Related articles and links |  1 of 3

Recent events have left Christians wondering how they stand in American society. In the last year, we at Christianity Today have received several manuscripts by prominent Christian intellectuals suggesting that the United States has become definitively and irreversibly anti-God. Other Christians continue to urge us to do good with the hope that we can make a difference. Each side can marshal compelling arguments and strong evidence. Yesterday and today we publish two views on the matter by two prominent evangelical leaders.

Harold O. J. Brown has led a distinguished academic career, and now serves as a professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is the author of many books, most recently The Sensate Culture (Word, 1996), and as the editor of The Religion and Society Report, Professor Brown has relentlessly exposed the folly of Western society's anti-life drift.

Leith Anderson is pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Anderson is one of the most respected pastors and leaders in America, having also served as interim president of Denver Seminary and the National Association of Evangelicals. He is the author of many books, most recently Leadership That Works: Hope and Direction for Church and Parachurch Leaders in Today's Complex World (Bethany, 2002).

These two articles came to us separately. The authors did not see each other's manuscripts ahead of time, and so are not debating one another. Nor are these essays intended to be finely reasoned theological or sociological arguments. While they offer arguments, they distill moods shaped by the authors' years of passionate involvement in trying to shape American culture for Christ. —The Editors

From all that terror teaches, from lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches that comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation of honor and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation, deliver us, good Lord.

—G. K. Chesterton

Our nation has lived for three decades with what must be the greatest lie "of tongue and pen" of the 20th century, handed solemnly down by seven unelected justices of the U.S. Supreme Court: "We do not know when human life begins." The conclusion that the justices drew in Roe v. Wade was unwarranted, namely, because if we say that we do not know whether human life has begun, we may allow its termination at any time up to the undeniable birth of a live baby. Now, three decades later, we have perhaps 42 million fewer Americans, of which perhaps 15 or 16 million would be between the ages of 18 and 30 today. The lie must comfort the cruel men-and the women too, now-who give us leave to terminate life prior to birth, at will.

While our nation plans great things for the world-democracies in the Middle East, peace between Israel and the Palestinians, no more weapons of mass destruction (other than in our own hands or in the hands of those too powerful for us to oppose), prescription drugs for older people, no child left behind (of those who succeed in being born)-the number of us who will enjoy those great things is declining, thanks in large part to abortion, as European and American births drop below the replacement rate.

What is going on here? In his 1978 Harvard Commencement address, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn uttered words that have made him forever politically incorrect: "Men have forgotten God." In the United States, a large majority of the population is associated with Christianity, and a substantial minority calls itself practicing, observant, "evangelical," "born again," or otherwise conservatively Christian. God is not forgotten on Sunday, not in the churches, great and small, that dot the landscape. But otherwise?

next page... |  1 of 3

share this page

August 2004, Vol. 48, No. 8