This Group Must Take Responsibility For the State of Our Culture
“For all the people who are upset about last night’s horrible debate, they should pause and ask themselves: wasn’t that just an accurate reflection of where we are as a nation?” wrote millennial Ben Domenech (born 1982) after the first Trump vs. Biden presidential debate.
Domenech is an American writer, blogger and television commentator. He is also the founder and publisher of The Federalist, host of The Federalist Radio Hour and writes a daily blog for political and media insiders called “The Transom.”
He continued: “Two septuagenarians bashing each other with bursts of bombastic “expletive” and competing ‘whatabouts’ is the content you will find on Facebook and cable news.”
To the extent that Christians feel powerless in contemporary America, we must remind ourselves that following some 175 years of meteoric rise, America was seduced in the late 18th century to switch horses midstream as a “fresh” new ideology appeared and spread like wildfire (in the sense of being equally expeditious as detrimental).
With its motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity) stemming from the bloodstained French Revolution of 1789, the so-called Age of Enlightenment began infiltrating America’s colleges, introducing a forbidding school of thought devoid of God, and commencing the call for “hope and change” as well as destroying the biblical foundation the Founding Fathers laid down to secure sustainable freedom.
It has been asked, “If America’s Founders wanted to establish Christianity as the official religion of America, why didn’t they just say so?” All it takes to answer this somewhat unenlightened question is reading the 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.
This will inform the reader that the Founders did make it abundantly clear.
In the new Foreword to Benjamin F. Morris’ monumental history of early America, The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (1864), Dr. Archie P. Jones provides additional confirmation: “[The American Founders] did not turn civil government, the making, enforcement, and adjudication of laws, over to Satan and those who serve him. They did not surrender the ministry of civil government to those who are in rebellion against God. Instead, they sought to base civil government and law upon the truth. They knew that our nation’s civil government and law must be based upon God’s laws and principles of justice if we are to enjoy His blessings upon our land and people.”
Yet, those in the late 18th century who elevated the chauvinistic rationality of man to exceed the authority of Scripture, “slyly worked,” as Dr. Jones writes, “to gradually remove the formerly dominant Christian content of education and to use government-controlled education to establish their own religious, ethical and political principles. Through control of education they sought to change the views, values, politics and laws of the people of the United States.”
Historian Benjamin Franklin Morris (1810-1867) began working on his 831-page magnum opus in 1853, supplying it with the explanatory subtitle: Developed in the Official and Historical Annals of the Republic. (In other words, fully documented!)
He introduced the book thus: “We have a noble historic life; for our ancestors were the worthies of the world. We have a noble nation, full of the evidences of the moulding presence of Christian truth, and of the power and goodness of Divine wisdom in rearing up a Christian republic for all time. That this was the spirit and aim of the early founders of our institutions the facts in this volume fully testify.”
Secularism’s present-day supremacy in newsrooms, education, sports, arts and entertainment, government, Fortune 500 and medicine is a testament to its power to bring about a desired effect, notwithstanding its reverential regard for the folly of carnal man.
Hard facts yield information that is true and cannot be refuted. It is a hard fact that there is no neutrality regarding religion, for not believing in God is every bit of a religious belief as is believing in God. To exclude the Bible from public education curriculums is a religious decision, just as is including the Bible.
Christians have been dragooned into believing that government-run bureaucrats are “neutral” in educating our children. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Moral, intellectual and spiritual enlightenment and awareness has been surrendered to secularists, including, amongst other things, the (Molotov) cocktail of Big Tech’s Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and mainstream media’s infringement on the constitutional rights of free speech, religious liberty and right to assembly. In sum, wholesale disaster is in store for our children and grandchildren.
Christians, and no others, are responsible or accountable for the loss of the biblically-based culture laid down by America’s Christian founders. Over the last 200 years, Christians have gradually forsaken Jesus’ kingdom assignment from Matthew 16:18—His ekklesia assigned to the public square. In additionally, embracing an idolatry that requires huge budgets, big buildings and legions of bodies in seats so as to have bragging rights on who’s the most important and biggest influence in the community, we have forfeited our prime place in the culture.
The current church model has been tried and found wanting. The once Biblically based culture has fallen apart. Having squandered the Founders’ gift bequeathed to us, we have lowered ourselves in force and influence over the last 200 years from developing a multitude of wise and faithful cultural leaders and counselors, to now shepherding flocks of sheep. The Christian impact on the culture is currently practically non-existent.
Our success is now measured by how many are in attendance, or how much money is collected, instead of how our city or region is doing. Is there any resemblance to a divine station, or is this a domain of darkness?
“Any casual observer of Christianity will immediately recognize the disparity between what Jesus said He would build and the modern church,” Joe Nicola said.
In the 20th century, the idolatrous, yet religious, liberally crusading Warren Court lay waste to the Christian education model developed and introduced by the Founders. Inculcating and urging on the mind of children secularism’s state-directed values speaks of a shameless boldness and transgression of the bounds of responsibility in defiance of the living God.
We Christians have ourselves to blame for this; we have “sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind” by sacrificing our children on the secular shrine of those living in rebellion against God. Two centuries of Biblical negligence and Christian iniquity have now reached a “place of liberty” of what the political and moral philosopher during the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) termed a culture devoid of God.
Rousseau begins his treatise on the nature of education, Émile, or On Education, by declaring: “God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil.”
America is in the process of regressing from a Republic to an Empire, which will imitate closely the Roman Republic’s path from glory to fall and collapse.
This is happening while American Christendom drifts idly towards the abyss, having raised the white flag of surrender to secularists over the last 200 years.
Jesus’ discerning observation from Matthew 11:19 comes to mind, “Wisdom is known by her children.” All but wisdom’s vindicators, today’s youth is occupied with burning and looting America’s cities, mindlessly pushing to defund local police as they inflict carnage and devastation, while tearing down historical relics and monuments.
In 2 Samuel 8:1-18, the sweet psalmist of Israel is shown to play for keeps, in contrast to American Christendom’s activities over the last century. There will be dire consequences to godless secularists and government appointed “educators” camouflaging their religion as “neutral” and meanwhile indoctrinating our children with non-kingdom beliefs. Our children’s lives and eternity are in the balance.
American Christendom has to get back to playing for keeps.
God be praised that Gideons and Rahabs are finally beginning to stand. {eoa}
David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.
