America in decline, revisited

We can’t say we weren’t warned

Author’s note: I originally wrote this in August of last year, but I have modified it slightly and added to it in light of the continuing decline of our culture.

While our Country remains untainted with the Principles and manners, which are now producing desolation in so many Parts of the World: while she continues Sincere and incapable of insidious and impious Policy: We shall have the Strongest Reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned Us by Providence. - John Adams to the Massachusetts Militia, 11 October 1798

The state of our country and the reason for the direction it’s headed can be rather contentious. There is at least one logical argument, one that will not be popular, if it is even accepted or liked by any. Many will contest the premise. Others will reject or take umbrage at the conclusion. Regardless, it should be considered as it may also hold the key to setting America back on track, if that’s possible.

There is a reason that America, at least at one time if not still now, enjoyed a level of success as a union that the European Union has been unable to achieve. America was founded on the basis of having a unique but coherent culture that was an admixture of those from which its inhabitants departed but that congealed into a unifying thread. Those who followed later would integrate into that culture and become “American,” leaving behind the homelands from which they emigrated as they sought a better life.

The Union brought together States in a common bond, largely for shared protection. No individual State, the founders intimated, could successfully defend itself against invasion without the aid of others. But there was yet another uniting thread.

The first colonists, as many are apt to cite, came to America seeking refuge from religious persecution. People generally don’t realize, however, what that meant at the time. These asylum-seekers were fleeing Europe to get out from under the thumb of state-run religion. The Church of England, at the time, was the official and only permitted “religion.” Those who left, however, held differing Christian beliefs. Yes, they were Christians (and those who weren’t held Christianity and Christian morality in the highest regard), they just didn’t adhere to the doctrine of the Church of England.

Coming to America, they settled in colonies with those holding similar beliefs, or who were part of the same denomination, generally congregating within a particular colony. Thus, the colonies each, to some extent, had their own “denomination,” though the local government held no sway over their religion. 

So here is the offensive premise: Christianity is inherent in, and crucial to, the founding and maintaining of our country. I have written previously that I wouldn’t argue whether America was established as a “Christian nation;” instead, I focused on the principles embraced by the founders. They expected the populace to be “religious,” as Adams made clear in the greater context of his warning:

We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion…Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Adams to the Massachusetts Militia, 11 October 1798

You’re now thinking, “but that just says ‘religious,’ not ‘Christian,’ right? So how do you force Christianity into the picture?” It is important to understand that, during the time of the founders, the word “religion”, while it did have a denotation of belief systems outside of Christianity, primarily expressed a belief based on Christian principles, as shown in the first definition listed in Webster’s 1828 dictionary:

1. religion in its most comprehensive sense, includes a belief in the being and perfections of God, in the revelation of his will to man, in man's obligation to obey his commands, in a state of reward and punishment, and in man's accountableness to God; and also true godliness or piety of life, with the practice of all moral duties.

https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/religion 

This entry still does not explicitly mention Christianity, but there is more to this first definition, and Webster included four others, the last of which simply states, “the rites of religion.” It isn’t until the next to last (the fourth) definition that Webster addresses anything that would not be considered Christianity, and in so doing, he makes clear that the prior entries were in reference to Christianity, as the others are therein compared to/lumped in with Christianity almost as if an afterthought (or, more directly, “false religion”):

4. Any system of faith and worship. In this sense, religion comprehends the belief and worship of pagans and Mohammedans, as well as of christians; any religion consisting in the belief of a superior power or powers governing the world, and in the worship of such power or powers. Thus we speak of the religion of the Turks, of the Hindoos, of the Indians, etc. as well as of the christian religion We speak of false religion as well as of true religion

Ibid

You may think, “ok, but that doesn’t mean the founding fathers were Christians or believed in Christianity.” True, not all of them were actually Christian, but they did all have tremendous respect for the Christian religion. Joseph Story, who you’ve seen me quote often if you’ve been reading my substack for any length of time, wrote the following regarding the First Amendment:

§441. The same policy, which introduced into the Constitution the prohibition of any religious test, led to the more extended prohibition of the interference of Congress in religious concerns. We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment to an indifference to religion in general, and especially to Christianity, (which none could hold in more reverence, than the framers of the Constitution,) but to a dread by the people of the influence of ecclesiastical power in matters of government;

Joseph A. Story, Familiar Exposition of the Constitution

Story, one of history’s foremost constitutional scholars, knew that the framers held immense respect for, if not belief in, the Christian religion. He also recognized that, contrary to common current (mis)understanding, the first Amendment was to keep government out of religion, not religion out of government and that the government actually should encourage the practice of the Christian religion:

Probably, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State, so far as such encouragement was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.

