Addressing the steep moral and spiritual decline in the United States
For many years now, it has been clear that America has been in a steep moral and spiritual decline, despite some genuine revival movements along with some holy pushback against the growing cultural insanity. But two recent examples confirm that we are now in moral freefall.
The first is Pres. Biden’s proclamation that March 31, which this year falls on Resurrection (Easter) Sunday, is now “Transgender Day of Visibility.”
This is not a poorly timed announcement. It is not even a slap in the face. It is a kick below the belt accompanied by a laugh and a smile. It is as insulting as it is perverse, no matter how much we care for our trans-identified friends and colleagues and want them to experience wholeness and freedom in the Lord.
The second example is a post by Baptist leader William Wolfe, contrasting this presidential announcement, which was made on Good Friday, with Good Friday, 1956:
“Good Friday, 1956: Three crosses on the NYC Skyline
“Good Friday, 2024: The White House celebrates ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’
“America didn’t become ‘less religious.’
“We just traded Christianity and the cross for the religion of LGBTQIA+ and the rainbow flag.”
This prompted David Limbaugh to repost Wolfe’s post with the comment, “Is it fair to say that we are now a full-blown pagan society?”
Yes, it is quite fair – at least for those celebrating the Biden proclamation and for the symbolic significance of this act, emanating from the White House itself.
Of course, this twisted trend (in the name of compassion and, at times, “Christian” love) is nothing new. That’s why, in February 2020 I wrote an article titled, “As We Mindlessly Careen Our Way Down the Slippery Slope.”
It began with these words: “Is anyone surprised that HGTV recently featured its first “throuple,” in this case, a man and two women? But what else should we expect? This is the inevitable direction of our society’s slippery slide down. The avalanche goes downward, not upward.”
In that regard, we have been in moral freefall for many years, with Christian philosophers like Francis Schaeffer calling America a “post-Christian nation” over 50 years ago.
As noted by Elliot Clark in December 2020, “Yes, back in 1970, Schaeffer says the United States—not just continental Europe—was already post-Christian. He writes about the reality of historic Christianity becoming the minority in the West, stripped of cultural power and influence.” (Schaeffer also had this prescient warning: “in this situation, Schaeffer identifies a great danger for evangelicals: taking sides with political elites in order to retain comfort, affluence, and personal peace. In the face of societal chaos and upheaval, Schaeffer doesn’t want Christians to compromise for the sake of short-lived comfort.”)
So, to repeat, we have been in spiritual and moral and cultural decline for decades, despite, as I noted above, some positive developments in the midst of the decay.
And it is true that, back in 1944, 9 years before the first edition of Playboy was published, Rev. Peter Marshall declared, “Surely the time has come, because the hour is late, when we must decide. And the choice before us is plain — Yahweh or Baal. Christ or chaos. Conviction or compromise. Discipline or disintegration.”
Similarly, in 1959, Prof. Robert Coleman proclaimed, “In a day when unprecedented numbers of people have a form of religion while at the same time the church seems unable to stem the rising tide of degeneracy that threatens the land, the question must be raised: Why this paradox? Should not the church have influence for righteousness in proportion to her numbers? However one may seek to answer this question, it is obvious that what we need is not more religion, but more power. In short, we need real revival!”
I’m confident that we can go all the way back to the American colonies and find similar, thunderous warnings, speaking of our spiritual apostasy and moral rot. After all, the first Great Awakening, which presupposed a great falling away, took place in the 1730s and 1740s, “at a time when the idea of secular rationalism was being emphasized, and passion for religion had grown stale.”
There’s even a danger of becoming so accustomed to our nation’s precipitous condition that we just yawn at the latest example of our depravity.
Drag queens reading to toddlers with the enthusiastic support of the American Library Association? No big deal.
Thirteen-year-old girls having their healthy breasts removed and 11-year-old boys getting chemically castrated because of short-lived struggles with their gender identity? Nothing to fuss about.
Radical feminists launching a “Shout Your Abortion” movement? No big deal.
Christians being cancelled because they dare to hold to their biblically-based values in public? Let’s not get too worked up.
How deadly complacency can be!
That’s why we need to feel the full force of the outrage of the moment, as the President of the United States, himself a professing Catholic, uses his bully platform to mock the followers of Jesus worldwide. First, he announced “Transgender Day of Visibility” on Good Friday. Then, he timed things so that it would be celebrated this year on Resurrection (Easter) Sunday.
Wake up, America! It really is revival or we die – and that revival, that awakening, that coming to life again, that returning to the Lord with all our hearts and souls, repenting of our own sins – must begin with each of us.
To pray it again, “Lord, let the awakening start with me!”
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