Reforming Our Nation on the Solid Foundation of Christ

A friend posted this note on his Facebook page on 4/14/10:

April 15th used to be only known for one thing. Taxes. However in recent years, as our God given liberties have been lost with every piece of legislation we have seen a rise in political grassroots. The aim of which is to restore the Country back to the historical constitutional roots.

I praise God that there is a lot of talk about about the Constitution. People are carrying it around in their pockets, people are reading it and many people, for the first time, are learning of their God given rights and the restrictions of the Government. This is a very, very good thing. However by itself, the parties, the petitions, the flag waving, the protests, the signs, and the passion are meaningless with out the one thing the overwhelming noise of the Parties are silent about...

The Gospel

Now don't get me wrong. I am not saying that as Christians we should be absent from the political process and just preach the Gospel. I believe the exact opposite. I believe that as Christians, because we have the Gospel, we are the only ones who are capable of running and sustaining a Government.

Read the words of Noah Webster, the founder of modern American public education.

“In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed... No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.” -Noah Webster written in the preface to his American Dictionary of the English Language of 1828.

Understand this point. Without Christ, men are wicked (Gen 6:5), they are born at enmity towards God (Rom 8:7), they hate God (Rom 1:30). They despise his wisdom (Pro 1:7), they despise the education that comes from his Word. Without Christ men are fools (Rom 1), and they seek after their own pleasure (Ecc 7:4), they are liars, thieves and adulterers (1 Cor 6). Everything about sinful man is in constant rebellion to God. (Rom 3)

Yet these men, year after year, election after election are ones we put on the ballot, we promote, we petition and we evangelize for these enemies of God. Be they Mormons, Catholics or Unregenerate posers, We give men who we would not trust five minutes alone with our wallets, control of our entire country.

We have come to the conclusion that we don't need Christians in office, we just need people who resemble Christians. Great Moralist. Our perfect candidate is the perfect description of a wolf in sheeps clothing. We want someone who is politically correct, won't talk about Jesus in public and reduces the slaughter of millions of Children a mere check mark on his election brochure. We want candidates who simply resemble Christianity. Be they any religion they please but true regeneration is of the least of our concerns.

However it should be the priority. It should be the very first question we ask.

I don't want a candidate who can articulate the finer aspects of capitalism and the free market if he cannot show me in Scripture why this method is ordained by God.

I don't want a candidate who is against abortion because it's a moral tragedy. I want one who can articulate it's violation of the sixth commandment, and testifies with authority that it violates God's Law and forgiveness for this terrible transgression is only in Christ.

I don't want a candidate who goes to Church, but I want a candidate who Loves the Church and would gladly risk persecution from terrorists or ecumenists to propose it's truth.

Most importantly, I don't want a candidate who is unable and unwilling to testify to the truths of his own salvation. If a Godly candidate has Christ as the center of all his policy, all other policies will fall into play.

But very little of this talk will be happening at the Tea Parties tomorrow and that is why the movements, if left to vain conversation grounded in the rambling reason and leadership of unregenerate men, will fail.

Christian. I urge you not to shy away from the political sphere but subdue it. Speak up, turn off Fox News, a network dominated by unregenerate Catholics and Mormons. Turn off CNN and MSNBC who promote unbiblical policies, and turn back to Christ as the source for all political knowledge and wisdom. Get involved locally. Share the Gospel at meetings. Run for Office if for no other reason but to proclaim the Truth of the Gospel and the sola source of true Freedom and Liberty.

Take this Nation Captive for the Gospel. First by Preaching it openly and publicly and second by overflowing with truly good works that are not only centered but dependent on Christ, for your Country.

I pray that as we head out to our rallies, while waving banners of freedom we realize that without Christ at the center all ideas are depraved vanities which will do the opposite of giving us true Liberty, but instead they will enslave us to damning moralism doomed by the depraved hearts of men to fail.

As Noah Webster said:

"Let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God [Exodus 18:21]. . . . If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted . . . If our government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws." - Noah Webster, The History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie and Peck, 1832), pp. 336-337, 49

For the sake of restoring the Sovereign.

Marcus

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I do not have a problem with watching the news as long as a person uses discernment. Nonetheless, Marcus makes some important points. Political rallies and political reform have value, and they can accomplish good ends. However, purely political solutions do not address the root problem. They ultimately put a band-aid on a deep and increasingly infected wound. Our country's root problem is that we have turned away from God.

Secular writers will often argue that the United States is not a Christian nation and that the US Constitution is a secular document. On the contrary, the existence and active role played by the biblical God was paramount in the minds of this country's founders. While it is true that the US is not a Christian nation in the sense that the majority of government and public policies now operate on Christian principles, we should still keep some important historical facts in mind. The US Constitution does not mention Christianity as a state religion, but it does presuppose Christianity. For example, Sunday is not counted in the number of days that the president has to sign a bill, thereby making it a day off. The Constitution was also signed on "the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven."

