God Bless A Godless And Wicked America?

We live in a postmodern, post-Constitutional and post-God nation. Do not be deceived. There is a war on religious liberty, the true target is Christianity.

Perfectly stated by Todd Starnes from Fox News.

The answer is NO.  If the churches of this nation will not repent – why should God bless a nation that spits in His Face and kicks Him out of the country while His followers sit idle on their hands and remain silent in the face of evil?

 

Can God bless a Godless America?

The White House is waging an all-out assault on religious liberty. Public schools are indoctrinating our children with the gospel of secularism. Hollywood is spewing toxins into our homes. The soundtrack of our lives is a pulsating mix of sex and violence and filth. The American family is in ruins. What was once wrong is now right and what was once right is now wrong.

Our nation stands on a precipice. Freedom hangs in the balance. We live in a postmodern and post-God nation. The perfect storm is brewing. Do not be deceived. There may be a war on religious liberty, but the true target is Christianity.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Kelly Shackelford, president of Liberty Institute, penned an open letter to the American people last year. Hostility against religious liberty has reached an all-time high, they warned. The freedom of religion is being pushed out of public life, schools and even churches.

The freedom of religion is being pushed out of public life, schools and even churches.

“Our Founding Fathers considered religious liberty our ‘first freedom,’ and the bedrock upon which all other freedoms rest,” the men wrote. “They understood that one’s right to worship God and follow his conscience according to the principles of his religious faith was foundational to civic tranquility. A man whose religious faith was repressed could never be a loyal citizen since the state was usurping his first allegiance and costing him his primary freedom. This is one of the most important distinctions that makes America an exceptional nation — if not the most important.”

Both groups document more than 600 recent examples of religious hostility. Six hundred. American stories. Our stories. Their documentation included many stories I have covered during my career at Fox News Channel.

The Obama administration wants to force religious organizations and Christian business owners to provide insurance for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs in direct violation of their religious beliefs. The military conducted training sessions that labeled Evangelical Christians and Catholics as examples of religious extremists. The Internal Revenue Service launched investigations into pro-life organizations, demanding to know the contents of their prayers.

This is happening right here, right now, in the United States of America. We are under attack from within — from an enemy who wants to remove any mention of God from the public marketplace.

In recent days, a Florida child was bullied by his public schoolteacher for reading his Bible during “free reading time.” The teacher was recorded on a voice mail message telling the child’s parents that “he’s not permitted to read those books in my classroom.”

Seventh-day Adventist preacher Eric Walsh was suspended with pay from his job as the public health director of Pasadena, Calif., after critics exposed videos of sermons in which he preached that homosexuality is a sin. Pasadena officials told local reporters the pastor was placed on paid leave while they investigate his sermons and determine whether he has the ability to lead a department that he’s headed since 2010.

A while back Rev. Billy Graham penned a letter expressing his dismay over the moral decline of the nation, declaring that his “heart aches for America and its deceived people.”

“The farther we get from God, the more the world spirals out of control,” Graham wrote, noting that the nation seems to be going out of its way to remove God from the public arena. “Just a few weeks ago in a prominent city in the South, Christian chaplains who serve the police department were ordered to no longer mention the Name of Jesus in prayer,” he wrote, noting that officers were only allowed to pray to “the being in the room.”

“Our society strives to avoid any possibility of offending anyone —  except God,” he continued.

We ask God to bless America, but we elected a president whose pastor asked God to damn America. We ask God to bless America, but we slaughter millions of unborn babies. We ask God to bless America, but we silence His children.

God bless America? We should be on our knees asking for His mercy instead. The time has come for people of faith to rise up and claim their Ebenezer. We need patriots who will take back this land. We need patriots who will say we are still one nation under God.

The storm clouds are gathering. The winds of revolution are blowing, friends. Religious liberty is under attack.

Years ago the Christian songwriter Steve Green penned a song titled, “Find Us Faithful.” It was a prayer that all who came after us would find this generation of believers faithful. The call still rings true today.

