the New Pantagruel

Christian College Professor Flunks Christian Worldview Tests

by Jack Heller

take online tests. If I were a Led Zeppelin song, which song would I be? (“Kashmir”) Which character from “The Simpsons” would I be? (Marge Simpson) Which character from Shakespeare’s tragedies do I most resemble? (Coriolanus, but that result may be skewed by the fact that I’ve studied him extensively.) What’s my IQ? (I’m not telling.)

I also do not have a Christian worldview. I have taken both of the free online Christian worldview tests, one from the Nehemiah Institute and one offered by WorldviewWeekend.com.¹ According to WorldviewWeekend.com, there are five possible ratings: Strong Biblical Worldview, Moderate Biblical Worldview, Secular Humanist Worldview, Socialist Worldview, and Communist/Marxist/Socialist/Secular Humanist Worldview. (I kid you not.) From WorldviewWeekend.com, my score was a 37 out of a possible 170 points, 21%, Socialist. As pitiful as that is, my score from the Nehemiah Institute was even worse, -43. The Nehemiah Institute has only four worldview categories–Biblical Theism, Moderate Christian, Secular Humanism, and Socialism–so I am in its bottom group. The Nehemiah Institute concludes that “help is needed in developing a Biblical understanding,” and WorldviewWeekend.com offers a seven-point plan of action “to improve [my] biblical worldview,” including reading a book with its title misspelled No Retreasts, No Reserves, No Regreats.

I am currently an assistant professor of English at a Midwestern Christian college, a member institution in the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). I do not dismiss my score on a Christian worldview test–as I would being identified with Marge rather than Maggie Simpson–because CCCU publications often identify the development of a Christian worldview as one of the missions of its member institutions. Furthermore, each of these tests is used by Christian high schools and homeschoolers as a bona fide assessment of the students’ faith understanding, so there is a strong likelihood that a number of incoming evangelical freshmen will have had their views influenced by those who have created these tests. And if these students evaluate their professors–even at Christian colleges–on the basis of the content of these tests, as they are encouraged to do by some apologetics ministries, then they begin college predisposed to reject rather than to think about ideas which other Christians may hold consistently with their faiths. On course evaluations, good professors have paid for their digressions from the students’ beliefs.²

These tests have gained in significance in the mainstream of the American evangelical subculture. The resolution presented to the Southern Baptist Convention this summer calling on its members to remove their children from “government schools” argued that “the Nehemiah Institute has discovered through its extensive surveys of student attitudes and beliefs that acceptance of a secular humanist worldview by Christian children attending government schools has increased dramatically over the last fifteen years.” (The resolution was defeated in committee before it reached a floor vote.) The Nehemiah Institute’s materials have received endorsements from Paige Patterson, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and Ted Baehr of the Christian Film and Television Commission. WorldviewWeekend.com has done even better for itself in getting endorsements and co-workers from Josh and Sean McDowell, Norm Geisler, David Limbaugh, Erwin Lutzer, Kirk Cameron, Tim Wildmon, Probe Ministries, and Summit Ministries.³ The president of WorldviewWeekend.com, Brannon Howse, is the “education reporter for the Michael Reagan Show”; as Reagan’s guest host during the week of his father’s funeral, Howse has interviewed Jerry Falwell and former attorney general Ed Meese. The Worldview Weekend conferences are held at Christian high schools and churches around the country.

It is not my intention to justify all of the answers I chose on both of these tests. Nor is it my intention to prove that I have a Christian worldview. The paradoxical premise of the Southern Baptist resolution suggests that it is possible to be both Christian and secular humanist, so, while I do not believe that I am a socialist, let others interpret my answers as they would like. What concerns me is my sneaking suspicion that these tests are becoming a measure for assessing whether individuals are indeed Christians who are growing in their understanding of the faith. I would suggest that neither test offers an accurate of assessment of a person’s Christian worldview and that they may mislead a person as to what a Christian worldview is.

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