Elections, Worldviews, & Anti-Christian Bigotry

By Brannon Howse Live, 04 February, 2018

Without a doubt, America is a divided nation, and the 2004 presidential election revealed just how divided we are. While the electoral map shows more red states than blue, that does not reveal the whole picture because the candidate that wins the majority of the votes in a given state gets all the electoral votes in that state. When we look at the straight vote count, we see that 55.1 million Americans voted for John Kerry and 58.6 million Americans voted for President Bush, a difference of only 3.5 million votes. That certainly suggests a clear division.

So just what is dividing Americans? Why can we not agree on the issues of our day? What is the driving force that causes both sides to be so committed to their beliefs, ideas, and opinions? Why is the battle between these two opposing groups as important as the battle between the colonies and the British troops during the Revolutionary War? What will be the outcome for the winners as well as the losers? Whether you are a Christian, conservative, atheist, liberal, moderate, or even if you don’t know what you believe, this book will reveal the real state of the Union and the two predominate opposing worldviews that will determine the fate of America.

While liberals reside in both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, the platform of the Republican Party has traditionally reflected conservative positions such as respect for the life of the unborn, marriage defined as between one man and one women, and opposition to euthanasia.

Polling data shows that many who embrace the liberal policies of the Democratic Party are less religious than those who support the pro-life, traditional marriage policies of the Republican Party. This divide first became apparent with the 2000 election in which those who attended religious services more than once a week supported Bush by a margin of 2 to 1 while those who never attended religious services supported Gore by the same margin (footnote #1)

Thomas Edsall, writing in the Washington Post, also documents the religious worldview battle going on in the voting booth: “Pollsters are finding that one of the best ways to discover whether a voter holds liberal or conservative values is to ask: How often do you go to church? Those who go often tend to be Republican; those who go rarely or not at all tend to be Democratic.: (footnote #2) The election numbers affirm that the same religious-practice divide of 2000 was again present in 2004, and that it extended across ethnic, gender, and age lines. In this election, 61 percent of Bush’s vote came from people of all faiths who attend services weekly. Conversely, Kerry received the support of 62 percent of Americans who never attend worship, and among occasional churchgoers, voters were split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats. (Footnote #3)

The reaction of modern-day liberals to the reelection of George W. Bush has been very instructive to the worldview battle that is raging in America:

• Democratic leaders such as Lawrence O’Donnell and Bob Beckel (as well as many rank-and-file Democrats) are making noise about secession. The proposed map they are circulating on the Internet demonstrates their understanding of the cultural divide in this election: they propose that the blue states won by Kerry join with Canada to form the “United States of Canada” and that the remaining thirty-one red states be named “Jesusland.”

• Radio personality Garrison Keillor, host of the popular National Public Radio show “A Prairie Home Companion” and a Democrat, claims he is on a quest to take away the right of born-again Christians to vote, saying their citizenship is actually in heaven, not the United States. Keillor made the comments during a speech at Chicago’s Rockefeller Memorial Chapel and during his radio monologue the Saturday after the election. According to a transcript of the Saturday show, Keillor said, “I am now the chairman of a national campaign to pass a constitutional amendment to take the right to vote away from born-again Christians. [enthusiastic audience applause] Just a little project of mine. My feeling is that born-again people are citizens of heaven. That is where their citizenship is, [laughter] in heaven; it’s not here among us in America.” Earlier, in the Chicago speech the day after the election, Keillor also described his reaction to the reelection of President Bush: “I am a Democrat—it’s no secret. I am a museum-quality Democrat,” Keillor said. “Last night I spent my time crouched in a fetal position, rolling around and moaning in the dark.” According to a report in the University of Chicago’s Chicago Maroon, Keillor told the audience, “If born-again Christians are allowed to vote in this country, then why not Canadians?” (footnote #4)

Many in the media claimed President Bush won reelection in the fall of 2004 because of the “values vote.” Liberals seemed unable to understand how “values” could override the issues of the economy and the war in Iraq. Yet, one voter in five said moral values were the most important issue driving the vote, and almost eight out of ten of those backed Bush. (Footnote #5)

Strikingly, liberals talk about the values vote only when referring to those who voted for President Bush. Of course, those that voted for John Kerry also were voting on the basis of values of a different sort—and how those values align with John Kerry’s thinking about abortion on demand, same-sex marriage, and so forth. Modern-day liberals have a value system, too, but it is based on a different foundation than that of conservatives. Liberal values are built squarely on moral relativism.