In these early days of the 21st century, the fire is flickering and the footprints are few. Storm clouds are gathering. The winds of persecution are blowing. But friends, no matter how difficult these days have become, let not your heart be troubled.

The time has come, brothers and sisters, my fellow countrymen. Who among you is willing to take a stand for religious liberty? Who among you is will to risk everything for the cause of Christ? Who among you is willing to rise up and declare that we are still one nation under God?

“If my people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land,” the Scriptures declare.

The most pressing problem facing America can’t be solved in Washington, D.C. True hope and change can’t be found at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It can only be found at the foot of the cross
on Calvary.

Our government may spy on our phone lines. It may throw us in jail. It may take away our photography shops and bakeries. It may demand to know the content of our prayers. But we will not be bullied. We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced.

The Church’s Failed Influence Of Maintaining American Culture

Christian freedom is fading in America, and soon the faith itself will be shoved underground by an oppressive government where only the doctrines of the state are allowed to be preached.

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams

” Where there is no religion, there is no morality…With the loss of religion…the ultimate foundation of confidence is blown up; and of life, liberty and property are buried in ruins” – Timothy Dwight

I’ve been crying aloud the warning for years that the church in America was losing it’s salt and influence in maintaining our culture.  Sadly, when speaking about this topic at myriad churches and public rallies and events – the vast majority of Christians are disinterested.  In counties where the Ten Commandments were threatened to be removed, asking pastors of hundreds of churches to come and lead the community in prayer were met with silence and indifference.  Some did not want to “rock the boat” by appearing to be ‘political’.   In one county alone, after contacting over 100 Christian churches – only 1 pastor came.  That should have been my wake up call that the Christian church in America was fading into irrelevance.  For if those that pay their Savior lip service each week would not stand on the bedrock of His Word as the foundation of our civil society – why should I expect the church to stand against state-imposed homosexual marriage and homosexual doctrine being forced upon society?

As it is – the greater Christian church itself sat in decades of ridiculous prosperity and riches while the nation practiced infanticide, killing hundreds of MILLIONS of babies murdered in the womb.  An entire generation of Americans murdered in the most precious and safest place that God ordained, simply for the sake of convenience for a hedonistic people to have illicit sex without consequences.  The churches by and large?  They hear, see and speak no evil against the evil being practiced in their midst.

Are Christians become as biblically illiterate and ignorant as the secular hedonists?  Do we think we will not be held to account for losing this gift of liberty and allowing such evil to go unchallenged? Do Christians now believe their is no judgment for their indifference and apathy?

I believe that it is the tiny remnant of Christians that have not turned their heads and have stood in the gap, that God has not judged the nation prevented it to suffer in collapse and ruin by the heinous weight of it’s national sins.  But scripture is clear – at some point the cup of iniquity overflows, and even God’s anointed would suffer along with a nation of people that were called by His Name – that refused to repent and do those things that God expected His people to be doing in the first place.

When reading a majority of the Founders, they understood that the civil society and liberty itself could only exist if the whole people were a moral and upright people who were self governed by God.  In modern parlance, Christians were intended to be the Jedi Knights of safeguarding the Republic by maintaining watch over the culture and keeping it on the straight and narrow path.  As the church’s influence faded – so too did your liberty and freedom.

And the church itself doesn’t seem to mind – as long as their collection plates keep getting filled and their II Timothy 3 generation of members are entertained with the smooth and easy things their itching ears want to hear.

The American Thinker has nailed the issue of the fading influence of the church in America.

The Church’s Fading Influence on American Culture

By Simon de Hundehutte

It seems people have misunderstood, as well as misrepresented, the church’s role and influence in “secular society.”  The early Christians lived in the secular society of Rome, but by heralding the good news of salvation, what some might call “thumping,” their words along with their deeds changed all of society of their day.  In present-day America, however, secularists have taken over and changed the rules of the debate on so many key cultural issues.

