Response to Newsweek Article - End of Christian America

Re: The End of Christian America by Jon Meacham, Newsweek, April 13, 2009)

Post-Christianity returns Christians to the basics. It may be true, Christianity as an ethical and moral dogma to be incorporated into America’s political system has diminished. Thus your Post Christian label. You may be going a bit too far, however, if America under the banner of Christianity has changed as the moral standards of society at their highest levels still reflect on the tenets outlined in the Bible. It is the most profound and complete guide on how to live a proper life for self and neighbor. When our founding fathers put together the constitution there were less than 20% self-identified Christians – now its 76% down from 86%, but the moral and ethical principles expressed biblically held sway.

Christians need to evangelize, build and grow a community for their belief and solicit volunteers for a faith, its roots and the standards set forth biblically. For Christian Americans they need fight to preserve the liberty our deist fore-fathers established constitutionally. Freedom needs to be the mantra for all religions, to include what today may be secularist, humanist, and atheist religions. Indeed as Americans “we value individual freedom and free enterprise” and “liberty, not religion, is what holds us together.” How our leaders deal with the pressures from any religion (including the secularist and atheists, as well as Christian, Jew, Muslim and any community group, even the homosexualist) reflects not on the dogma influencing our society nationally, but on the religions and beliefs of the elected and the support groups to which they acquiesce.

One of the worst things that ever happened in America was the Supreme Court agreeing with Madalyn Murray O’Hair in 1962 about compulsory prayer and reading the Bible in schools, not so much from a Christian perspective but from a freedom perspective, the freedom of choice. Saying "no" to the "compulsory" reading of the Bible and prayer is one thing, but total removal of the historical, foundational, moral, ethical offerings of the Bible from teaching, from academia, went too far and took away from all Americas a valuable point of view to be considered. This has led to a lack of tolerance. Tolerance is a critical debate issue as this term suggests “fairness” and yet seldom do we see the tolerant atheist, pro-life, pro-choice advocate, liberal or conservative. Lack of tolerance is a form of coercion and we see it everywhere, from homosexual groups abusive campaigning for same sex marriage and the use of whatever bathroom they please, atheists attacking Mother Teresa, secularists and humanists attacking ‘Christmas’, calling any believer ‘stupid’ and so on. Christians need to be concerned less with their role in government and more the government’s role in their Christian programs. Why should Christians be coerced by a loss of their church’s tax freedom when speaking out for those they support politically? This is the change in America, an overt action by the populists to remove the bible in all forms from daily life; post-Christianity is nothing more than the eradication of Christianity from the focal point of those that prefer self actualization, in government or out. Defense of freedom, especially the freedom of speech, un-coerced in any form, should be the Post-Christian mantel. A theocracy is not a goal of Christians

Consider creation, Intelligent Design, a first cause and evolution – what is in, what is out, what religion leads the way – today it seems to be evolution (in academia anyway). Has the freedom of the creationist been denied, or everyone’s freedom for not being able to hear the other side! Believing in Christ, the inerrancy of the bible and an eternal life is Christian, and no American or any one in the world is required to believe such. And not all who believe are believers; many are doubters and can be influenced one way or another. That should occur without coercion, with access to as much information as possible so that with knowledge a person can voluntarily decide their belief system. Minds of America are being coerced by academia in other directions and that may continue in your Post-Christian era, but then again after a while the pendulum may well swing back. Sure Christians want to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, but even more they want to be able to freely express their faith in all public places. Let the individual then decide his faith, not the government. Let the individual decide without the threat of committing a “hate” crime, or being denied use of a Bible, Koran or Talmud in school, but with access to all beliefs, theories and respective apologetics. Your most critical statement was “coerced belief is no belief at all; it is tyranny.” This may be the era of “Coerced Post Christian.”

As for moral issues we seem to be trending towards utilitarianism - the “greatest-happiness principle.” (philosopher - Jeremy Bentham) It holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people. Even so it will not prevent Christians from believing in the Risen Lord, reminded by Easter of the sacrifice made for all mankind, and the life lessons to be learned from the Bible. The future for Christians is strong. The effort is needed to reestablish the Bible as an essential book for the study of moral and ethical standards. More scientists and philosophers are seeing the need to include in their research the impact of a divine element. With the Big Bang showing the way for many scientists, and the discovery of DNA code, for many palientologists, evolutionists and philosophers, evidence is now pointing more convincingly towards a First Cause. This should in turn increase everyones awareness of God and the need to considered more than ever before their relationsip with God. Christians are returning to the basics with more evidence than ever before of the reality of the events that occurred Easter 2000 years ago.