Joseph A. Story, Familiar Exposition of the Constitution §444

When Story talks about the “influence of ecclesiastical power in matters of government,” he is referencing that which the founders fled - a church/government monolith. This too was the reason, as he mentioned, for the forbidding of religious tests when it came to holding office. There were several “powerful sects” (as Story puts it in §441, which was his way of describing denominations), and the founders were wary of any specific denomination gaining too much power and holding sway over another. The aversion to “religious tests” was to avoid denominational conditions being imposed as a requirement for holding office.

With the foundation laid, now I bring the reason for the decline: a failure of the church. If Christianity undergirds the stability of the country, then spreading Christianity maintains that stability. Christians have failed to spread their faith. They’ve failed to endue their children with their faith. They’ve failed to spread it to those coming from abroad and joining their communities.

The founders believed that morality came from religion. If it is objective, it must - there must be a source outside ourselves that dictates what is moral. Otherwise, what we have is not morality; it is simply consensus. It is that failure to believe in an objective morality, however, that is revealed in the decline of America. Instead of having a firm foundation built upon the faith that the founding fathers revered, we are on an ever-accelerating downward spiral of relativity, where the next new fetish becomes a moral imperative imposed by those who embrace it.

Do you not ever wonder why government (and those in it) is so corrupt? Do you not ponder at those elected who claim to hold to religious beliefs yet in the next breath eschew them in favor of pandering to perversity?

Do you not marvel at humanity suddenly being unable to differentiate between man and woman, male and female? Or at those afflicted believing themselves to have been “born in the wrong body”?

Does the perversity that abounds not cause you to wonder how we arrived at such a state of not only acceptance but celebration?

Scripture makes it clear that this is the result of a departure from God:

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

Romans 1:28-32

When God is rejected, as He has been for so long now in America, wickedness follows, and after wickedness, destruction. When pride is elevated, a nation is lowered, for “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling” (Proverbs 16:18).

There is yet hope, but it requires repentance like that of the city of Nineveh:

Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth and sat on the ashes…When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it.

Jonah 3:4-6,10

No man is perfect, not even the Christian; but a Christian, a true Christian, who is as Scripture says, “a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17) and has been given a “heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26), will cling more tightly to moral obligation to God than a man who believes he owes no allegiance or responsibility to anyone.

This is what America needs in order to overcome the evil that has so perniciously pervaded the population. We must restore the Christian underpinnings of our country.

Let me wrap up with another quote from Joseph Story:

The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion, the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God; the responsibility to Him for all our actions, founded upon moral accountability; a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues;—these never can be a matter of indifference in any well-ordered community. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive, how any civilized society can well exist without them. And, at all events, it is impossible for those, who believe in the truth of Christianity, as a Divine revelation, to doubt, that it is the especial duty of government to foster, and encourage it among all the citizens and subjects. This is a point wholly distinct from that of the right of private judgement in matters of religion, and of the freedom of public worship, according to the dictates of one's conscience.

Joseph A. Story Familiar Exposition of the Constitution  §442

Those who are not “moral and religious” are not governable under a Constitution, nor any government really (as Adams intimated). Those who are not “moral and religious” will not adhere to the Constitution, nor will they govern constitutionally. Those who are not “moral and religious” will revel in sin, commit heinous acts of evil, and celebrate these things with no hint of conscience.

Christianity was intended by the founders to be the guiding light for the country. Like it or not, if we do not return to being a “moral and religious” society, we are sure to go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah who, wallowing in wickedness, were wiped from existence as a result.