Religion, or more accurately, the Christian way of life, is being shoved out of not only politics but the American culture.  We believers are being forced to accept things anathema to our way of thinking and living — accept them or be labeled “haters” or, more recently, “thumpers.”

Every Christian is keenly aware of the Great Commission, where Jesus commanded, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19).  Christians in the earliest days of the Church did not keep silent about their faith, bringing it with them (and many times at great cost) into the public arena.  St. Paul debated at the illustrious Mars Hill with Greek and Athenian scholars (see Acts, Chapter 17).  Many there, in fact, welcomed his insights and reasoning skills.  Others, including both civic and religious leaders of the day, wanted him to keep his views to himself.

Think about it:  Christianity in a few hundred years after the resurrection of its namesake had changed the entire Roman Empire.  And certainly not by keeping its beliefs bottled up, only to be uncorked for an hour or two every Sunday.  No, the Good News was front-and-center in a believer’s life, sometimes even shouted from the mountaintops (when the spirit so moved).

But, I am afraid the days of free speech for Bible-believing Christians may be quickly winding down.  If the Supreme Court sanctions gay marriage, God and country will both soon fade away.  America will fast become like Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Germany.  It may be that the day is near when any church unwilling to preach the State’s “gospel” will not be allowed to exist.  (Woe to churches which currently meet on public property — in school auditoriums, for example.)

If we Christian’s are no longer able to share what the God of the Universe has revealed to us, how can anyone’s thinking on gay marriage or abortion or taking care of the planet or whatever be shaped or swayed?

I walked past a parked car the other day that was plastered with bumper stickers championing a far-left point of view.  One that especially grabbed my attention said, “The last time religion and politics mixed, People got burned at the stake!”

After pondering this for a second, I thought, I wish I could meet the driver of this car and let him know that a more accurate statement would be, “The last time religion and politics mixed, William Wilberforce freed the slaves.”  It has been Gospel-believing Christians, applying the tenets of the Word of God, who have taken on the huge challenges of humanity and, many times through much personal sacrifice (think martyrs), have freed many from bondage.

In the book of Romans, Paul challenges people to “be transformed by the renewing of your thinking.”  (Romans 12:2).  Will the Christian way of thinking be welcome in the “court of public opinion,” or will we just settle into being a country filled with people who have a bumper-sticker mentality, never having a thought beyond the cleverest saying we can slap onto the tail end of our vehicles.

 

Liberty Must Be Fought For, And Maintained By A Willingness To Fight To Keep It

 

By Jim O’Brien

Today is the 4th of July, the day that America celebrates Independence.

Frank Buckles is 107 years old and still going strong. A farmer from Charleston, West Virginia, he is the last surviving doughboy of WWI. He was just 15 years old when he entered the army and was dispatched to England on the Carpathia. By the time WWII came along he was employed by a shipping company. He was on a business trip to the Philippines when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He was taken captive as a prisoner of war and lived a tortured life for 39 months.

His mind is still sharp. An affable man, fighting has not only been a part of his life but the rest of his family as well. He remembers his great great grandfather talking about serving in the Revolutionary war.

America began with a fight. I guess some could call it an avoidable war but freedom would not have occurred without it, not only for us but other countries as well. When the French Revolution occurred, the Declaration of Independence was read aloud from the street corners throughout France. It has been used as a model of inspiration for people everywhere ever since.

It was a fight to defend basic rights; the right of self-determination, the right of private ownership, the right to hold leaders accountable, and the right to justice to name a few. Freedom is not a universal value and it does not come without a fight.

Some people believe that man has no right to self-defense whatever the circumstances. The Bible is often used to support that concept in spite of obvious evidence to the contrary.

The Bible has a lot to say about fighting. And generally it isn’t what the timid or faint of heart expect.

