The Death of Christianity in America
Gordon Greene - June 4, 2009
As a conservative living in this day of history in America, my fears are numerous. Most of them revolve around the economy and the tremendous debt that is being thrust upon our children and their children, and so on.
I'm concerned about the path of our government as it relates to society. We are quickly becoming a nanny state in most every arena. The government is devouring the private sector at an alarming pace. Whether you're talking about welfare or healthcare, the systematic takeover of the banking industry or the automotive industry, the overriding feeling is that the government exists to save us from ourselves in every aspect of our lives.
But in the midst of being consumed by these social concerns, a certain truth brings me to my senses; God cares little for governments or powers. Gods' business is the human soul.
Some have been lulled into believing social good outweighs the significance of the spirit of man. How many trees must you save, how many soup kitchens do you have to serve in, how many carbon offsets does it take? Or, if you're of the conservative mindset, exactly how fiscally conservative do you need to be to rescue your soul from Hell? Neither the struggle over strict constructionist judges nor reliance on rugged individualism was meant to take the place of being in right standing with the Creator of the Universe.
As Americans, the answer should be simple for us, but the failure to come up with the correct answer only leads us further down the path of Humanism and increasingly far away from God and the America imagined by the Founders. You could be Ronald Reagan incarnate… you might be the most thoughtful, humble conservative on the planet and still be a world away from God. Conservatism without Christianity is hollow from inception and disastrous at its conclusion.
To this point in history the complacency of Christians has been largely responsible for the incremental loss of both our nation's freedom and its meaning. In this void appeasers and so-called "conservative atheists" have begun to assume the leadership of the conservative movement. Deniers and scoffers labor in vain as this Nation's glories fade into the ether. Unless the remaining Christian element takes back the helm, these unbelievers will continue to spread their social conservative message. And if they are allowed to continue in this course, we will all be peering into the rear view mirror questioning what became of the country we once knew.
America absent the God of the Bible is not the America we know and it never can be.
On Christ within Today's Conservative Movement:
There is a troubling trend in Conservatism today… what I see coming about is a tendency toward conservative Godlessness. To the point that Christianity is ridiculed by the same peoples who purport to revere the founding and the Founders! These people do not represent the Founders any more than the Pope represents the Hells' Angels. John Adams was one of our nations' founders a signer of the Declaration of Independence. What he said in these few words dispels the myth that the signers of that document believed an America based on the Constitution could work outside the provision or people of God, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." [October 11, 1798]
And if there's any question as to what "religion" John Adams was making reference to he then proclaimed that, "The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principals of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God."
Along with John Hancock, Mr. Adams then made this declaration, "We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!" [April 18, 1775]
Benjamin Franklin gave life to these principles by saying, "God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel" [Constitutional Convention of 1787]
There are countless quotes in which, one after the other, the founders proclaimed the importance of God and Christianity in America. To even the most casual observer of history, it should be abundantly clear that these contentions were shared by each of Americas' founders. God and His Word as declared in the Bible were woven throughout the tapestry of their language and of every founding document. It's as if they all cried in unison, "There is no civil society without God!"
Faith in God is not a thing that can be laid down and picked up on a whim. Without God and His Word, the values that made us great as a nation will cease to exist. Without God and His Word any attempt at morality will only be replaced by sin and degradation.
A just society will not remain so in the absence of a righteous God.
__________________________________________________________
On Christianity in Education:
The founding fathers also had much to say about education in America. In 1749 Benjamin Franklin presented a plan of education for Pennsylvania public schools. In this plan he insisted that the schools teach in his words, "the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern." [Benjamin Franklin / 1749]
There are those in American Conservatism that would say that Atheism and Conservative values can abide together, but I'm afraid Thomas Paine would disagree, "The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools, in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only, has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator himself, they stop short, and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of his existence. They labour with studied ingenuity to ascribe every thing they behold to innate properties of matter, and jump over all the rest by saying, that matter is eternal." [Thomas Paine / The Existence of God-1810]
Our liberties do not exist in a vacuum. They are assured only by the hand of God and that has been proven throughout the history of America. How do we suppose we would wrest God from our children and emerge from the other side intact as a society, still trusting in God?
