The issues roiling American society today are no generally social or perhaps ideological, but religious.
America is presumably a liberal state, with separation of church and state, free exercise of religion, and so on. We are now engaged in what amounts to a spiritual conflict. How could that be?
Because America, like all countries, is founded on spiritual says, and relies on those promises for its consistency. We’ve grown to know what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said in his famous Gettysburg Address that America was “dedicated to the argument that all men are created equal,” a word that has long been used.
The concept is that America is necessarily distinct from the cultural nation-states of Europe, which were founded on body, land, and faith. America allegedly overcame everything. It was based preferably on an idea — a statement. If he agreed to the idea, people could become an American.  ,
And this is real. However, almost everyone who claims that America is a propositional state is incorrect about what the statement is. America is certainly a collection of Enlightenment motifs that come from the crossing of Rousseau and Locke; rather, it is a jumble of intellectual ideas about the rights of man. America is the development of Christian civilization.
The statement at the heart of America, undergirding our nation’s life, is not just” all men are created”, but , Christianity and all that comes with it. Without Christianity, you do n’t get free speech, liberty, equality, freedom of conscience. It relies entirely on the statements of the Christian faith, but none of it stands on its own.
Some will acknowledge America’s Christian heritage, but they’re making a point of departure because it’s a safe separation from the religion that started it, after the American experiment is launched. They believe it is possible to reject the “best” aspects of the Christian faith without having to reaffirm the trust at all. ” Christless Christianity”, you may call it.
But it does n’t work like that. A few months ago the popular agnostic Richard Dawkins wondered aloud in an interview why his own country, England, could not just come on having” social Christianity” without true, believing Christians. He claimed that he enjoyed the Christmas songs and cathedrals without bothering to practice true Christianity. He wants fewer , believing , Christians and more , cultural , Christians.
Dawkins never made it clear that you do n’t get to retain the culture without the cult. The depressing scene of contemporary England should enough to refute the assertion. If there is no one to devotion in the churches, they may be music halls or, in England’s event, mosques. People will eventually prevent singing Christmas carols if no one truly believes what they say.
The same goes for us here in America. The British claim that all men are created equal is a spiritual one, especially a Holy one. The British members never attempted to dispute the fact that they only always believed that all men were created equivalent because they believed that we were created in His image and as God’s children. From that conviction, the whole system of government falls, and without it, too.
Just to a spiritual consciousness that was born out of the lessons of Christianity down through the centuries, teachings that came from Christ Himself, can be held to be true to the notion that every individual is in some way spiritual, created in the image and likeness of Almighty God.
Thus, the American founding cannot be understood purely secular or rationally. Our country begins with a claim regarding the nature of man and God. If that statement is discarded or denied, whatever comes after that is n’t America. It may call itself America, it might even build the common diction of rights and liberties, but it is not America.
But I mean when I say that we are currently engaged in a religious conflict. We will either become a society based on Christian notions of what man is and how society should get organized in light of those notions, or we will go back to a cultural state that predated Christianity, one based on ancient notions of man and that positions a very distinct view of how a nation may be organized in light of those claims.
To be clear, the battle is not between atheism or “wokeism” and Christianity. If we reject Christianity, America’s future wo n’t be a secular liberal utopia, in which case we continue to live off the capital of our Christian ancestry without replenishing it. It’s going to be a novel type of pagan, and you’re not going to enjoy it.  ,
Although it may not appear to be like the mythology of the past, this post-Christian paganism is no less angry and inconsistent with Christianity. Its principles, then and now, constitute an reversal of Christian statements and commitments: a rejection of divine wisdom, moral absolutes, and perhaps objective reality. All of these represent a refusal of God.
The new pagan rejects the fundamental tenet of British society: that all men are created equal. It posits a distinct say, from an older, pre-Christian order: people are not identical, by character some are slaves and some are experts. Our nature teaches us that injustice is natural, and it should be reflected in our laws and regulations.
So the Christian retreat in the West signals a new and old social buy emerging from the ashes of Christendom. The coming of a heathen attempt, one based on the unceasing energy of His fallen angels, emerges from the far past, appearing in new guises and names, but still indicating the return of a fallen angelic order. The lesser gods, rulers, and ancient gods that have been Christ’s church’s enemies since the beginning of time are marching under its banners.
Christians in America will have to reject the false belief that their faith is merely a private matter and that there must be a “wall of separating” between our faith and our politics in order to combat this new pagan. We have to say, without explanation, that public life in this country should been shaped by Christian conscience and ordered by its demands, as it was for most of our humanity’s history.
Most importantly, we must acknowledge that our country’s self-government and rights under the regulation cannot long be cut off from its fundamental foundation, which is and has always been the Christian faith.  ,
Without that trust, alive and active among the people, there can be no British nation. If we want to save the nation, we’ll have to become a Religious persons once again. And that requires that we engage in and triumph in a spiritual conflict for America.
The nation’s highest goals are as high as they can be. We now know that a country can drop in more than one way. There is the Roman manner: a centuries-long drop finally succumbing to wave upon wave of invaders. There is the British way: a dwindling to irrelevance and impotence, passive in the face of an assertive Muslim immigrant population.
And then there is the American way: not to decline and fall, not to dwindle into irrelevance, but to become evil.
A version of this article was delivered at the NatCon conference in Washington, D. C., this week.