When God gave His law to Moses, He commanded that a near relative should avenge murder (Num 35:19). The accused was allowed to flee to a city of refuge for trial. But the relative could take vengeance if the accused did not go directly to the city or if he left before the death of the High Priest. If he did the near kinsman of the victim was allowed to take the life of the offender. The reason the near kinsman was required to take revenge was that he was the inheritor of the victim‚s property. He had a vested interest to protect his family.

God seems to understand man’s timidity in the face of a fight. In fact, when Israel was fleeing Egypt God intentionally took them a circuitous route to avoid facing the Philistines. He knew the fear of war would cause them to turn and run (Exodus 13:17).

Jesus expected that truth would stir up trouble. He said he did not come to bring peace but a sword (Matt. 10:34). If a man thinks that becoming Christian means a life without fighting, he is mistaken.

And He expects us to prepare for opposition. In fact, when Jesus gave instructions to his disciples at the last Passover service he would observe with them he gave instructions for them to sell, if necessary, a second garment and buy a sword (Luke 22:36). His disciples responded that among the assembled group there were two swords at the time.

Later when He was take prisoner by a servant of the high priest, one of the disciples took out a sword and cut off a soldier’s ear. It is doubtful the disciple was aiming for the ear.

It is fascinating that people who read the Bible overlook these many references. It is filled with military references. The Patriarchs were often military leaders. Even the prophet Gideon, when God’s Spirit came upon him, went to war. Paul talked of fighting the good fight. It is a common theme throughout scripture.

But why does God focus so many scriptures on this subject?

One may as well ask, Why do men enslave others? Why do they build walls around countries guarded by sentries? Why do they cross an ocean to destroy the financial center of free people who seek peace? The answer is as clear as it is simple. There is something that hates freedom. It is a spirit that desires worship under threat of force.

Men who worship God do so from choice. Only men with a heart of freedom can make such a choice.

It has ever been and shall always be.

When our country was founded one of the books that turned the hearts of the patriots to resist the tyranny of oppressive government was “Common Sense” written by Thomas Paine. He reasoned that freedom could only exist without the burden of kings or powerful churches.

It is amazing that Paine referenced churches with oppressive government. What is important for a nation is equally important for a congregation. One of the founding tenets of this nation was freedom of religion. That meant freedom from another man’s religion.

It is an incredible thought that men had to die so that [y]our congregation can exist. We are free to worship God as we understand Him because someone was willing to fight.

Congregations, like nations, have the right as well as the responsibility to defend against oppressive church governments, heresy, disrespect by unruly attendees and abusive leaders. The willingness to stand against such threats is part of the heritage received and the legacy to pass on.

The Meaning of Religious Liberty

The article by Dr. Matthew Spalding speaks for itself.

The Meaning of Religious Liberty

By Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.

“America does not depend on a shared theology, but it does depend on a shared morality.”

It is often thought that religious liberty means a strict separation of church and state, but that view is out of tune with the proper understanding of the role religion and morality play in the civic and public life of a self-governing people. A more compelling model is that of America’s Founders, who advanced religious liberty in a way that would uphold religion and morality as indispensable supports of good habits, the firmest props of the duties of citizens, and the great pillars of human happiness.

Origins of Religious Liberty

The story of religious liberty in America begins with religious persecution in the Old World. At the root of these conflicts was the much deeper controversy of divided loyalty between the city of God and the city of man. These dueling claims undermined political authority and obligation and led to religious wars and the civil coercion of faith.

The basic parameters of the American Founders’ arrangement in the New World are well known: They sought to prevent the religious battles that had bloodied the European continent by removing entirely the authority of the church over matters of governance. In its place, they sought to secure the basis for political obligation in the consent of the governed, premised on concepts of individual freedom and equality that were grounded in human nature.

In a letter written in 1791–all the more powerful because it was written by the first president to a Jewish synagogue–George Washington declared that ‘the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance’ but ‘requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.’ Toleration, he continued, was no longer ‘spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.’

The Founders’ View of Religion in Public Life

But far from wanting to expunge religion from public life, the Founders encouraged religion as a necessary and vital part of their new nation. They sought the official separation of church and state in order to build civil and religious liberty on the grounds of equal natural rights, but never intended–indeed, roundly rejected–the idea of separating religion and politics.