Our institutions of learning; most of which had their start in one Christian faith or another, have become more humanistic and anti-religious with every passing decade. This process is accelerated by our reliance on atheistic professors who train our children's teachers, and then go on to train our children. We allow them to introduce a perverted version of the world to our young men and women. Do we not realize they are the only thing of meaning; the only true legacy we leave when we pass from this earth? Pastor Voddie Baucham put it this way, "If we continue to send our children to Caesar for their education - We need to stop being surprised when they come home as Romans." [Pastor Voddie Baucham / On the need for Home Schooling]
Republicans and Conservatives alike complain about the reliance of others' on the government. Yet we load up our kids and deposit them directly onto the sidewalk in front of the closest state-run school. We proudly watch as they march into the halls of government education without giving it as much as a second thought. And to our shame we do this with the full knowledge that any thought of God or faith must be checked at the door. In a speech to the Delaware Indian Chiefs on May 12th, 1779, George Washington said, "What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ." [George Washington / May 12th, 1779] This type of thinking has long since disappeared from our educational institutions but we still insist that the system can be "fixed". Because of the behemoth Teachers' Unions have become, "fixing" means a continual call for more funding. And as government involvement increases, parental involvement decreases.
If we are to repair our educational system, abandoning it may be the only choice that remains. If it is left without serious competition, those in power will find new and more costly ways to hold that power. We must then choose a better option for our children so that we can train them in the Christian faith. This is the only power we have to shape the future of America.
Alternatives are never easy. Like streams of water, people generally choose a path of least resistance. "Going with the flow" is always the simplest course, because it presents the least amount of obstacles. Because of this the excuses for failing to choose an alternative are many, and seemingly well reasoned. You might say, "Private education is too expensive." Or, "It takes both parents working to support a family." Or maybe, "There's not enough time to spend going over their homework with them." You may even use the excuse that, "I don't have the education to help them with their schoolwork." These same justifications are applied in the case of home schooling, with the added worry over whether the children will be properly "socialized". This is probably the saddest and least rational reason of all. It takes only a few minutes at a mall or the local grocery store to get a glimpse into the kind of "socialization" meted out in public school. And so we sacrifice our offspring to the gods of complacency. When we choose to bring children into this world they number among our primary responsibilities. What we fail to understand is that we risk giving up our children's future, and possibly their salvation, for the sake of "convenience". In effect, our offspring are being offered up in exchange for a larger home, a car payment, or a flat-screen television.
God's judgment cannot be far behind.
__________________________________________________________
On the so-called Separation of Church and State:
The news is all abuzz today with stories pertaining to the pre-eminence of one faith over the other. What they would have you believe is that there is no religion over another and this is clearly not the case. Jesus made the statement, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." [John 14:6] (New International Version)
This is a mutually exclusive statement that tells us there is no way to Heaven except the shed blood of Jesus Christ. This IS the same "Jesus" the founders trusted in and suggested others trust the same. Patrick Henry who was known as the "Orator of the Revolution" had this to say about the reason we enjoy freedom of religion in America. "It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here." [May 1765 Speech to the House of Burgesses]
Not only did the canons of Christianity permeate the founder's thoughts, writings and actions, they filled the halls of our public institutions, educational facilities, and even the halls of our justice system. The clarity with which this was iterated is astounding! Still, there are those who claim these same men would have us remove God; and Christianity in particular, from government and education, and erase Him entirely from the public square.
In speaking to the General Assembly of the State of Virginia, James Madison made a statement which today would be thought scandalous should any elected official repeat it, "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We've staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." [1778 to the General Assembly of the State of Virginia]
Far from fighting for the supposed rights of American's to be free from the invisible bonds of religion, it is outright slander to suggest those God-fearing men meant for us to enjoy something less than a Christian culture.
__________________________________________________________
On Revisionist History:
There are a multitude of stories that recount the philandering nature of our Founding Fathers and their myriad of misdeeds. For this reason, I am inclined to mention Jesus is the only sinless man to walk the earth. The founders were men; flesh and blood just as we are. One should expect they would have had their fair share of faults. But overwhelmingly, they were Christian men who sought to glorify God in their personal and public lives… men who sought to lead others and show the world a nation founded on the ways of Christ.
In the enemies bid to take history for his own, there has emerged a sort of "pseudo history" to stand in the way of truth. For all that has been spoken about Benjamin Franklin, he did not believe we could succeed as a nation if we were to remove God from our society.
At the Constitutional Convention held on June 28th, 1787 he spoke these words, "In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered… do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?" [Constitutional Convention / June 28th, 1787]
Mr. Franklin; we do, indeed need Gods' assistance. And what we so desperately needed in those early days we need all the more today. Our country is being aggressively dismantled, and at a rate not seen before in our history. Our lives are short and our memories shorter. For this reason we see this as a sudden thing or something that has possibly even begun within our lifetimes. But since Satan's fall he has had a plan. He was separated from God because he sought to be equal to Him and his plan is to separate us from God thus bringing us to himself. We are not seeing the beginning of this process but the culmination. If you wonder who is the author of revisionist history you need look no further than the Father of Lies; Satan, himself.
We are subject to revising our own history to fit our desires. As Christians we have been blessed to live in a country where the outpouring of Gods' bounty has been great indeed. As a result of these blessings we have fooled ourselves into thinking we can handle this whole thing without God. The Creator made us with a free will and allows us to believe what we wish. When we suffer under the illusion we are masters of our own fate, we are destined to experience abject failure. The end-game of total self reliance is separation from Christ for all eternity.
I am concerned by the apparent inability of American's to look past the lies and see the dangerous future we now face. But I am more concerned about the increasing number of those who believe the answer to the loss of conservative values is a conservative way forward without God.
There is no way to know for sure what the future holds for us here, but if you are a student of history, you have to be wondering if the freedoms we have enjoyed in America will themselves, soon become just words on a page.
__________________________________________________________
In Summary:
Even given the liberties we have in America today as Christians, you ought not be surprised when you wake up and find yourself on the opposite side of history. Today we have religious freedom and can share our faith in most any place we choose. If we continue to move forward on the course we currently travel, I do not believe those freedoms will continue. I believe we should fight for our country tooth and nail, and that we should fight as the Founders fought for liberty. But if, as history predicts, we find ourselves on the other end of freedom, we should hold onto God; to protect and defend our faith with all our might… and on that day I pray politics will matter less as our faith and liberty will once again become the only essentials.
Be ready!
I am convinced of this; the time will come when we or our children will be persecuted for our faith in Christ. The signs are already here. As the enemies' scheme progresses, we will be condemned all the more for what we believe.
Knowing this; that we must continue not only to claim the Faith that owns us,
but to proclaim that Faith, bearing in mind that God is God...
And God will not be mocked.
I'm concerned about the path of our government as it relates to society. We are quickly becoming a nanny state in most every arena. The government is devouring the private sector at an alarming pace. Whether you're talking about welfare or healthcare, the systematic takeover of the banking industry or the automotive industry, the overriding feeling is that the government exists to save us from ourselves in every aspect of our lives.
But in the midst of being consumed by these social concerns, a certain truth brings me to my senses; God cares little for governments or powers. Gods' business is the human soul.
Some have been lulled into believing social good outweighs the significance of the spirit of man. How many trees must you save, how many soup kitchens do you have to serve in, how many carbon offsets does it take? Or, if you're of the conservative mindset, exactly how fiscally conservative do you need to be to rescue your soul from Hell? Neither the struggle over strict constructionist judges nor reliance on rugged individualism was meant to take the place of being in right standing with the Creator of the Universe.
As Americans, the answer should be simple for us, but the failure to come up with the correct answer only leads us further down the path of Humanism and increasingly far away from God and the America imagined by the Founders. You could be Ronald Reagan incarnate… you might be the most thoughtful, humble conservative on the planet and still be a world away from God. Conservatism without Christianity is hollow from inception and disastrous at its conclusion.
To this point in history the complacency of Christians has been largely responsible for the incremental loss of both our nation's freedom and its meaning. In this void appeasers and so-called "conservative atheists" have begun to assume the leadership of the conservative movement. Deniers and scoffers labor in vain as this Nation's glories fade into the ether. Unless the remaining Christian element takes back the helm, these unbelievers will continue to spread their social conservative message. And if they are allowed to continue in this course, we will all be peering into the rear view mirror questioning what became of the country we once knew.
America absent the God of the Bible is not the America we know and it never can be.
On Christ within Today's Conservative Movement:
There is a troubling trend in Conservatism today… what I see coming about is a tendency toward conservative Godlessness. To the point that Christianity is ridiculed by the same peoples who purport to revere the founding and the Founders! These people do not represent the Founders any more than the Pope represents the Hells' Angels. John Adams was one of our nations' founders a signer of the Declaration of Independence. What he said in these few words dispels the myth that the signers of that document believed an America based on the Constitution could work outside the provision or people of God, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." [October 11, 1798]
And if there's any question as to what "religion" John Adams was making reference to he then proclaimed that, "The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principals of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God."
Along with John Hancock, Mr. Adams then made this declaration, "We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!" [April 18, 1775]
Benjamin Franklin gave life to these principles by saying, "God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel" [Constitutional Convention of 1787]
There are countless quotes in which, one after the other, the founders proclaimed the importance of God and Christianity in America. To even the most casual observer of history, it should be abundantly clear that these contentions were shared by each of Americas' founders. God and His Word as declared in the Bible were woven throughout the tapestry of their language and of every founding document. It's as if they all cried in unison, "There is no civil society without God!"
Faith in God is not a thing that can be laid down and picked up on a whim. Without God and His Word, the values that made us great as a nation will cease to exist. Without God and His Word any attempt at morality will only be replaced by sin and degradation.
A just society will not remain so in the absence of a righteous God.
__________________________________________________________
On Christianity in Education:
The founding fathers also had much to say about education in America. In 1749 Benjamin Franklin presented a plan of education for Pennsylvania public schools. In this plan he insisted that the schools teach in his words, "the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern." [Benjamin Franklin / 1749]
There are those in American Conservatism that would say that Atheism and Conservative values can abide together, but I'm afraid Thomas Paine would disagree, "The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools, in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only, has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator himself, they stop short, and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of his existence. They labour with studied ingenuity to ascribe every thing they behold to innate properties of matter, and jump over all the rest by saying, that matter is eternal." [Thomas Paine / The Existence of God-1810]
Our liberties do not exist in a vacuum. They are assured only by the hand of God and that has been proven throughout the history of America. How do we suppose we would wrest God from our children and emerge from the other side intact as a society, still trusting in God?
Our institutions of learning; most of which had their start in one Christian faith or another, have become more humanistic and anti-religious with every passing decade. This process is accelerated by our reliance on atheistic professors who train our children's teachers, and then go on to train our children. We allow them to introduce a perverted version of the world to our young men and women. Do we not realize they are the only thing of meaning; the only true legacy we leave when we pass from this earth? Pastor Voddie Baucham put it this way, "If we continue to send our children to Caesar for their education - We need to stop being surprised when they come home as Romans." [Pastor Voddie Baucham / On the need for Home Schooling]
Republicans and Conservatives alike complain about the reliance of others' on the government. Yet we load up our kids and deposit them directly onto the sidewalk in front of the closest state-run school. We proudly watch as they march into the halls of government education without giving it as much as a second thought. And to our shame we do this with the full knowledge that any thought of God or faith must be checked at the door. In a speech to the Delaware Indian Chiefs on May 12th, 1779, George Washington said, "What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ." [George Washington / May 12th, 1779] This type of thinking has long since disappeared from our educational institutions but we still insist that the system can be "fixed". Because of the behemoth Teachers' Unions have become, "fixing" means a continual call for more funding. And as government involvement increases, parental involvement decreases.
If we are to repair our educational system, abandoning it may be the only choice that remains. If it is left without serious competition, those in power will find new and more costly ways to hold that power. We must then choose a better option for our children so that we can train them in the Christian faith. This is the only power we have to shape the future of America.
Alternatives are never easy. Like streams of water, people generally choose a path of least resistance. "Going with the flow" is always the simplest course, because it presents the least amount of obstacles. Because of this the excuses for failing to choose an alternative are many, and seemingly well reasoned. You might say, "Private education is too expensive." Or, "It takes both parents working to support a family." Or maybe, "There's not enough time to spend going over their homework with them." You may even use the excuse that, "I don't have the education to help them with their schoolwork." These same justifications are applied in the case of home schooling, with the added worry over whether the children will be properly "socialized". This is probably the saddest and least rational reason of all. It takes only a few minutes at a mall or the local grocery store to get a glimpse into the kind of "socialization" meted out in public school. And so we sacrifice our offspring to the gods of complacency. When we choose to bring children into this world they number among our primary responsibilities. What we fail to understand is that we risk giving up our children's future, and possibly their salvation, for the sake of "convenience". In effect, our offspring are being offered up in exchange for a larger home, a car payment, or a flat-screen television.
God's judgment cannot be far behind.
