“Over the last two years,” writes Bruce S. Thornton, the American classicist at California State University, Fresno, and research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, “many of us have been surprised and troubled at how eagerly millions of citizens have surrendered their freedoms to the shifting, contradictory, nakedly politicized diktats of various ‘experts’ and government agencies. Coerced vaccinations, boosters, masks, and social distancing continue to be mandated and just as eagerly obeyed, even in the case of the mild Omicron covid variant.
“The technocratic Left currently ruling the country has wrung every ounce of unconstitutional power from the sovereign people, a large cohort of whom, especially the cognitive elites, have willingly gone along with every new crisis and command.
“As the year ends, signs of a pushback are multiplying. But will such resistance reach the critical mass of voters necessary for liberating us from such ‘soft despotism’ and its wardens?
“Now, however, there are multiple signs that voters are getting fed up with the whole COVID endless crises triggered by variants and spikes in infections, a datum that creates big dramatic numbers and increases, but isn’t as significant as death rates.
“They’re sick of their children’s schools serially opening and shutting, demanding useless masks, and making grammar school kids eat lunch outside in the cold. They’ve had it with the endless parade of ‘experts’, especially government functionaries unaccountable to either the voters or the market, playing the endless loop of virus porn.”
Over the last 100 years, American Christendom ceded the culture to religious secularism, giving secularists a free hand to create a culture diametrically opposed to the one established by America’s founders.
With God’s Word as the bedrock of society and culture abolished, consideration should be given to the examination of what constitutes the real crisis in today’s America. COVID is an external manifestation of it but the underlying cause is spiritual.
As early as 1789, American founder Fisher Ames [1758-1808] and co-author of the First Amendment to the Constitution noted the first signs of things to come: “We have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education. We’re starting to put more and more textbooks into our schools. We’ve become accustomed to putting little books into the hands of children, containing fables and moral lessons. We’re spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principal text in our schools.”
“All cultures,” writes Peter J. Leithart in his excellent 1 & 2 Kings Commentary, “draw lines between who is inside and who is outside and between different classes of people within the culture. Cultures lift some high and consider others low.”
In a democratic republic, a voting majority elects representatives to create and pass legislation and laws representing their beliefs about life.
Being overly occupied with developing American Christendom’s disengaged subculture, Christians withdrew from the public square. While this was a clear breach of Jesus’ ekklesia kingdom assignment from Matthew 16:18, it handed religious secularists the unopposed opportunity to drill their unmatched turpitude into the culture.
Religious secularism attached itself to the State in the 20th century, elevating it over Jehovah God. Thus, by the removal of prayer from public education in 1962, and the Bible in 1963, the radicalized Warren Court engendered a turbulent environment that resulted in the de-Christianization of America and its culture.
Secularism’s devotees and defenders now hold full sway over education, indoctrinating America’s youth with secular canons and credos in their incubation centers, all under the guise of edification.
Conversely, American Christendom, by abandoning the public square, turned civil government, i.e., “the making, enforcement, and adjudication of laws, over to Satan and those who serve him.”
If Christians would be still in authority over public education as they were throughout the 17th-19th centuries, Proverbs 9:13-14 would be front and center in every classroom in America:
13: “The woman Folly is turbulent [noisily ignorant]; she is totally gullible and does not know anything [speaks to moral knowledge, not mental].
14 [NKJV]: “For she sits at the door of her house, On a seat by the highest places of the city.” [In the words of Jewish Hebrew scholar Michael V. Fox: “Like Wisdom, Folly seeks a public venue and appears in much the same places as Wisdom. They are often in proximity, proposing alternative choices in many circumstances.”]
In Proverbs 4:14-17 Solomon waves a red flag toward present-day public education:
14 [NKJV]: “Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of evil. [Fox: “Do not join in the abominable customs and activities of the wicked.”]
15 [NKJV]: “Avoid it, do not travel on it. Turn away from it and pass on.” [Fox: “The path of the wicked is not somewhere off in the distance, far from the path of the righteous. Somehow, their path zigzags through the territory of life.”]
16 [NKJV]: “For they do not sleep unless they have done evil; And their sleep is taken away unless they make someone fall.” [Fox: “The wicked have a need to cause harm, their ‘peace of mind’ depends on it.”]
17 [NKJV]: “For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.” [Waltke: “The spread of homosexuality in America in less than a generation validates the danger of progressive hardening in sin.”]
In 2015, in a 5-4 ruling, the secularized United States Supreme Court discovered in the U.S. Constitution the “right” to homosexual marriage. This once again revealed the vastness of the ever-growing gap between current American government, law and public square and the American Founders’ religious/spiritual commitment, persuasion and intent.
In 2021, the American Renewal Project hosted 13 North Carolina pastors’ luncheons featuring NC Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, which were attended by 2,700 NC pastors and spiritual leaders. Of those, 132 signed a card saying they were praying about running in 2022 for local office: city council, county commissioner, school board, etc.
On Monday, November 29, 2021, in Asheboro, North Carolina, we hosted a type of campaign school, which was attended by 146 North Carolina pastors and spiritual leaders. At the end of the two-hour meeting, 30 went forward for prayer, signaling, “I’m running for local office in 2022.” We might even have an additional 30 on the other side of North Carolina.
Gideons and Rahabs are entering the public square. The Lord is dispatching His time-tested veterans to the front ranks to establish His ekklesia as the backbone of America’s resurrection. Praise His name!
As they begin to stand, they can be assured that Christ is ever ready to defend His own. Indicating the things to come, it says in 1 Kings 18:44: “A cloud about the size of a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” {eoa}
David Lane is founder of the American Renewal Project.
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