The Founders opposed the establishment of a national church (though the federal government did not do away with state establishments); church doctrine would not determine the laws, and laws would not determine church doctrine. However, the Founders did favor government encouragement and support of religion in public laws, official speeches and ceremonies, on public property and in public buildings, and even in public schools.

Indeed, the official separation of church and state allows and encourages (just as true religious freedom depends upon) a certain mixing of religion and politics. On the day after it approved the Bill of Rights, Congress called upon the president to ‘recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God.’ President Thomas Jefferson regularly attended church services held in the House of Representatives and allowed executive branch buildings to be used for the same purpose. Jefferson seemed to find nothing wrong with the federal government supporting religion in a non-discriminatory and non-coercive way.

Even after the ‘republican revolution’ of 1800, President Thomas Jefferson praised America’s ‘benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter.’

Religion and Morality

The Founders’ support for blending religion and politics was based on the following syllogism: Morality is necessary for republican government; religion is necessary for morality; therefore, religion is necessary for republican government. ‘Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,’ Washington wrote in his Farewell Address, ‘Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness–these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens.’

Those two sentences are illuminating. Religion and morality are the props of duty, the indispensable supports of the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, and the great pillars of human happiness. They aid good government by teaching men their moral obligations and creating the conditions for decent politics. And while there might be particular individuals whose morality does not depend on religion, Washington argues, this is not the case for the nation as a whole: ‘And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.’

In the end, while it is often thought that religion and politics must be discussed as if they are radically separate spheres, the Founders’ conception of religious liberty was almost exactly the opposite. It actually requires the moralization of politics, which includes–and requires–the continuing influence of religion in public life.

The health of liberty depends on the principles, standards, and morals common to all religions. By acknowledging the realm in which reason and faith agree and can cooperate about morality and politics, religious liberty unites civic morality and the moral teachings of religion, thereby establishing common standards to guide private and public life. By recognizing the need for public morality and the prominent role that religion plays in nurturing morality, the Founders invite churches to cooperate at the political level in sustaining the moral consensus underlying their theological differences. It is by separating sectarian conflict from the political process and then strengthening this moral consensus that religious liberty makes self-government possible.

America does not depend on a shared theology, but it does depend on a shared morality. In his First Inaugural Address, the first president said that ‘there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness’ and that no nation can prosper that ‘disregards the external rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.’ Jefferson put it more succinctly: The people, who are the source of all lawful authority, ‘are inherently independent of all but the moral law.’

What the separation of church and state does, then, is free religion–in the form of morality and the moral teachings of religion–to exercise an unprecedented influence over private and public opinion by shaping mores, cultivating virtues, and, in general, providing an independent source of moral reasoning and authority. At the same time, religious liberty reminds man to pursue his transcendent duties and frees religion to pursue its divine mission among men. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that even though religion ‘never intervenes directly in the government of American society,’ it determines the ‘habits of the heart’ and is ‘the first of their political institutions.’

Conclusion

Today, it is increasingly evident that there is a close connection between America’s deepest social ills and the weakening of religious participation and the abandonment of traditional moral norms taught by religion. Rebuilding a post-welfare state society demands the return of religion and faith-based institutions to their central role in the nation’s civic and public life. To attain this, Americans must abandon the interpretation, maintained by the Supreme Court, that religion is in conflict with freedom and that any ‘endorsement’ of religion creates an unconstitutional religious establishment. That interpretation prevents government from recognizing or advancing religious faith generally.

At the same time, sectarian politics is not the way to restore and strengthen America’s religious heritage. A better course is to return to the more reasonable, historically accurate, and faith-friendly view of religious liberty that upholds religion and morality as indispensable supports of good habits, the firmest props of the duties of citizens, and the great pillars of human happiness.

Matthew Spalding, Ph.D., is Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation.