3 of 3

By this tortured reasoning, if we can call it that, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, has been banned from the scene in the nation whose endeavors he has so often blessed. In his place we have, if anything, the gods of Sodom and Gomorrah. The justices, in their sovereign bliss, with the exception of the dissenters, do not seem to know what they have done. Or do they know and not care? Or know and want to do exactly what they have done?

Those of us who do see and know what has been done must not wait until all of the organs of government are brought under the gods of Sodom: We must look, see, and speak. We cannot change the Court's decision, not now and perhaps not ever, but we can and must say with the Israelites of the past, regarding a crime they had not committed, "Our hands have not done this thing [orig. "shed this blood"], nor did our eyes see it … and do not place the guilt … in the midst of thy people Israel" (Deut. 21:7-8).

These two Court decisions-Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas-are catastrophic symbols of what has been happening to the country at large. Much of the nation outside the government, and especially all that pertains to the elite or the establishment, has been or has recently become in essence anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-natural law, and implicitly or explicitly pagan. All of the nation's great secular universities, private and public, have turned pagan, with the exception of occasional faculty members, department heads, and other officials who have remained true to Christianity or observant Judaism. Even some confessionally bound universities, such as Baylor in Texas, are struggling to resist the trend. A few religiously affiliated colleges have remained loyal to their religious foundations. An even smaller number, such as Hillsdale College in Michigan, although not religiously affiliated, have managed to ignore the pressure to impose a totally naturalistic worldview on their students.

Many churches have fallen far away from the faith of their founders, as most recently and spectacularly the Episcopal Church has done by appointing an actively homosexual bishop. Indeed, we shall see that several churches have slowly accepted beliefs and patterns of conduct that radically deny their heritage, although seldom do they do so explicitly.

All this in itself is not yet a disaster, because as many rightly point out, there are many vestiges of authentic Christianity still to be found in our nation. But it would be a disaster for Christians and other God-fearers not to recognize that we've reached a turning point in our cultural history, and to go on dreaming that we can gradually change this formerly more or less Christian country for the better.

Those of us who are Christians and take our commitment seriously are slow to recognize it, but ultimately it will be easier for Christians to live in a country that we know is pagan than to live in one that we think is still sufficiently Christian to listen to us and to change in accordance with Christian values.

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today.Click for reprint information.

Yesterday we posted an opposing argument, "A Steady Christian Influence."

More information about Harold O.J. Brown is available from the Reformed Theological Seminary website.

The Sensate Culture is available from Amazon.com and other book retailers.

first page |  3 of 3

share this page

August 2004, Vol. 48, No. 8