An Apathetic Populace & Pastors Leads to Tyranny
According to the Constitution, our legislative representatives are charged with the responsibility to counterbalance the power of the judicial branch, but, quite simply, the United States Congress has shirked its duty and utterly failed to restrain our overheating judiciary.
Congress has not required the judiciary to stay within the confines of its constitutional authority and responsibility. The final blame, however, does not rest even with the Congress. The primary reason legislators have not acted is because the American people have not demanded that Congress correct the mistakes of the U.S. Supreme Court and the liberal revolution that has stripped states and American citizens of religious liberty. Noah Webster warned that if America found itself in the shape we are today, it would be the fault of the people: “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.” (Footnote #60)
At one time, Americans were well versed in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Federalist Papers. We understood the civic process—how it works and why it is so important. Citizens knew the lessons of history well enough to assess current events by time-tested standards. Yet today, countless Americans are ignorant of even the most basic information such as the name of the vice president, the secretary of state, the attorney general, and the Speaker of the House.
Most Americans do not recognize when freedoms are at risk because they don’t know exactly what their God-given rights are and how the Founders intended to preserve them.
Riding the Fence
Among “we the people,” there is one group which I think bears a special responsibility for the present state of our nation. Most of America’s pastors have been virtually missing in action for years on substantive public policy and worldview issues. By contrast, pastors and religious leaders of the Founders’ day preached not only the salvation message but also exhorted their congregations on the biblical response to the issues, whether it be slavery, gambling, drunkenness, voter participation, the biblical responsibilities of an elected official—including the type of judges we put into power—or the appropriate consequences for ungodly elected officials.
While America has pastors and religious leaders who stand tall, they are much too few and far between. The typical pastor in America today is liberal or leaning-liberal in their theology and politics. Even those who maintain a sound theology often are ignorant of how to apply biblical principles to the issues we face.
Many pastors do not realize the phrase “separation of church and state” is not found in the Constitution. They know next to nothing about our nation’s founding and little of substance about the Christian worldview and how it applies to law, government, economics, education, and sociology. They do not recognize the threat of worldviews that compete with Christianity and that are stealing the souls of adults and young people alike in their churches. In many cases, these pastors not only have bought the “separation lie” but like doing so because accepting the lie makes life easier for them. They justify believing it by accepting the equally false notion of a dividing line between the “secular” and the “sacred.” This way, pastors and religious leaders don’t have to address topics in church that require them to pick a side instead of riding the fence. Most prefer this fence ride because it allows them to keep everybody happy while they fill pews and offering plates and build multimillion dollar churches as monuments to themselves and their success.
The problem fence-sitters try desperately to avoid is that as soon as a pastor embraces and practices a thoroughly biblical worldview that pastor is asking for controversy. Such a pastor must be willing to confront abortion, postmodernism in America’s schools, and other controversial topics in sermons. Any firm stand is sure to offend a certain percentage of church members, who will simply take their money elsewhere and tell their friends about the narrow-minded church they just left.
This potential loss of a “paying customer” terrifies many church leaders. And if you don’t think the majority of America’s churches are run like businesses seeking to outdo the competition in order to garner more patrons, then walk the aisle of a Christian bookstore. Read the titles and back covers of the latest church growth propaganda, and a fairly clear picture will emerge. It’s not pretty.
Because they are “up front,” pastors are especially vulnerable but also especially responsible. A Christian worldview that acknowledges good and evil, right and wrong, and rejects our culture’s worship at the new altar of tolerance, political correctness, moral relativism, and the New Age that says “all ways lead to God” will make waves.
Unfortunately, timid, whiney pastors are neither new nor uniquely American. Aside from a few German church leaders like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed in a Nazi concentration camp, the majority of pastors in World War II-era Germany did not have the courage of their convictions and did nothing to stop Adolph Hitler’s murderous regime. The lesson, I believe, is that, aside from a handful of courageous pastors, most American church leaders will “go along to get along” right up until the day they find the doors to their churches chained and locked.
Why do I think the majority of America’s Christian leaders are now more like castrated sheep than strong shepherds? Consider this: The Barna Research Group surveyed America’s pastors and found “that only half of the country’s Protestant pastors—51 percent—have a biblical worldview. Defining such a worldview as believing that absolute moral truth exists, that it is based upon the Bible, and having a biblical view on six core beliefs (the accuracy of biblical teaching, the sinless nature of Jesus, the literal existence of Satan, the omnipotence and omniscience of God, salvation by grace alone, and the personal responsibility to evangelize).”
It’s little wonder pastors are off base in their worldviews since most have been trained in institutions also stumbling toward liberalism. Aside from a few that still stand firm, America’s Bible colleges and seminaries have been hijacked by religious liberals who themselves doubt America’s godly heritage.
Many professors at our “Christian” colleges and universities are hostile to biblical faith even though the institutions in which they teach retain a Christian façade. They attack the authority and inerrancy of the Bible with higher criticism, they question the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, His deity, His virgin birth; they take Bible verses out of context, and they completely ignore verses that call into question their preferred religion of tolerance, political correctness, and New Age spirituality.
What can you do about this issue? The first step is simple. If you’re attending a church whose pastor would rather hide behind the “separation lie” than to face the implications of the real truth, then your part in solving our national crisis is to find another church. The next step is to learn to counter lies with the truth.
Memorize a few key points in this chapter, and the next time someone babbles about the “separation lie,” set them straight. Don’t be shocked if not everyone is open to hearing the truth, much less accepting and believing it. Overcoming years of brainwashing is not easy, particularly if the “lie” fits a person’s liberal ideology and their desire to repress and eradicate the Christian worldview from America.
Go ahead: Hold that school Bible study. Invoke the name of God or Jesus Christ in a graduation speech. Begin a city council meeting with prayer. Use your local park for a church service. Why not even have a student read a few verses from the Bible? Then when the liberals go nuts and threaten to sue, call up a free religious law group and take them on. These committed legal experts have argued cases all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and they do it for free because reversing the tide of judicial pollution is their mission. Believe me, if you call them with a solid case, you’ll make their day.
Footnote:
Grant, The Family under Siege, 141.
