By Nancy Thorner & Bonnie O'Neil -
How can God continue to bless America if the Christian church remains silent on issues that oppose God's Word? Atheists and agnostics have no trouble blatantly telling their supporters to vote for specific candidates who oppose Christian values, but many churches won’t even have voter registration tables or Christian voter guides as encouragement for Christians to engage in the process of electing our leaders. Is it any wonder why we are losing our Christian nation given one immoral law after another?
Our opponents are fully engaged in this battle, while Christians largely ignore the growing dangers to our families and the Christian church. Those who founded our country and protected our founders’ values through the centuries understood the need for a nation to stay engaged. That was most often accomplished when a majority of citizens believed in Christian-Judea principles and fought against that which was harmful, if not evil.
Religion and our Founding Father
All or nearly all who signed the Declaration of Independence were Christians who were very familiar with the Bible. Among the singers were quite a few ministers. George Washington and John Adams, our first two presidents, understood the need for this new country to have strong connections to the church and to Biblical values. The main author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, admired Christ very much but did not believe in any of His miracles. Jefferson did, however, believe Christians made the best citizens. For it was their faith in God and the biblical instructions they embraced that demanded morality and respect for authority.
Following is the most well-known and quoted statement from the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
A large percentage of America’s leaders have identified themselves as Christian since this nation was founded, some more devout than others. Nevertheless, each one of them knew the value and importance Christians played in forming our country through their embrace of the very values necessary to keep America morally strong and thus able to achieve greatness.
Decline of Christian churches
Morality breeds morality, just as evil begets evil. Our leaders, having chosen wisely through the years since its founding, embraced the Christian faith as well as biblical standards. America prospered. Until the 1960’s, prayer and saluting the American flag were a part of every American student’s day at school. It wasn’t long after Leftist Supreme Court Justices ruled that prayers and the 10 Commandments must be taken down from all our schools and public places that school curriculum began to change, as did our City officials and politicians. Concurrently, as immoral laws were introduced and passed, immorality and crime increased exponentially in America.
It was inevitable that over time even the Christian church would begin to decline, and it has at unprecedented rates. This decline began in Europe where Christianity once flourished. Europe has for decades seen a serious decline, which has resulted in the rising of a non-Christian Europe. Beautiful, magnificent churches that once thrived in European cities are now being turned into restaurants, stores, and even counseling centers as churches close due to lack of attendance. Most of the remaining churches in Europe are used only for weddings and funerals and perhaps for Christmas and Easter.
Tragic is that large numbers of young adults in twelve European countries have no faith. Czechs are the least religious. 70% of young people in the UK identify as having no religion. Meanwhile, the most non-religious country is Poland, where over 50% of young adults define themselves as non-religious, followed by Lithuania where only 25% still identify as Christian. See here a chart showing how 16- to 29-year-olds self-identify by percentage in each European country.
While Gallup polls and other statisticians claim about 40 percent of America's population (on average) has attended church for the past 70 years, a different research currently paints a rather grim picture of how many Christians in Americans today actually attend a local church on any given Sunday. Less than 20 percent of Americans regularly attend church—half of what the pollsters report
When we allowed people to govern us that promote immorality and discourage moral laws, what did we expect? It is all about who is making the laws and that is due to who “we the people” elect to represent us. It is therefore urgent for the American church to engage in the political process if we do not want to end up like Europe. A nation’s people, elected officials, and laws all determine the direction a nation will take on issues affecting morality.
Evangelicals as Trump's base of support in 2016
Was Trump’s amazing election victory God's last chance for America? It certainly seemed to be a miracle that a non-politician could/would win with so many established opponents in the race. And did Christians largely vote for Donald? They did, and many believe it was the Christian voter turnout that helped elect “The Donald" in 2016. They appreciated his goals and hoped he would keep his promises when so many politicians have failed to do so in the past.
Evangelicals emerged as one of Donald Trump’s most ardent bases of support in 2016. Nearly four out of five (79%) voted for Trump, compared to 18 percent siding with Hillary Clinton, providing the Republican candidate with better than a four-to-one margin.
It was not necessarily Trump that Christians wanted, but they saw in Trump, a non-politician and one not beholden to anyone, someone they hoped would not be the average politician who rarely kept campaign promises. There must be consequences if a politician votes the opposite of his/her campaign promises. Ideally politicians should be voted out in the next election, but are we paying enough attention to know the voting record of our own legislators?
After 18 months, most Christians are impressed with President Trump, despite the non-stop negativity directed at him by the mainstream media. It speaks volumes that the same media that protected President Obama now does its best to malign President Trump.
Ralph Reed gave an interesting interview to Bari Weiss on June 20, 2018, explaining why Trump has not lost the Evangelical vote. During the 2016 election Mr. Reed was instrumental in getting out the evangelical vote for Donald Trump. His group, which has some 1.8 members, says it will spend $20 million to turn out evangelical voters in the November midterm election.
As Reed said: "Evangelicals confronted a less than perfect choice in 2016, as they frankly do in almost every election, and they acted as responsible citizens in voting not for the lesser evil but for the greater good." Does Trump sometimes say and do things Reed wishes he would not? He answered "Yes, and so has every other politician I have ever worked with.”
An important aspect of one’s character is whether politicians hold firm to their promises. Trump has done so on issues that matter deeply to evangelicals and millions of other citizens of faith. They include but are not limited to the following:
- Signing into law the most sweeping anti-human trafficking legislation in a decade.
- Embassy moved to Jerusalem.
- The scuttling of the Iran deal.
- The appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
- Defending Israel.
- Protecting life and religious freedom.
- Religious task force created to protect pro-life Christians.
Our role as Christians defined
We have learned a great deal in the last year; enough to know Trump was right. There was a need to “make America great again", and it continues despite resistance from the Democrat Party, some leaders in his own party, The Deep State, many in the mainstream media, and even billionaires like Socialist George Soros, who is pouring millions of dollars into his umbrella groups for the express purpose of maligning Trump and his administration.
Some consider it a type of treason to finance groups with the sole purpose of destroying a duly elected president of the United States. Other find it fair and the duty of the opposition; however, the opposition has gone over the line of what is acceptable in its use of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose express purpose it is to find something about Trump that could result in removing a duly elected president from office.
The November mid-elections are perhaps the most important elections in the history of this nation, for if Democrats succeed in retaking the House and/or the Senate, not only would there be a call to impeach Trump, but all that Trump has accomplished would be in danger of being reversed, to be replaced by a Socialist agenda.
All Americans should be determined to keep the Republic our fore-founders bequeathed to us so many years ago. We should be exceedingly grateful to all who have worked hard to make America the great country we all enjoy today. It has served Americans quite well.
May we all be guardians of our Republic in the decade ahead, so we are not remembered as a generation who failed to protect our nation from those who now seem determined to fashion this nation into one of their own liking.
