Can America Be Governed Without a Set of Common Values?

Earl Warren (1891-1974) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as the 14th chief justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1953 to 1969. He was born in Los Angeles and reared in Bakersfield, California, by Swedish and Norwegian immigrant parents.

Following graduation from Kern County High School in 1908, Warren enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley and received his B.A. degree in 1912, his J.D. degree from Berkeley School of Law in 1914 and was admitted to the California bar in 1915.

Warren, like many children of immigrants, found success not by accident but through hard work, perseverance, learning, studying and sacrifice. Remarkably, Warren served as governor of California from 1943 to 1953.

In 1953, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower (1890-1969) appointed Warren to the chief justice position. Thus, unknowingly, began America’s experiment to determine whether culture can survive and flourish when severed from the biblical founding by America’s Founding Fathers through the 17th and 18th centuries.

With its liberal edicts and moral abominations over a 13-year period, the Warren court (1953-1969) distinguished itself as “the most liberal Supreme Court in history.” President Eisenhower supposedly admitted later that nominating Warren to the court was “the biggest damn-fool mistake I ever made.”

Nevertheless, Warren was appointed and confirmed by the United States Senate in 1954. Looking back on his schismatic tenancy brings up the key question whether Western civilization can be governed without a set of common values and a baseline to structure and order freedom.

The American founders didn’t think so, arguing that virtue of character is a key component of sustainable liberty. “No garment is so resplendent as that of a holy character,” as Charles Spurgeon put it.

Os Guinness (born 1941), English author and social critic, accentuates the indisputable link existing between virtue of character and freedom: “The plain fact is that no free and lasting civilization anywhere in history has so far been built on atheist foundations.

“A culture with no claims on its members—or curbs on their desires—would be a culture with no future. Freedom requires a firm refusal of what is false, what is bad, what is excessive, what is ugly and, above all, what a person is not and should never try to become. When everything is tolerable, nothing will be true; and when nothing is true, no one will be free.”

The current debate in public education on the illusory existence of more than two genders should give parents of young children cause for concern. Dr. Bruce K. Waltke, the foremost living authority on the wisdom literature found in the Old Testament, takes the debate a step further: “The spread of homosexuality in America in less than a generation validates the danger of progressive hardening of sin.”

With Christians making the first step in the early 17th century, America’s founders laid down the nation’s biblically based foundation, as exemplified, among others, by the fact that all but a few of the first 123 colleges and universities were set up as distinctly Christian, by origin and purpose.

A simple perusal of the charters and constitutions of the 13 original states—Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland—will easily prove that the Founding Fathers established, by design, a Christian nation.

Modern America, however, is woefully morally adrift, having become unmoored from its biblical anchors under the fateful influence of godless secularism. Through confiscation of public education, the schooling system has turned into a breeding ground and grooming hatchery of prepubescent and adolescent boys and girls, priming them for a life of unmitigated discontent and distress.

Despite public education verging on self-destruction, secular government bureaucrats remain fixed on barring spiritual values from public schools and the Ten Commandments from courthouses and government buildings.

Dennis Peacocke notices an unspoken reality in the unraveling of America: “One thing is certain, virtually no one in ‘the real world’ expects Christians to be a significant contributing factor in the process [creating a counteraction to secularism].” American Christendom’s current model of butts in the seats, massive budgets and multiple buildings and campuses may actually be a detriment to a fourth Great Awakening.

Consequently, American Christendom’s next leaders will have inherited a grave situation, left untouched and unsolved by the last two or three generations of Christian leaders. In his remarkable “Of God and Men,” A.W. Tozer notes that “Religious leaders who continue mechanically to expound the Scriptures without regard to the current religious situation are no better than the scribes and lawyers of Jesus’ day who faithfully parroted the Law without the remotest notion of what was going on around them spiritually.”

A collapse of culture and loss of freedom is where this leads unless God’s under-shepherds take action.

Solomon laid out in Proverbs 4:14-16 (AMP) how to deal with the bane of contemporary public education: “Do not enter the path of the wicked, And do not go the way of evil men. Avoid it, do not travel on it; Turn away from it and pass on. For the wicked cannot sleep unless they do evil; And they are deprived of sleep unless they make someone stumble and fall.”

Dr. Michael V. Fox, Jewish Hebrew scholar and author of the excellent two-volume “Proverbs Commentary,” elaborated on Solomon’s advice: “Radaq observes that the verse [v. 14, ‘path of the wicked’] does not say ‘al telek’—’go not’—in the way of the wicked, but rather ‘al tabe’—’enter not’ [or ‘come not’]—into it. ‘Entering’ [‘bw’] indicates the moment one comes into a space rather than continuous movement [‘going’] within a space. Radaq takes the line to mean that one should not join in the abominable customs and activities of the wicked.” Dr. Fox adds: “The wicked have a need to cause harm; their ‘peace of mind’ depends on it.”

American Christendom must set in motion a mass exodus from public schools if the nation is to make it through.

The formula seems clear: 1) every church in American must have a pastor, elder, deacon or congregant running for local office in 2024, 2026, 2028 and thereafter; 2) pastors and spiritual should devise a plan for a mass exodus from public education. With both of these fulfilled, a spiritual awakening lasting well into the next century might well be on the horizon.

Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to stand. {eoa}

David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.