One Democrat argues that his party needs to make up for its “God-gap,” as if a party that is overwhelmingly committed to abortion and same-sex marriage, to name only two pertinent issues, could fool the public into thinking they actually care about what matters to God—to say nothing of the implications that Democrats are hooked at the hip with the American Civil Liberties Union, radical homosexual groups, the National Education Association, Planned Parenthood, and the United Nations, all of which make no secret about their hatred of the God of the Bible and His laws. What many modern-day liberals don’t understand is that everyone’s worldview is the foundation of their values, and this worldview is the motivator behind a person’s conduct.

The “values vote” was a worldview vote because the voters that oppose same-sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia, and the secularization of America do so based on the Christian worldview on which their values are founded. Voters that openly embrace the Christian worldview and voters that are even moderately committed to a Christian worldview went to the polls in record numbers in the 2004 elections. President Bush received 78 percent (21.2 million) of the evangelical vote. Nearly 12 million more evangelicals voted in 2004 than in 2000. There was an 80-percent increase in the number of evangelicals voting from the 2000 elections. (footnote #6) This surge in evangelicals showing up at the polls returned President Bush to the White House.

The phrase “culture war” is often invoked to describe the values battle between liberals and conservatives, but a more fitting term would be worldview war. While Pat Buchanan invoked the term culture war in 1992, he went on to describe a war of worldviews: “There is a religious war going on in this country, a culture war as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.” (Footnote #7)

Political writers, seemingly without even knowing it, are agreeing with the premise of this book, which is that modern-day liberalism is based on a humanistic worldview and the associated morally relativistic foundation. Thomas Edsall, writing in the Atlantic, puts it this way: “Whereas elections once pitted the party of the working class against the party of Wall Street, they now pit voters who believe in a fixed and universal morality against those who see moral issues, especially sexual ones, as elastic and subject to personal choice.” (Footnote #8) Whether Edsall recognizes it or not, he is describing a worldview battle between Christianity and secular humanism.

Political writer and commentator Michael Barone understands that the issues of today are far more than political. He describes a worldview battle between those that knowingly or unknowingly embrace secular humanism and those that are influenced to some degree by the Christian worldview: “What demographic factor separates voters more than any other? The answer is religion. . . . The two Americas evident in the 48 percent [to] 48 percent 2000 election are two nations of different faiths. One is observant, tradition-minded, moralistic. The other is unobservant, liberation-minded, relativist.” (Footnote #9) Notice that Barone also describes the desire of liberals to be liberated—from any notion, laws, and worldview that restrict their freedom to do as they please.

Today’s modern-day liberals desire to free themselves and America from God and the Christian worldview, the foundation of conservatism as well as our republic itself. They concern themselves less with America’s war on terror than their own personal war on Christianity. Former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, Robert B. Reich, echoes their perspective when he declares:

The great conflict of the 21st century may be between the West and terrorism. But terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The underlying battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernist fanatics, between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe blind allegiance to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is no more than preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe that truth is revealed solely through scripture and religious dogma, and those who rely primarily on science, reason, and logic. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism is not the only danger we face. (Footnote #10)

Do you realize what this former high-ranking U.S. government official has declared is equal to terrorism and is a foundational threat to America? That’s right, conservative Christians.

Reich says today’s worldview battle is “between modern civilization and anti-modernist fanatics.” If you don’t believe, accept, and value postmodernism and its belief that all truth is created by man and not God, you are an anti-modernist fanatic. Reich himself acknowledges that today’s worldview war is between secular humanists and Christians, “between those who believe in the primacy of the individual [secular humanism] and those who believe that human beings owe blind allegiance to a higher authority.” He goes on to attack those that believe in life after death as well as the authority and validity of the Bible. If Reich and his radical liberal friends have their way, there may one day be a division in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security dedicated to monitoring not only terrorists but also tracking and prosecuting Christians that openly live out their Christian worldview.

