This is a superficial use of the data, ignoring the reasons for the apparent discrepancy between atheists and born agains. For instance, merely looking at the divorce numbers overlooks the fact that atheists have less divorce because they marry less often; they tend to substitute cohabitation for marriage, and those relationships have a shorter duration than marriages.

Another common error in such arguments is that of assuming that being Christian is synonymous with being morally perfect. As any thinking Christian will admit, we remain sinners – aware of our moral failings, convicted of our moral imperfections, and seeking to raise our game to a higher level. I am not aware of any mature Christians who claim moral superiority over other people – that would be judgmental, which itself is a moral failing – but know many who lament the fact that Americans (be they atheist, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish or otherwise) are not living up to a higher moral standard.

Another dimension of the atheist arguments I have recently read is that there is no standard to live up to; morally, in that view, is a personal choice, based on their determination of what serves their needs best. To me, that’s really scary since that renders murder, rape and other atrocities morally viable if so determined by personal preference.

It is abundantly easy to identify social statistics that support any desired perspective. What’s harder is to offer a compelling, comprehensive and viable worldview that does not have God’s moral standards at the center.

Because I am a professional researcher, I wanted to get everything just right; it’s a matter of professional pride. So I read the cover letter carefully. I read the simple questionnaire form a couple of times to be sure that I understood what they wanted, to see if professionally I could learn anything from their questionnaire construction, and also to address my surprise at just how short the form has become. (The Bureau now supplements the decadal census with massive monthly surveys, allowing them to reduce the census questionnaire to just a handful of questions – much shorter than the versions used in previous cycles.)

I filled in the information about myself and my wife without problems. Smooth sailing. Quick and simple. But then I got to person #3 in our household, our oldest daughter. She is adopted from Guatemala. Under question 4 – a question about origins – marking her down as Hispanic was a no-brainer. But the related query, question 5, stumped me. It’s about racial identity. The options provided were white, black, American Indian, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian, Other Pacific Islander, and Other Asian. Nothing that fits anyone from Guatemala. Or Mexico, the nation that has provided the U.S. with the largest number of non-native residents. In fact, there was no category that would describe American citizens of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origins who came from any country located in Central or South America.

It made no sense that there’d be categories provided for groups that represent less than one-half of one percent of the population, but no category for those who represent 16% of the population. And yes, I understand that the Bureau will combine the two variables of origin and race to create a Hispanic origin category, but without instructions, how will the more than 50 million Hispanic residents of the U.S. complete that second question? Will many of them check one of the boxes provided, assuming they apparently belong to one of those groups since infinitesimally small racial groups had their own category to mark? Surely the uber-funded Census Bureau, with the nation’s professional and scholarly talent pool available to draw upon, and a 10-year window in which to create their six question survey, would not have developed a confusing, incomplete question. Especially with trillions of dollars at risk. Clearly, 30 years of experience and advanced degrees in survey research notwithstanding, I was missing something.

And the problem was compounded by my realization that I’d face the same dilemma for person #4 of our household, our next-oldest daughter, who was also adopted from Guatemala.
Stymied, I called the Census Bureau. First, I got the recorded messages which walked me through the process. However, the pre-recorded explanation did not address my concern, so I indicated a need to speak to a representative. Once a live Bureau staffer came on the line I explained my dilemma. She offered to read me the same statement that I had just heard from the automated voice. After I respectfully declined the offer, she indicated that she was not allowed to tell me how to answer the question. I explained my frustration with that, knowing that real money was on the line here – how my tax dollars (and trillions of others) would be allocated according to the percentages emanating from the Census statistics. She was well-trained, though, and refused to help me beyond telling me she was not allowed to assist me in figuring out how to answer their question.

So I hung up feeling as if my concern had not been heard or cared about – which, of course, is nothing new when dealing with the federal bureaucracy. And for my two daughters from Guatemala, I half-heartedly checked the “Other” box and wrote in “Hispanic/Mayan.”
What a bizarre situation. Robert Groves, who heads the Bureau, is a very competent, experienced, and respected researcher. I doubt that he would let a gaffe of this magnitude go unrepaired, if he had the ability to make revisions. Perhaps the questionnaire contains this unfortunate question because the most dreaded event in the life of a researcher occurred: questionnaire design by committee. Departmental committees. House committees. Senate committees.

In the end, the bad news is that there will inevitably be a lot of inaccurate information collected and reported from our government’s $15 billion tax-funded research project, resulting in inappropriate financial allocations of our other tax dollars. But the good news is that I did not have to wrestle with this issue over person #5 in our household, our youngest daughter, who was adopted from Russia. I’m pretty sure she is “white.” And the best news of all may be that I am not the Director of the Census Bureau, forced to have political committees approve the art of survey research and having to deal with complaints from people like me.

For instance, England has a government agency – the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) – whose job is to determine whether or not someone should be barred from working with children. This vetting process applies to volunteers as well as paid staff. Each paid individual who will work with children at a church must pay ISA a one-time registration fee (about $100) to be approved for their job by the agency. (Volunteers must go through the same registration process but are exempt from the fee.)

Approval is based upon making it through the screening process without raising any concerns such as pertinent criminal convictions, other cautions listed in their official records, or additional red flags raised by police or intelligence sources. Any concerns that do surface cause the person’s file to go to the agency’s examination board, which will determine the acceptability of the candidate. The files of all individuals who are approved are then continuously updated through automatic database searches. Further, any suspicious or inappropriate behavior around children that is observed by or submitted to an employer must be reported in a timely manner to the regulatory agency.

Reflecting the seriousness with which the Brits take the health and well-being of their children, these regulations will apply not only to churches but to any organization that deals with children – health care, educational, athletic, social service and faith-based organizations.

In my own travels I have found that the lengths to which churches go to protect children varies substantially. Even in states where the laws are fairly rigorous, compliance tends to be inconsistent. There are a couple of important insights I gleaned from some research the Barna Group conducted on this matter. First, the safety and well-being of their children is one of the most important attractions to parents who visit a church. If the ministry does not impress the parents with its commitment to ensuring the security and care for their child, the parents are unlikely to return to that church, regardless of their reaction to the church’s ministry to adults.

Second, we discovered that churches that are most effective at helping parents to raise spiritually healthy and active children place such security matters at the head of its priority list. We saw that such churches typically go well beyond whatever the government statutes require in an honest effort to do “everything possible” to make sure that children are well taken care of while they are under the umbrella of the church.

Think about what you have seen or experienced related to the ministry to children at churches you have attended or visited. How adequately do you think we protect our children? What could we do better? Is there anything significant to adopt from the British approach?