Hell-bent on “canceling” Attorney General William Barr, Katherine Stewart and Caroline Fredrickson cobble together a New York Times opinion piece under the headline “Bill Barr Thinks America Is Going to Hell.” “Mr. Barr’s infamous speech,” they held, “at the University of Notre Dame Law School, in which he blamed ‘secularists’ for ‘moral chaos’ and ‘immense suffering, wreckage and misery’, it has become clear that no understanding of William Barr can be complete without taking into account his views on the role of religion in society.”
Stewart’s and Fredrickson’s scornful reproval of Barr resulted from the attorney general’s suggestion how to rectify pagan secularism’s threatening of sustainable freedom in America. “Threatening” as in dispelling virtue as the key component of freedom as made widely known by the Founding Fathers.
“This form of ‘religious liberty’ is not a mere side issue for Mr. Barr,” they maintained, “or for the other religious nationalists who have come to dominate the Republican Party. Barr has made this clear. All the problems of modernity—’the wreckage of the family’, ‘record levels of depression and mental illness’, ‘drug addiction’ and ‘senseless violence’ —stem from the loss of a strict interpretation of the Christian religion.”
Regarding Stewart’s and Fredrickson’s own view on the role of religion in society, we don’t have to look far to find out what that entails. Fredrickson is the past legal counsel of NARAL Pro-Choice America. It will be easily understood that she thought up her own special religious morality, based on human nature, human experience and private rules of conduct.
As Stewart and Fredrickson “minister” and attempt to recruit and ‘”convert” unbelievers to their self-styled religion, the hard-left New York Times felt called upon to underwrite their “missionary” work with in-kind giving, believing in a kingdom principle: It brings more blessing to the giver than to the recipient …
Stewart and Fredrickson, strangely enough, seem to feel threatened by Barr, who is simply calling for a return to the Judeo-Christian heritage and culture established by the Founding Fathers in 17th- and 18th-century America.
America being a democratic republic, Stewart and Fredrickson, of course, have every right to air their opinions, to muster and marshal like-minded troops to polling booths and be ever-present on radio and television news shows in their endeavor to establish a libertine system of beliefs.
However, they do not have the right to stifle Attorney General Barr, evangelical and pro-life Catholic Christians or any other body politic from advancing their agenda and values, more specifically, conservative moral values conflicting with far-left ideologies.
Let there be no doubt about the fact that the Judeo-Christian culture established by America’s founders has been serially impugned and systematically dismantled over the last 50 years. America has become just another nation among the nations. The once Christian uniqueness shares greater comparison to “French Enlightenment, whose intellectual basis of the French Revolution sought to replace Christianity, and religion in general, with secularism rooted in reason. No God, Bible or Ten Commandments is necessary for morality or meaning: reason [and science] will replace them.”
Marcello Pera writes, “The intellectual and political elites of the West take for granted that religion, in particular Christianity, is a cultural vestige, a primitive form of knowledge, a consolation for the weak minded, and an obstacle to peaceful coexistence. We are told that politics must take a neutral stance on religious values, and that societies must hold together without any reference to religious bonds. Liberalism is considered to be ‘free-standing’, and the Western, liberal, open society is taken to be ‘self-sufficient’.”
Anti-Christian secularism jeopardizes America’s identity, leaving it with no conscience. We know this to be so because culture is the public manifestation of religion.
As we begin 2020, we might recall Dr. Peter J. Leithart’s foretelling warning signal: “Indifference to idolatry has its roots in the early modern period. According to a common telling of the story, Europeans discovered that theology was bloodily divisive and concluded that the only way to restore comparative harmony was to expunge theology from the public square, forcing theological decision and debate into the recesses of the conscience or, at best, safely behind the walls of the church.”
Over the last century, American Christendom didn’t put a straw in the way, making itself scarce in the public square, and antithetical to Jesus’ guidance in Matthew 16:18 to establish His ekklesia in the marketplace, so that “the gates of Hades will not overpower” the culture.
Which brings us to CNN’s scurrilous and repulsive live coverage on New Year’s Eve in Times Square, hosted by openly homosexuals Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen.
During CNN’s gaiety and merrymaking, Cooper and Cohen considered sexual questions and downed shots of tequila on the live broadcast, while CNN correspondent Randi Kaye joined a drag queen in a liquor-filled bath in a bar in Key West, Florida. The broadcast represented rock bottom in American television history.
In Proverbs 4:14-16, Solomon cautioned “Hear, my children” (v. 1) not to join in the beastly ways and activities of the wicked. For folly seeks a public venue and appears in much the same place as wisdom. They are often in proximity, proposing alternative choices in many circumstances. Sin is so addictive that it keeps the wicked awake; their ‘peace of mind’ depends on causing harm.
Contemporary theology seemingly seeks to deny that Jehovah God has enemies. Dr. Peter J. Leithart sets the record straight: “Enmity arises before the fall, and Adam’s sin from one angle is his inability to recognize an enemy or, more accurately, his refusal to be an enemy.”
We can be certain that the establishment of a secular state never crossed the minds of the Founding Fathers.
Will a Gideon or Rahab the harlot please stand?
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