In 2002, Charles Kimball, a college professor at a prominent university, wrote When Religion Becomes Evil, in which he suggests that one indication a religion has become evil is when it makes claims of absolute truth: “When zealous and devout adherents elevate teachings and belief of their tradition to the level of absolute truth, they open the door to the possibility that their religion will become evil.” (Footnote #11)

Ironically, Professor Kimball misses the point that, by his own definition, he is evil. Kimball maintains a religious worldview whether he cares to admit it or not. There is no such thing as a nonreligious worldview. All worldviews uphold some perspective about God and truth. The professor is practicing an evil religion by forcing on his students his absolute belief that Christians are evil.

The political arena is similarly awash in an anti-Christian point of view. In September of 2004, former vice president Al Gore showed his anti-Christian colors when he attacked the reported religious views of President George W. Bush. In a twelve-thousand-word profile on his “life and times” in the New Yorker magazine, Gore revealed how the liberals like to preach tolerance but are the most intolerant. Here’s what Gore had to say about the faith of President George W. Bush: “It’s a particular kind of religiosity. It’s the American version of the same fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia, in Kashmir, in religions around the world: Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim.”

While I have some serious concerns in regards to the self-described, religious views of politicians like George W. Bush, the article by Al Gore reveals the open hostility to anyone that does not fall in line with progressive, New Age spiritualism and/or postmodernism. Al Gore equated Wahhabi Islam—which has fostered beheadings, massacres, the September 11 attacks, the killing of children, and countless horrors—with the president’s self-described values. When was the last time an evangelical Christian beheaded someone, blew up a building filled with innocent people, flew a plane into an office tower, or slaughtered children in the name of God? Secularists may try to paint conservative Christians and radical Muslims with the same brush, but the facts mitigate against such attempts. Their values led self-described Christians, instead, into “radical” activities like founding the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the first American hospitals, the first rescue missions for homeless people, and pro-life clinics that provide health-care and adoption services, which save thousands of babies from abortion each year.

President Bush may well have offended the postmodern crowd when he called the terrorists evil and sought to bring capitol punishment to bear upon them through the use of military force, but he has stated clearly in several interviews that he cannot separate his Christian faith from his job as president. That, as you no doubt know, drives the progressives crazy.

It is the worldviews of people like Al Gore, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Robert Reich, and their liberal, humanist compatriots that pose the real threat to America. Their worldview has resulted in the taking of innocent life through abortion and now active euthanasia in the case of Terri Schiavo.

The precursor to Adolf Hitler’s annihilation of Jews and Christians was his murder of 275,000 handicapped individuals. (Footnote #13) The worldview by which Al Gore and those of his ilk justify legislation and policies that allow for and fund the killing of unborn babies is the same worldview that allowed Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini to justify the murder of millions. Hitler’s paganism and hatred of Christianity fueled his vile regime. The Fuehrer once proclaimed, “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity.” Heinrich Himmler, the brutal head of the Gestapo, dictated the policy that followed from Hitler’s view: “We shall not rest until we have rooted out Christianity” (Footnote #13)

Hitler’s atrocities were birthed from a worldview that rejected God and His laws—a rejection that humanists in America share. The twentieth century was the bloodiest of all centuries, and humanism—the worldview of Robert Reich, the Third Reich, Al Gore, and Charles Kimball—was the foundation for those committing the atrocities. Such a comment may seem extreme to some Americans, but facts are facts. It has been the godless worldview of America’s radical liberals that has permitted, encouraged, funded, and profited from our nation’s holocaust—the slaughter of forty million unborn babies and counting. And now picking up steam in America is the liberal’s barbaric love affair with active euthanasia.

As humanist liberals decry Christianity, they undermine the very worldview upon which America was founded, dating back to the Colonies, thus making themselves the true enemies of America. Founding father Dr. John Witherspoon would certainly agree with my analysis, for it was he who wrote, “[H]e is the best friend to American liberty who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down on profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not [do not hesitate] to call him an enemy to his country.” (Footnote #14)

Americans must realize that it is the worldview of humanistic liberals that poses the real threat to our American way of life. How can our nation long survive if the worldview of the secular and religious humanists are allowed to permeate every American institution? According to William Provine of Cornell University, a prominent evolutionary biologist, the following are five foundational beliefs of a secular humanist: “There’s no evidence for God, there’s no life after death, there’s no absolute foundation for right and wrong, there’s no ultimate meaning for life, and people don’t really have free will.”

