The survey also revealed a shocking gap between political conservatives and liberals. When it comes to recognizing that Easter is a celebration of the resurrection:

* 53% on the political "right" view Easter as a celebration of Christ's resurrection compared to

* 29% on the political "left".

David Kinnaman, the Barna researcher who directed the project, said that although most Americans continue to view Easter as a religious holiday a great deal of them do not understand what Easter really means. The Barna survey also revealed that among those who celebrate Easter, because of the resurrection of Christ, there appears to be little zeal for inviting non-churched friends to the Easter service.

Every born-again Christian is a new creation and we have all been given the ministry of reconciliation, which is that God offers people salvation through Jesus Christ. Still, statistics prove that Satan has been, and still is, effective in separating Jesus from the Easter celebration. To separate Jesus from Easter is to deny His resurrection; to deny the resurrection of Jesus is to deny His deity. Perhaps it is the Believers lack of commitment to the great commission of Jesus that is making Satan's attack on the deity of Jesus so successful. Every new creation in Christ must loudly proclaim that there is but one God the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and that there is but one way to God and that is through the Jesus the Christ.