Who determines your gender—you or God? Not long ago, most people dismissed questions like this one as absurd. But in recent years, rapid and alarming changes have taken place in American views on important ethical issues such as gender and sexuality. Ligonier’s 2022 State of Theology survey reveals that nearly half of U.S. adults now believe that gender identity is a matter of personal choice.
With the steady rise of secularism in the United States, it’s tragic yet unsurprising to see so many people embracing the false notion that we, rather than our Creator, have the authority to determine our gender and to alter this identity at will. More disturbing, however, is the finding that 37 percent of professing evangelicals now also think that gender identity is a matter of choice.* These survey results represent an increase of 15 percent in only the last two years.
We asked Ligonier Teaching Fellow Dr. Stephen Nichols to address this finding from the survey. Listen as he speaks on the important relationship between our ethics and our theology.
The rise of unbiblical views among American evangelicals on the subjects of gender and sexuality seems to expose the influence of a secular worldview that is making deeper inroads into the church. These survey results also indicate an urgent need for clear biblical teaching on ethical issues among Christians. We hope the 2022 findings of our State of Theology survey will galvanize the church in its calling to make disciples, teaching them to observe all that the Lord has commanded.
* In this survey, “evangelicals” were defined by LifeWay Research as people who strongly agreed with the following four statements:
- The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.
- It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.
- Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.
- Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.