George Washington saw the hand of God in the formation of the country. He wrote to Gov. Trumbull of Connecticut:

"We may with a kind of pious and grateful exultation trace the finger of Providence through those dark and mysterious events which first induced the States to appoint a general convention, and then led them one after another, by such steps as were best calculated to effect the object, into an adoption of the system recommended by the general convention, thereby, in all human probability, laying a lasting foundation for tranquillity and happiness, when we had too much reason to fear that confusion and misery were coming upon us." (Benjamin F. Morris, The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States [Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2007], 305)

The Declaration of Independence is far from secular. Human rights were endowed by "Nature's God" and the "Creator." The signers appealed to "the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions." The Declaration closed with the following: "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

The modern concept of "separation of church and state" would have been foreign to the minds of the founders. Properly understood, the first amendment does not forbid religion from being involved in politics, whether that be on the local, state, or even federal level. It limits what the government can do regarding religion, but it does not limit the freedom of religious organizations or individual believers. It protects churches from the state. It was never intended to ban the church from politics.

This will surprise many people, but the establishment clause of the first amendment originally forbade only a nationally endorsed church. The states had state endorsed churches, and the states could (and did) impose religious conditions for holding office. Christianity was the accepted religion of the country, but no particular denomination was mandated by law. It is also worth noting that on same day that the first amendment was approved, president George Washington declared a national day of prayer. Such an act today would draw the wrath of the ACLU on the grounds that it constitutes an "unconstitutional" establishment of religion, even though the very men who wrote the first amendment would not have seen it that way.

Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist Association can hardly be used as a basis for a separation of church from the state (as separation of church and state is commonly applied today) considering that Jefferson (a hero of secularists today), while he was the governor of Virginia, declared days of prayer and thanksgiving to God. As president he prayed in both of his inaugural addresses. He signed bills which provided funds for chaplains. He supported the teaching of religion in state-endorsed schools. He also proposed that the national seal include an image of Pharaoh’s army being killed in the Red Sea (one of the most significant events in the Bible).

Our nation has increasingly become more secular, but this was not the intention of the founders. Secularism also is not a source of strength. The US Constitution officially guarantees freedoms to the citizens of this country, but it is only as strong as the foundation on which this country rests. Genuine strength to respond to such forces as moral relativism, rampant political corruption, and racial tension, but still maintain individual freedoms, comes from having a firm foundation for values. This foundation is found only in the eternal, holy, and just creator, and it is in him that our country can find what it needs to recover from its current decline. Daniel Webster wrote:

"If we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religion—if we and they shall live always in the fear of God and shall respect his commandments—if we and they shall maintain just moral sentiments, and such conscientious convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life—we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country; and if we maintain those institutions of government, and that political union exceeding all praise as much as it exceeds all former examples of political association, we may be sure of one thing, that, while our country furnishes materials for a thousand masters of the historic art, it will be no topic for a Gibbon—it will have no decline and fall. It will go on prospering and to prosper. But if we and our posterity neglect religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. If that catastrophe shall happen, let it have no history! Let the horrible narrative never be written! Let its fate be like that of the lost books of Livy, which no human eye shall ever read, or the missing Pleiad, of which no man can know more than that it is lost, and lost forever." (Morris, 320-21)

The biblical Christian worldview is a comprehensive worldview. It covers more than what people believe about God and the afterlife, and what people do on Sunday mornings. It includes how a person should see all aspects of life: work, culture, society, politics, economics, philosophy, art, literature, music, and leisure. The Gospel is also the means by which God reforms both individuals and societies. Francis Schaeffer said it well.

"If we ache and have compassion for humanity today in our own country and across the world, we must do all that we can to help people see the truth of Christianity and accept Christ as Savior. And we must stand against the loss of humanness in all its forms. It is God's life-changing power that is able to touch every individual, who then has a responsibility to touch the world around him with the absolutes found in the Bible. In the end we must realize that the tide of humanism, with its loss of humanness, is not merely a cultural ill, but a spiritual ill that the truth given us in the Bible and Christ alone can cure." (Francis A. Schaeffer, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, in Francis A. Schaeffer, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer [Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1982], vol. 5, 410. Emphasis mine).

Religion is not a private matter. It has significant impact on both individual lives and the life of a nation:

"The central message of biblical Christianity is the possibility of men and women approaching God through the work of Christ. But the message also has secondary results, among them the unusual and wide freedoms which biblical Christianity gave to countries where it supplied the consensus. When these freedoms are separated from the Christian base, however, they become a force of destruction leading to chaos. When this happens, as it has today, then, to quote Eric Hoffer (1902– ), 'When freedom destroys order, the yearning for order will destroy freedom.'

"At that point the words left or right will make no difference. They are only two roads to the same end. There is no difference between an authoritarian government from the right or left: the results are the same. An elite, authoritarianism as such, will gradually force form on society so that it will not go on to chaos. And most people will accept it—from the desire for personal peace and affluence, from apathy, and from the yearning for order to assure the functioning of some political system, business, and the affairs of daily life. That is just what Rome did with Caesar Augustus" (Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, in Francis A. Schaeffer, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, vol. 5, 243–44. Emphasis original).

(I comment on this further here.)

Christians should be involved in politics. They should use the political means which are made available, but they should keep such efforts in the proper perspective. Political solutions from any political party, however helpful they may be, are ultimately inadequate. The Gospel of Christ provides the only means by which our country can ultimately be saved from it current decline. Christians can and should vote and run for office, but they should remember that purely political efforts are limited and that their first priority is to spread the Gospel of Christ and train believers in a life which is submitted to God and glorifies Him.

I suggest the following books on the Christian background of the United States:

• Benjamin F. Morris, The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2007) (paperback, ebook). An older edition is available at Google Books


• Gary Demar, America's Christian Heritage (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 2003) (hardback).