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The Pagan Influence Rapidly Degrading American Culture
DAVID LANE CHARISMA NEWS
A clash between two inimical worldviews is taking place in America: Biblical Christianity vs. secular humanism. In order to dominate, secular humanists had to find a way to exercise complete control over the five levers of cultural influence: spiritual, intellectual, educational, economical and vocational.
Secular lawyers can be unflaggingly persistent as well as ruthlessly devious. They determined that to banish the Judeo-Christian culture from the public square, the Bible had to be expunged from public education first. Theological principles and debate then could be relegated to the recesses of the conscience, and safely lodged behind the four walls of the church. As a consequence, public education, higher learning and academia have become ever more intertwined with the state.
It was completely different in the 17th and 18th centuries. Public education and higher learning "had its roots in American Protestantism, in fact 106 of the 108 colleges were distinctly Christian. It was while the First Amendment was passed, requiring all new states entering the Union to have education systems in place emphasizing the teaching of both religion and morality," Arthur W. Hunt III says in The Vanishing Word.
Someone's morality will be legislated and someone's philosophy will be taught in public schools and universities, "for those who govern the minds of the young, direct the course of the future of civilization," Joseph Boot writes in The Mission of God: A Manifesto Of Hope For Society. For this reason, under the influence of pagan secularism, the culture has become gruff, debauched and vitriolic over the last 75 years.
Corporate Christianity should have countered secularism's attack by going full tilt to where the battle was fiercest, engaging the hard fight in the public square. While increasingly moving into the meetinghouse seemed good strategy at the time, it has been shortsighted and ineffectual. With Christian retreat from the public square, Western culture is rushing headlong into apostasy from the Triune God.
Christianity today hardly resembles the muscular faith, honed by persecution, that arrived at America's shores. Modern Christendom has near zero impact in the culture as it has become progressively esoteric and academic. It has been reduced to a subculture.
The Southern Baptist Convention had its annual meeting last week in Dallas.
Progressive liberals have no intention of letting up. Take Hillary Clinton's homily last week over Congress's inaction at the southern border. "Those who selectively use the Bible to justify this cruelty are ignoring a central tenet of Christianity ... [Jesus] did not say, 'Let the children suffer'," she pontificated.
Indeed, Jesus did not say that. The Greek word 'ἄφετε' is used, which translates as 'let', as in "Let the little children, and do not forbid them ..." Jesus is saying, allow and do not forbid children from learning my teachings. Yet, forbidden they are in public education by the law established in 1963 by nine unelected and unaccountable Justices. This is diametrically opposed to the intention and foundation laid down by the American Founders.
Hillary Clinton employed the use of a Bible verse totally out of context to make a 'policy' argument. This shows one of several things about her. Either she is: (1) Biblically illiterate, (2) duplicitous, or (3) both; you choose.
Not to be outdone, MSNBC Anchor and Business Correspondent Ali Velshi also took to the Good Book. Mr. Velshi, being a Muslim, obviously does not understand that cherry-picking a few selected verses from the Bible does not convey the real meaning of Jesus' teachings.
In his Gleanings from Joshua, A.W. Pink writes: "The deception which the Gibeonites practiced upon them illustrates the dual character in which Satan opposes the people of God and the methods he employs therein—as the roaring lion seeking to devour, as the subtle serpent using deceit. Both scriptural and ecclesiastical history demonstrate that the latter is far more dangerous and successful than the former. When open persecution fails either to exterminate or intimidate the faithful" (read: Obama administration), "Satan resorts to his secret wiles" (read: Hillary Clinton and Ali Velshi).
If America is to survive, evangelical pastors and pews must take their civic skills to the next level. We were granted a reprieve with President Trump. A Hillary Clinton presidency would have set back America for a century by, among others, stacking the Courts with godless progressives. Would we even have survived, keeping in mind that the loss of religious liberty, the loss of the right to keep and bear arms, and President Obama's transgender military policy were just the warm-up acts?
Pastors must begin to comprehend that religious liberty will be won by participating in political action, in addition to Sunday sermons. A Sunday sermon is not a denomination of political currency. Mustering and marshaling parishioners to the public square is. The teaching of the whole counsel of God in America's pulpits, the resurrection of prayer in America's churches, and evangelical and pro-life Catholic Christians bringing biblical values to the public square will determine if America remains free.
If successful, history will declare that the early 21st century was one of the most momentous periods in HisStory since the 16th-century Protestant Reformation.
Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to stand.
David Lane is the founder of American Renewal Project.
