Summit Ministries

About Summit

About Summit Ministries

Summit Ministries® is an educational Christian ministry whose very existence is a response to our current post-Christian culture. Today, countless Christian youth have fallen victim to the popular ideas of our modern world. Most have adopted these ideas into their own worldview, while still others go on to renounce their Christian faith altogether.

Summit views its role in God's kingdom as a catalyst to counteract this alarming trend. However, our ultimate goal supersedes simply training. As Christians are challenged to stand strong in their faith and defend truth, they will also be equipped to have a positive influence on the society in which they live.

About Summit

Our World

The statistics below shine a dreadfully bleak light on the current state of the world and Christianity. Not only are large numbers of Christians (and especially Christian youth) abandoning their faith; they are adopting the false ideas presented throughout our culture - Darwinism, naturalism, relativism, postmodernism, pluralism, and many others. Christians have simply not been taught how to develop a comprehensive Christian view of reality or an intelligent biblical defense regarding the fundamental issues of our day.

"Education is the most powerful ally of Humanism [Atheism], and every American public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday Schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?"

— Charles Francis Potter, Humanism: A New Religion, p. 128

A nationwide survey revealed that only 4% of adults in this country use a biblical worldview as the basis of their decision-making. The survey discovered that only 9% of born again Christians have such a perspective on life.[1]

Our World

More college freshmen today describe themselves as liberal than at any time since the Vietnam War, according to a nationwide survey taken during the fall of 2001. 57.9% think gay couples should have the legal right to marry and 29.9% say they are "far left," the highest figure since 1975.[2]

In a national survey, respondents were asked if they believe that moral absolutes are unchanging or whether morals are relative to the circumstances. 64% of Americans adults and 83% of American teens denied moral absolutes. Only 34% of adults and 8% of teens held to an absolute standard of morality. The same national survey found the following among Christians surveyed. 55% of Christian adults and 76% Christian teens denied moral absolutes. Only 32% of Christian adults and 9% of Christian teens held to an absolute standard of morality.[3]

"The basic problem of the Christians in this country...is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals. They have very gradually become disturbed over permissiveness, pornography, the public school, the breakdown of the family, and finally abortion...They have failed to see that all of this has come about due to a shift in a world view—that is, through a fundamental change in the overall way people think and view the world and life as a whole.

— Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, p. 19

Our World

According to findings published in a UCLA dissertation, Dr. Gary Railsback notes that between 30 and 51% of Christians renounce their faith before graduating from college. That means one out of two professing Christian youth are turning their backs on the 18 years of Christian instruction from their homes and churches and embracing the atheistic ideas of their professors.[4]

Each year thousands of Evangelical high school students take the Nehemiah Institute PEERS worldview test, a survey revealing their worldview perspective regarding politics, economics, education, religion, and social issues. Every year since 1988 our Christian students have been answering those questions more and more like Humanists and less and less like Biblical Christians.

Today, the majority of Christian high school students are responding as committed Secular Humanists would respond.

"Nothing short of great Civil War of Values rages today throughout North America. Two sides with vastly differing and incompatible world-views are locked in a bitter conflict that permeates every level of society...the struggle now is for the hearts and minds of the people. It is a war over ideas. And someday soon, I believe, a winner will emerge and the loser will fade from memory. For now, the outcome is very much in doubt."

— Dr. James Dobson, Children at Risk, p. 19–20

[1]  The data in this report are based on a nationwide telephone surveys conducted by the Barna Research Group from its telephone interviewing facility in Ventura, CA. The interviews among a national random sample of 2033 adults were conducted from September through November of 2003.http://www.barna.org/cgi-bin/PagePressRelease.asp?PressReleaseID=154&Reference=D

[2]  The CIRP Freshman Survey, based this year (2001) on responses from 281,064 students at 421 four-year colleges and universities, is the nation's oldest and most comprehensive assessment of student attitudes. It is a joint project of UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute and the American Council on Education, based in Washington, D.C. http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/norms_pr_01.html

[3]  The data in this report are based on two nationwide telephone surveys conducted by the Barna Research Group from its telephone interviewing facility in Ventura, CA. The interviews among a national random sample of 1010 adults were conducted in late October and early November 2001. The interviews among a national random sample of 604 teenagers (ages 13 to 18) were conducted in November 2001.http://www.barna.org/cgi-bin/PagePressRelease.asp?PressReleaseID=106&Reference=C

[4]  Gary Lyle Railsback, "An Exploratory Study of the Religiosity and Related Outcomes Among College Students," Doctoral dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1994.

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