re-Christianization of America

What I’m hearing from many people is despair. They think the country is past saving: the Left has won, it’ll be all downhill from now on. Unless God personally intervenes.

Certainly the prospect is a daunting one. Thanks to the long negligence of the church (the legacy of Cyrus Scofield and his adherents, who fostered the notion of “Don’t bother, the Rapture’s coming soon”), the de-Christianization of America has had over 100 years to grow very, very high, put out countless branches, and put down exceedingly deep roots.

Personally, I had a sense that when the Supreme Court forced “gay marriage” upon our culture last year, we crossed a line that won’t be easy to cross back. I felt–not reasoned–that we’d burned our bridges.

Now this development would not have been possible without the contribution of the public schools and our fat, overgrown university system. We bear the children and the Left gets to train them. And train them they do.

It’s true that Christians in America don’t have to put up with anything like the lethal persecution suffered by Christians in many countries. Here, all they do is mock us incessantly, turn our children against us, destroy us if we decline to take an active part in a “gay wedding,” and make us pay for other people’s abortions. But few Christians I talk to think it’ll stop there.

Nevertheless, regardless of eschatology, I believe God wants us to try, at least, to turn our country off this evil course. And getting Christian children out of the public schools is the most necessary first step.

It also doesn’t help, that we send our young people to “colleges” swollen to several orders of magnitude beyond their natural capacity, there to learn how to be self-righteous, thin-skinned, ignorant and useless Social Justice Warriors, with inane degrees in This-studies and That-studies, thoroughly indoctrinated by professors who are passionately committed to transforming America into a vast prison camp with themselves as the jailers.

If we can’t get back some degree of control over the education of our children, anything we might attempt politically will be in vain.

Even so, I very much doubt that a President McCain or a President Romney would have publicly described abortion as “how young girls achieve their dreams.” Or sued a state for enforcing the country’s immigration laws. Or urged state attorneys general not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act.

Winning over independents–that’s not so hard. Romney won the independent vote, big-time, but still lost the election. Winning over “other Republicans”–that, too, should be possible especially when the Democrat alternative is known and widely loathed.

So, yes, I’ve devoted a lot of time and effort to politics, without much to show for it.

But the Left didn’t achieve all its victories overnight, nor did they achieve any of them with anything like majority support. The spiritual and cultural havoc they have wreaked on America is testimony to what a determined minority can do when they really put their minds to it.

We must learn to do the same.

This is a dialogue between me and “Robed Bishop” in my “Playground Player” forum page at Chessgames.com ( http://www.chessgames.com ). The topic is, What can be done to reverse the de-Christianization of America? Or, more specifically, what would I recommend be done?

We join Robed.Bishop in progress.

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RB: So in the short term, pull kids out of public schools in favor of denominational schools.

I agree that for the most part, private schools outperform public schools and the rise in popularity of charter schools shows that Americans are dissatisfied overall with public schooling, though not for religious reasons. I think this approach has merit because it achieves two goals. It reinforces religious beliefs while providing a good education.

One drawback of course is the expense of private schooling. In order for this to be successful, and to avoid public funding (for obvious reasons), religions will have to either build more schools or otherwise provide financial support for church members. To make this happen requires one to be an activist in the church, to change the direction of the church to support education instead of just providing masses, something that is doable across different denominations.

Another solution regarding schools is to try to pass legislation that protects religious freedoms in schools, perhaps even offering classes in religious study. Then, as a parent, you could have your child take a class in all religions or a class for Christianity. I don’t know how feasible this is, but as long as classes are offered to every denomination (or at least for those who have an interest), like Title 9 in sports, then maybe so.

Long-term political solutions are more problematical. In our current landscape, we have two major parties running for office and I don’t see that changing in the near future. Independents, however, have become a large force in politics and I think independents will continue to grow. Indeed, in at least two states, independents are now the majority ” party (Massachusetts and Alaska), though there may be others…

Given that it will be either extremely difficult or impossible for the Democrats or Republicans to elect a candidate without support from independents, we need to try to understand why independents (those without a party preference) are independents.

Let’s propose that one reason people are independents is because they do not think that Republicans are always right, nor always wrong, that Democrats are not always right and not always wrong.

It could also be that there is something in the parties’ platforms that keeps them from registering as one or the other. In other words, they are generally more liberal or more conservative, but that there is something about the party as a whole, or an important issue, that keeps them from registering that way. For example, a person who is generally liberal might not vote for a Democratic candidate because of the candidate’s stance on abortion. Or a more conservative person votes against a conservative candidate because of the candidate’s stance on abortion. Obviously, it could be any number of things, but you get the idea.

It could also be that they are generally in favor of the conservative fiscal agenda but against the conservative social agenda, or vice versa with Democrats.

I have no doubt that there are plenty of other reasons, but those come to mind off the top of my head.

I will stop here for now to give this more thought… To make political change, this will have to be the focus. The Democrats are going to be against you, but the evangelicals will be for you. That leaves other Republicans and independents…

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My response will be in a separate post.