WHAT’S YOUR REACTION?
The Gallup Poll just reported that belief in God dropped to 81% among Americans, the lowest ever reported! Belief in God has been one of the reliable markers to measure American religiosity. Also in 2021, involvement in Christian churches dropped below 50% for the first time. Shocking news!
As we celebrate the 4th of July, I wonder, “How would our forefathers react to this?”
Here is my answer:
George Washington said, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”
William Penn said, “Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.”
On July 4, 1821, John Adams said, “The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: It connected into one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”
Calvin Coolidge wrote, “The foundations of our society and our government rests so much on the teachings of the Bible. It would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.”
James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution and last Founding Father to die, said, “We have staked the whole future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves, to control ourselves…according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.”
The Bible played a primary part in forming this nation. In 1782, legislation was passed that declared “the Congress of the United States approves of and recommends…the Holy Bible for use in the schools.” They even paid for the Bibles with tax dollars!
In 1844, someone sued to remove the Bible from schools. The Supreme Court ruled, “Why should not the Bible and especially the New Testament be read and taught as a divine revelation in our schools? Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the Holy Testament?”
I have read that 106 of the 108 universities founded in America were distinctly Christian. The first was Harvard University, chartered in 1636. Rule number one in the Harvard student handbook was that students seeking entrance must know Latin and Greek so that they could study the Scriptures.
Abraham Lincoln issued a wake-up call in his day when he said, “We have come to think that all our blessings were produced by some superior wisdom or virtue of our own. Intoxicated by unbroken successes, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace: too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us to humble ourselves before the offended Power to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” (Read II Chronicles 7:14)
We need a wake-up call in America today. God’s workbench is cluttered with broken pieces of empires and civilizations that decided to forget Him and do it their own way. We must return to the principles on which our freedoms were founded. My book, “Where is America Headed?” explores this and is available for $10 on our website.
How do you react to the Gallup Poll report?
