The Return of American Christendom in the Public Square
“Liberals control institutions because they care more about politics, a disparity that grew larger around 2016,” writes Richard Hanania, Research Fellow at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. “This makes attempts to use government [i.e., bureaucracy!] to take back the culture unlikely to succeed, at least in the short term.”
Liberals, in our view, care much more about culture than politics. Plato, the founder of the first institution of higher learning in the Western World, put his finger on it some 2,400 years ago. According to him, the major precepts of the culture are decided by: [1] who teaches the children; and [2] what do we teach them? Politics is downstream from culture.
In the more fashionable words of the Canadian conservative author Mark Steyn, it goes like this: “If public education is radically secular; if Apple, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, & Google discriminate against conservatives by censoring and manipulating social media, if Howard Stern, Miley Ray Cyrus, Ellen DeGeneres, and the Kardashians tutor America’s youth, defining the tenets of common beliefs and social forms, well, then having an ‘R’ behind one’s name isn’t going to make much difference.”
American political theorist, moralist and father of American conservatism Russell Kirk [1918-1994] was of the sound opinion that “Politicians are actors performing a script that is written by the audience,” with former Ohio Congressman Bob McEwen making the addition that “the audience controls the stage.”
The rather quixotic notion that government, or bureaucracy, can be so shaped and influenced as to “take back the culture” is far removed from reality. There is simply no denying the fact that contemporary culture is nothing but the public manifestation of the State religion, imposed by the secular Warren Court in the Abington School District v. Schempp case [1963].
This becomes apparent when recalling Justice Potter Stewart’s [1915-1985] dissenting opinion: “[The Abington School District v. Schempp decision] led not to true neutrality with respect to religion, but to the establishment of a religion of secularism.”
In setting up a secular state, judicial and secular elites have created in America something fundamentally different in quality or kind from what the founders had established. In doing so, they are the chief protagonists in the war against biblical Christianity in the prevalent culture of a nation originally instituted “for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith.” [Mayflower Compact]
As a result of deceit and duplicity, spiritual worship in America now centers around the counterfeit golden calves of multiculturalism, political correctness and secularism. This idolatrous, profane religion magnifies wickedness in the culture, incites instability, whips up division and prompts political upheaval. It is cultural Marxism by another name.
The immediate danger facing the nation is unlikely to be Russia invading Ukraine. Instead, it will concern almost certainly the intrauterine murder of 63 million unborn babies. Rather than being dismissed without due consideration, their blood cries out to God for justice.
Christian and secular worldview and ideology yield distinctively different cultural outcomes. In his play Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare [1564-1616] suggests expertly what it means to take advantage of forces that are beneficial.
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
By withdrawing from the public square, American Christendom has neglected its opportunities and thus “lost its ventures.” “Bound in shallows and in miseries,” by letting secularism take over, folly has led the nation now down the Niagara Falls.
The ban of prayer to Jehovah God in public education [Engel v. Vitale, 1962] and the removal of the Bible from public education [Abington School District v. Schempp, 1963] abrogated the founders’ intentions. Just a quick look at the physical and mental state of America’s youth will demonstrate the dire consequences of such decisions.
There is no such thing as neutrality about religion. Believing in God is a religious decision, as is not believing in God. Including the Bible in public education curriculums, as America’s founders did, or excluding it by way of the secular Warren Court are also religious decisions.
It is the same regarding praying to God before school assemblies or skipping prayer in advance of high school football games. Somebody’s values are going to reign supreme in the public square in a democratic republic, which is determined by which constituency can get their voters to the polls.
Elections have consequences, which makes “Sidney Powell and Lin Wood’s Push for Georgians Not to Vote Senate Runoff” in early January 2021 come across as downright foolish and naïve, particularly in light of liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s announcement last week to retire.
Biblical Christianity and religious secularism are unmistakably at war in the public square. The current Jesus in America’s public arena is a meek and mildly sweet “beautiful soul” of 19th-century invention. The real Jesus, on the other hand, “came to Jerusalem as an avenger, mad with zeal to defend the honor of his Father against those who defile his Father’s house … the apocalyptic lamb who burns with perfect holy wrath.”2
American Christendom is starting to return to the public square after going amiss for over 50 years. The task will be to apply biblically based concepts and principles and watch God’s Word come to life in the culture through the rough and tumble of the public square.
Charles H. Spurgeon [1834-1892] is believed to have drawn the following fitting comparison: “The Word of God is like a lion. You don’t have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself.”
The battle taking place over the last 75 years came down to the cancellation of God’s Word from the public square, public education, U.S. courthouses and federal government buildings. Secularism fully intends “to expunge theology from the public square, forcing theological decision and debate into the recesses of the conscience or, at best, safely behind the walls of the church [building].”
Praise be to God. Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to enter the public square and with them comes dynamis, the power of God’s Word. {eoa}
David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.
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