So who is promoting a false and dangerous worldview for America? Conservatives that desire to continue as one nation under God or liberals who daily move us closer to becoming one nation under Man?

Conservatives are mistaken if they think we cannot lose this worldview war—and America with it. Although God is sovereign, He does not wear an American flag pin on His lapel. He can and will judge America . I am tired of pious Christians that justify sitting in their easy pew, completely uninvolved in the battle because they claim simply to be “trusting God.” Apathy is not trust. It is sin. As James 4:17 points out: “For the person who knows to do good and doesn’t do it, it is a sin.”

When the lines are this clear between good and evil, how can any Christian not see his or her need to at least vote? I take God at His Word, and, as a result, I know He will allow America to be lost—sooner rather than later—if Christians don’t do what they know is right.

God told Abraham He would not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if He found only a few righteous. And perhaps God will spare America if enough Christians continue to oppose evil and faithfully fight the worldview battles of abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage. In the fall of 2004, the issue of same-sex marriage was on the ballot in eleven states. All reaffirmed the definition of marriage as “one man with one woman,” and of the eleven, ten were red states. Only Oregon “went blue” for John Kerry.

Winston Churchill once said, “If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” Unless Americans recognize that liberal humanists hate truth, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Christianity, we will soon be enslaved by the anti-Christian worldview they are implementing to varying degrees in every area of American life.

Do you doubt their hatred? Consider the following article by Dan Whitcomb of Reuters:

A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God—including the Declaration of Independence.

Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination on Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian.

“It’s a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful,” said Williams’ attorney, Terry Thompson.

“Williams wants to teach his students the true history of our country,” he said. “There is nothing in the Establishment Clause (of the U.S. Constitution) that prohibits a teacher from showing students the Declaration of Independence.”

Williams asserts in the lawsuit that since May he has been required to submit all of his lesson plans and supplemental handouts to Vidmar for approval, and that the principal will not permit him to use any that contain references to God or Christianity.

Among the materials she has rejected, according to Williams, are excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, George Washington’s journal, John Adams’ diary, Samuel Adams’ “The Rights of the Colonists,” and William Penn’s “The Frame of Government of Pennsylvania.” (Footnote #15)

In 1776, a group of good men decided to fight because they believed in God-given rights, liberty, individualism, prosperity based on hard work and honesty, the right to keep and own what you work for, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from socialism, and a totalitarian repressive government. On a warm July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia, fifty-six brave men signed their names to the Declaration of Independence, stating, “With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Many of these were men of means. They owned land, livestock, homes, and businesses, and they risked it all for the one thing they could not buy—liberty. Freedom had to be earned. Even though it could not be purchased with money, liberty for America and these men came at a high price. Of the fifty-six, few were to get by for long without severe hardship. Five were captured by the British and tortured before they died. The homes of twelve—from Rhode Island to Charleston—were looted, occupied by the enemy, or burned. Two lost their sons in the war. Two sons of another were captured. Nine of the fifty-six died in the war that followed their courageous stand.

Those brave and noble men pledged and lost either their lives or the lives they had known. Though their fortunes may have been destroyed, their honor has remained intact to this very day. Will we be able to say the same of ourselves? Will our honor stand, or will our children and grandchildren ask why we did not follow the example of our founders? Will they wonder why, in our timidity, we allowed God to be kicked out of America? Will we be the generation in which we finally become one nation under Man?

Footnote:
1 “Election 2004: A Moral Mandate?,” November 16, 2004.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 “Keilor: Born-agains should not have right to vote,” www.Worldnetdaily.com, November 15, 2004.

5 David S. Broder and Richard Morin, “Four years later, voters more deeply divided,” www.msnbc.com.

6 “Election 2004.”

7 Pat Buchanan, 1992 Republican Convention.

8 Thomas Edsall, “Blue Movie,” Atlantic, January/February 2003, 36.

9 Michael Barone, Almanac of American Politics (Washington, DC: National Journal, 2002), 7–28.

10 Robert B. Reich, “The Last Word: Bush’s God,” The American Prospect, June 17, 2004.

11 Charles Kimball, When Religion Becomes Evil (New York: Harper San Francisco, 2002).

12 Dr. D. James Kennedy, Lord of All: Developing a Christian World-and-Life View (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 86.