Will Believers Continue to Sit Back and Just Take This Cultural Upheaval?

“There are bound to be tens of millions of Americans watching these atrocities, watching their country being seized from them by anarchists, racists, children of the professional class and their cowardly, self-hating parents,” writes Rod Dreher in The American Conservative.

“They’re watching while cities burn, and the police stand down. They are watching their fathers—the fathers of their country—spat on by the mobs of demons. They are not going to sit back and take this forever. Something is coming.”

Founded on the principle of self-evidence, the truth of the latter assertion quite literally goes without saying. It is reflected in Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion, formulated in his work Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis of 1687, that for every action [force] in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Something bigger than George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks and Abraham Lincoln is going on in America, made plain by the defacing of the Lincoln Memorial last week, a monument built in honor of a president who fought to free 19th-century blacks from the sin of racism. It was none other than Abraham Lincoln himself who “issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and [then] fought for the constitutional amendments that codified freedom for African Americans [into law].”

It would be most revealing to find out what a random sampling of everyday African American moms and pops thinks of the mindless malcontents, radical racists and ne’er-do-well nihilists destroying and defacing the nation. Contrary to what the mass media would lead us to expect, these coordinated incidents nationwide, backed by massive funding, which includes pallets of bricks dropped the night before on protest routes, may well drive African American voters in November back to the party of Lincoln …

Proverbs 2:12-15 offers a recipe for dealing with the infernal insurrection targeting American cities. Solomon advised that spiritual wisdom, biblical knowledge, discernment and good sense will “deliver you from the way of the evil man, from the man who speaks perverse things, from those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness; who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the perversity of the wicked; whose ways are crooked, and who are devious in their paths.”

Jewish Hebrew scholar Michael V. Fox adds that “the wicked not only do evil for the sake of its supposed rewards, they positively enjoy it.” Presenting a psychological insight into the proclivities of the wicked currently fanned out across America’s cities, Proverbs 4:16 reads: “For they do not sleep unless they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away unless they cause some to fall.”

“The wicked,” stresses Dr. Fox, “have a need to cause harm; their ‘peace of mind’ depends upon it.”

There is the danger of becoming so accustomed to living with vice, even regarding it as legitimate or virtuous, that we forget how perniciously malignant it is. As to the seductiveness of sin, Alexander Pope [1688-1744], England’s foremost poet of the early 18th century and second only to Shakespeare as the most quoted writer in the English language, explains how easily man is drawn to it: “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We must first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

So what do we do? Tucker Carlson reached his conclusion here:

“Our Republican leaders don’t believe they have the authority [to confront the mob], they don’t believe they’re legitimate. They don’t see the threat, they don’t want to see the threat because they know that they can’t face the mob.

“They know that they’re too weak. And so they offer trinkets and hope that the mob will go away. But it won’t. Mobs can’t be sated.

“We thought Republicans understood that; that’s why we supported them. But crisis has revealed the truth, now we know who they are, it could not be clearer, and now it’s time to find new leaders.”

We would take Tucker Carlson’s counsel one step further.

The fleeing from the showdown with those violating and defiling our country by Chief Justice John Roberts and newly minted Justice Neil Gorsuch has exposed a chasm of immeasurable depth between current Republican milquetoast leaders and Republican social movement conservatives.

Daniel Horowitz, senior editor of Conservative Review, cuts to the chase: “It is impossible to comprehend how much damage the Supreme Court has done to our values, society, sovereignty, rule of law and self-governance since the Warren Era. Now hold that thought and consider that 20 of 28 justices since 1952 were nominated by GOP presidents.”

What’s being described in political parlance is the faintly visible footprint in the culture of American Christendom over the last 100 years. “Politicians are actors performing a script that is written by the audience.” In these words the American political theorist, moralist and the father of American conservatism, Russell Amos Kirk [1918-1994] outlined the political reality of modern Christendom in being vanquished from the public square and culture.

The audience controls the stage and Christians are nowhere to be found.

In short, there are very real consequences to having allowed secularists—those in rebellion against God—to imbue the minds of America’s youth with their profane propaganda for the last 75 years. Their devotees and descendants now control every cultural lever of power and influence in the nation, as well as making up the majority of secularized, indoctrinated U.S. Supreme Court Justices and Courts of Appeals judges.

The best and brightest of the Federalist Society—that is, the “conservative list” assembled for the president to review for future judicial picks—has left the movement conservatives in the lurch. As fully befitting the word “conservative,” the “list” ought to give preference to judges who have served as law clerks to Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas or Sam Alito.

Contemporary Christendom’s emphasis on butts, budgets and buildings, while the culture falls apart, has all the appearances of “having a form of godliness but denying its power.” Jesus’ ekklesia must be moved out of the building into the marketplace if America is to survive.

Christians have to take their game to the next level. Preaching, orating and lecturing are not denominations of political currency, in contrast to how many votes can be brought to the table. In addition, prayer should be restored.

Still, it’s not too late for Gideons and Rahabs to start entering the public square. {eoa}

David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.