America’s Survival Depends on Another Spiritual Revival
If headlines are to be believed, America at the dawn of 2015 is a divided nation. From violent and lawless protests over alleged racial injustice by law enforcement and attacks on time-honored marriage to the dismissal of the rule of law in favor of judicial and executive activism and the attempted marginalization of voices that hold to objective morality, warring factors are only partially hidden behind the guise of national peace.
And while many pin hopes for a prosperous future on the leaders of Capitol Hill or the occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, religion and culture expert Dr. Alex McFarland says something far different from government action is need if America is to survive as a nation.
“America became a nation, and then a great nation, not merely because some charismatic leaders got together and decided to declare independence from England,” McFarland said. “The very roots of our civil order extend into the bedrock of the rule of law, moral law, and the law of nature and nature’s God. Acknowledgement of this God, and of the natural law stemming from him, was requisite to the establishment of America. Our nation didn’t emerge from a moral vacuum in which morality is self-determined, the rule of law optional and God not permitted in the public arena. Our liberties have a source, and eliminating the source of our liberties will unquestionably eliminate the existence of our liberties.”
As examples of threats to liberties, McFarland pointed to the increasing intensity of institutionalized discrimination against those who hold to a belief in absolute moral law, the rising disregard for the rule of law and widespread acceptance and even commendation of those who disregard it, and the growing belief that our liberties can be safeguarded apart from an acknowledgement of God. In fact, he added, many claim our liberties necessarily entail freedom from God, a claim that would have been abhorrent to our nation’s founders. McFarland said the answer, though, lies not with Washington but with the church.
“Our nation did not rise from rabble revolutionaries; it rose from men and women who held firmly to God’s law and believed in the liberties that come from Him and Him alone,” McFarland continued. “Even those who didn’t profess faith in Jesus Christ still, by and large, respected the morals of Scripture. No true student of history can deny that a driving force behind the American Revolution was the Great Awakening of the early 1700s, which swept the nation with a spiritual revival that led to her independence. And no true student of history can deny that a driving force behind many of the social reforms of the 19th century was the Second Great Awakening of the 1800s, which helped galvanize efforts including the abolition of slavery.
“We fool ourselves to think that America can continue as the beacon of liberty and justice apart from the pursuit of the source of liberty and justice: God. But while it’s all too easy to lay the blame elsewhere for the problems our nation is facing, the truth is that it’s the church that must step up. We have become too satisfied with the status quo—doing little beyond simply stating our concerns. But complacency does not become a people in pursuit of God. The church in America is in need of another spiritual great awakening if our nation is to survive the onslaught against her very foundations. This is not hyperbole but reality. Our nation’s survival depends on the church’s awakening.”
