Secular beliefs about life were on full display last week at our son-in-law’s graduation from Harvard Law School. In delivering the keynote address, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s speech sounded more like a homily advancing the doctrinal ideology of religious secularism than a delivery befitting a college graduation.
“We have a Mixed Member Proportional system [New Zealand’s constitutional monarchy],” Prime Minister Ardern offered, “which essentially means every vote counts and it’s ensured our parliament better reflects our communities. Almost 50% of our parliament are women [applause]; 20% Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand; and our Deputy Prime Minister is a proud gay man [huge cheers] and sits among several other rainbow parliamentarians [applause].
“In the past 10 years, we have passed laws that include everything from the introduction of gay marriage [joyous cheers] and the banning of conversion therapy [applause], right through to embedding a 1.5-degree climate change target into law [applause], banning military-style semi-automatics and assault rifles [applause], and the decriminalization of abortion [ecstatic ovation].
“These are significant issues,” Ms. Ardern went on, “and they have not been without debate and difference. But they are all examples of where we have navigated times of deep change, without, for the most part, leaving deep rifts [read: New Zealand Evangelical and Pro-Life Catholic Christians capitulated].”
We are of the opinion that America will not resurrect unless the cleansing gospel fire sweeps through the American culture. It must sweep through the legislative, executive and judicial branches of local, state and federal government, and particularly through the secularized educational curricula.
The supernatural power in early America had its major emphasis on Christian education, i.e., it was focused on the apprehension, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Founders’ accentuation of the Bible as the fixed point in order to judge society was not accidental, but intentional, for “the fear of the Lord” in conscience is the only thing that keeps one honest and doing right when no one is looking.
Embedding the Christian worldview in early American education was likewise an informed decision, based on the Founders’ pertinent understanding that only spiritual regeneration can transform the heart. Accordingly, The New England Primer became the first reading primer designed for America’s public schools and was read for over 150 years.
Many of the Founding Fathers and their children learned to read from The New England Primer, opening with “A is for Adam, and in Adam’s Fall, we sinned all.” Whereas this told the reader that humans are fallen beings in need of redemption from Adam’s sin, in today’s America sin is normalized and even glamorized and glorified. Therefore, dispelling religious secularism from contemporary education will require more than just a curriculum change; it will for the most part require the spiritual attitude of being [re]born of the Spirit, the understanding that none are renewed but by the Spirit of God.
CNN reported last week in connection to the Uvalde elementary school massacre that “We failed these children: Agony is compounded by outrage after the latest details about the Uvalde elementary school massacre.” CNN failed to address the real issue, which is the abject nihilistic falsehood of secular education. It was the gun that killed those innocent children, but it was public education that produced the monster that pulled the trigger.
Uvalde elementary school mass murderer Salvador Ramos is just another casualty of American education, which over the last 50 years has equipped America’s youth with a hedonistic, self-indulgent promiscuity that should terrify every parent who has dropped off little Johnny to be subjected to the iniquitous ideology of secularism.
Instead of discipline and righteousness being ingrained into America’s youth, profane values are exalted and normalized as secularists dominate the intellectual, educational, economic and vocational levers of power and influence in the nation.
This seems to be the perfect place to mention American Founder Fisher Ames’ [1758-1808] assessment of public education. Ames, the co-author of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, wrote: “We have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education. We’re starting to put more and more textbooks into our schools. We’ve become accustomed to putting little books into the hands of children, containing fables and moral lessons. We’re spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principal text in our schools.”
The sole reason why the Bible should be the principal text in American education is that God established civil government to restrain violence, to keep depravity in check; to the extent that only regeneration, not government programs, can transform the heart of man. Since the battle for the soul of America is spiritual, the gospel must get back its place as the cornerstone of public education. For as it says in Jeremiah 17:9 (NKJV), “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?”
It is on top of that beyond a shadow of a doubt that no free and lasting civilization anywhere in history has ever been built on an atheist foundation.
Americans find themselves in a situation of having squandered the Judeo-Christian heritage and biblically based culture established by the American Founders throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Consequently, the nation has become like Israel in the Book of Judges (17:6; 21:25, NIV), where “everyone did as they saw fit.” America has been “Canaanized,” and the deceiving spirits of fainthearted appeasement and acquiescence have undermined the culture over the last 100 years.
The nation must either trust God and return to Jehovah as “one Nation under God” or trust in secularism, all the while becoming more and more like its head, the serpent. For Satan’s activity is evident in contemporary America: 65 million babies dead, homosexuals praying at the Inauguration, seas of red ink … Judgment is upon us.
Thanks be to God as Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to stand. {eoa}
David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.
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