__________________________________________________________
On the so-called Separation of Church and State:
The news is all abuzz today with stories pertaining to the pre-eminence of one faith over the other. What they would have you believe is that there is no religion over another and this is clearly not the case. Jesus made the statement, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." [John 14:6] (New International Version)
This is a mutually exclusive statement that tells us there is no way to Heaven except the shed blood of Jesus Christ. This IS the same "Jesus" the founders trusted in and suggested others trust the same. Patrick Henry who was known as the "Orator of the Revolution" had this to say about the reason we enjoy freedom of religion in America. "It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here." [May 1765 Speech to the House of Burgesses]
Not only did the canons of Christianity permeate the founder's thoughts, writings and actions, they filled the halls of our public institutions, educational facilities, and even the halls of our justice system. The clarity with which this was iterated is astounding! Still, there are those who claim these same men would have us remove God; and Christianity in particular, from government and education, and erase Him entirely from the public square.
In speaking to the General Assembly of the State of Virginia, James Madison made a statement which today would be thought scandalous should any elected official repeat it, "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We've staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." [1778 to the General Assembly of the State of Virginia]
Far from fighting for the supposed rights of American's to be free from the invisible bonds of religion, it is outright slander to suggest those God-fearing men meant for us to enjoy something less than a Christian culture.
__________________________________________________________
On Revisionist History:
There are a multitude of stories that recount the philandering nature of our Founding Fathers and their myriad of misdeeds. For this reason, I am inclined to mention Jesus is the only sinless man to walk the earth. The founders were men; flesh and blood just as we are. One should expect they would have had their fair share of faults. But overwhelmingly, they were Christian men who sought to glorify God in their personal and public lives… men who sought to lead others and show the world a nation founded on the ways of Christ.
In the enemies bid to take history for his own, there has emerged a sort of "pseudo history" to stand in the way of truth. For all that has been spoken about Benjamin Franklin, he did not believe we could succeed as a nation if we were to remove God from our society.
At the Constitutional Convention held on June 28th, 1787 he spoke these words, "In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered… do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?" [Constitutional Convention / June 28th, 1787]
Mr. Franklin; we do, indeed need Gods' assistance. And what we so desperately needed in those early days we need all the more today. Our country is being aggressively dismantled, and at a rate not seen before in our history. Our lives are short and our memories shorter. For this reason we see this as a sudden thing or something that has possibly even begun within our lifetimes. But since Satan's fall he has had a plan. He was separated from God because he sought to be equal to Him and his plan is to separate us from God thus bringing us to himself. We are not seeing the beginning of this process but the culmination. If you wonder who is the author of revisionist history you need look no further than the Father of Lies; Satan, himself.
We are subject to revising our own history to fit our desires. As Christians we have been blessed to live in a country where the outpouring of Gods' bounty has been great indeed. As a result of these blessings we have fooled ourselves into thinking we can handle this whole thing without God. The Creator made us with a free will and allows us to believe what we wish. When we suffer under the illusion we are masters of our own fate, we are destined to experience abject failure. The end-game of total self reliance is separation from Christ for all eternity.
I am concerned by the apparent inability of American's to look past the lies and see the dangerous future we now face. But I am more concerned about the increasing number of those who believe the answer to the loss of conservative values is a conservative way forward without God.
There is no way to know for sure what the future holds for us here, but if you are a student of history, you have to be wondering if the freedoms we have enjoyed in America will themselves, soon become just words on a page.
__________________________________________________________
In Summary:
Even given the liberties we have in America today as Christians, you ought not be surprised when you wake up and find yourself on the opposite side of history. Today we have religious freedom and can share our faith in most any place we choose. If we continue to move forward on the course we currently travel, I do not believe those freedoms will continue. I believe we should fight for our country tooth and nail, and that we should fight as the Founders fought for liberty. But if, as history predicts, we find ourselves on the other end of freedom, we should hold onto God; to protect and defend our faith with all our might… and on that day I pray politics will matter less as our faith and liberty will once again become the only essentials.
Be ready!
I am convinced of this; the time will come when we or our children will be persecuted for our faith in Christ. The signs are already here. As the enemies' scheme progresses, we will be condemned all the more for what we believe.
Knowing this; that we must continue not only to claim the Faith that owns us,
but to proclaim that Faith, bearing in mind that God is God...
And God will not be mocked.
"We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We've staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
[James Madison / 1778 - General Assembly of the State of Virginia]
[James Madison / 1778 - General Assembly of the State of Virginia]
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If we don't make it up...
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