Overcoming Christian Lethargy in America

Guest essay by David Lane

A college student in Canada asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a question last week on free speech as it relates to the pro-life movement.

Student: “I’m a first-year student here at McMaster, and I just wanted to know your views on freedom of speech, and if it’s important to you because in today’s society, it’s turning more into a leftist view, and if people don’t have the same opinions, then they are ridiculed and called racists, bigots, and everything. For example, abortion. If you’re pro-life, then you are ridiculed and insulted, but if you’re pro-choice, then you’re praised. And I just want to know if this is important to you?”

Trudeau: “Listen, I think I’ve demonstrated time and time again that defending rights and freedoms is at the core of who I am, and, quite frankly, is at the core of what Canada is. In this country, we defend each other’s rights, even when they’re unpopular, as we’ve seen a couple of times. At the same time, we need to know that there is a difference between freedom of expression and acting on those expressions and beliefs. … An organization that has the explicit purpose of restricting women’s rights by removing rights to abortion, the right for women to control their own bodies, is not in line with where we are as a government, and quite frankly where we are as a society.”

The recent changes to the Canada Summer Jobs program require applicants to obey government edicts, including access to abortion and protection for LGBT Canadians. Veteran Canadian homosexual rights leader Tom Warner had this to say:

“There was a time, not so long ago, when Judeo-Christian values were indisputably ‘Canadian values’, when it was generally and willingly accepted that the role of the state was to promote and protect such values. This tendency was especially true in regard to the regulation of public morals. The state enacted and enforced criminal and other laws regarding contraception and abortion, sexual conduct, sexual expression, and family and spousal relationships. The public schools were mandated with indoctrinating children with Judeo-Christian moral values. The state’s role was to nurture, strengthen, and resolutely protect marriage and family in accordance with Judeo-Christian beliefs and morality.” ¹

Canada is one step ahead of where secularized America was headed under 8 years of Barack Obama’s tutelage. What Obama foresaw was a state that “nurtures, enforces, promotes, and indoctrinates in secular humanistic-religious values and because of the nature of the pagan state, regulation and control are extreme, drifting increasingly toward the totalitarian. No state is impartial in these matters.” Legislation in a state of law “will inculcate values from some worldview, either with man and his agencies as sovereign, or functioning as responsible and accountable to God.” ²

The state is not impartial in a democratic republic, someone’s values are going to reign supreme. If secularists such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Democrat Party chieftains get their constituency to the polls—constituents who hail abortion, same-sex intercourse and marriage, abolishing owning firearms, bigger government, higher taxes, open borders, transgender bathrooms, etc.—and Christians stay home, then secularists are going to impose their values.

The lethargy of Christians in America is the thing that’s puzzling, and certainly foreign to the Founders theology and Biblical worldview.

Blaise Pascal, 17th-century French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and theologian, expressed it thus in his work on theology and physiology, Pensées [Thoughts]: “The most cruel war that God can make against men in this life is to leave them without the war he came to bring.”

As specified by 19th-century English Biblical scholar William Kay, “God’s soldiers can only maintain their war by priestly self-consecration. Conversely: God’s priests can only preserve their purity by unintermitted conflict.”

In his book Genesis: A Commentary, Hebrew and Old Testament professor Bruce Waltke [born 1930] impresses upon us what is of the highest importance: “The serpent’s final defeat under Messiah’s heel (Genesis 3:15) is delayed to effect God’s program of redemption through the promised offspring. In the interim, God leaves Satan to test the fidelity of each succeeding generation of the covenant people (Judges 2:22) and teach them to fight against untruth (Judges 3:2).” Professor Waltke’s book was the 2002 Christian Book of the Year.

For the last 3 to 4 generations, Christians in America have become skilled at following the gentle, turn-the-other cheek Jesus as their main model. This in sharp contrast to the Puritans, who “accepted conflict as their calling, seeing themselves as their Lord’s soldier-pilgrims … not expecting to be able to advance a single step without opposition of one sort or another.” ³ The root cause of the current, feeble Christian worldview appears to be theological misconception.

At this late hour the men and women of Issachar—the Gideons and Rahabs—are beginning the Ground Game, taking a stand in the public square. The antidote to overreach by the state in Obergefell vs. Hodges in 2015 should have been the power of prayer in the churches—America needed air cover. “History belongs to the intercessors who believe the future into being,” as Walter Wink rightfully insisted. Prayer embodies the most underutilized source of power in the public square today. If America is to survive, senior pastors must reestablish prayer in America’s churches.

There is good news, the Ground Game has begun: 251 pastors are running for local office in 2018! Our goal is one thousand!

David Lane
American Renewal Project

1. Tom Warner, cited in Joseph Boot, Mission of God, A Manifesto of Hope for Society
2. Joseph Boot, Mission of God, A Manifesto of Hope for Society
3. J.I. Packer

American Renewal Project
815-A Brazos Street, Number 69, Austin, TX 78701

The original of this article appeared as a circular email, January 23, 2018.
David Lane energizes Evangelical pastors nationwide through the American Renewal Project, educating pastors to mobilize their congregations to register and vote their faith. Mr. Lane is calling for 1,000 pastors to run for city council, county commissioner, school board, mayor or congress in 2016. Issachar Training: the Men and Women of Issachar. The goal of Issachar Training is to restore America’s Judeo Christian heritage and reestablish a Biblical-based culture. Mr. Lane is an Elder at Calvary Chapel Thousand Oaks.

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