Is it Imposing--or Preserving--Our Beliefs?

Our conversation Monday on "The Mark Daniels Show" with Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly pointed up a clear truth that resonates through much of American debate regarding the role of religion in our society today. A general lack of knowledge of both Biblical and American history has created a broad misunderstanding of just what evangelicals and moral conservatives are fighting for.

Christians in America are not seeking to impose our beliefs on the institutions of government, with hopes of majority rule or the establishment of a theocracy. That is nothing more than a straw man, continually set up and knocked down by atheists, anarchists, and extreme libertarians.

People of faith want merely to stop the bleeding. We strive, not to interject our beliefs, our practices, and our culture into society’s institutions--only to halt their unnecessary removal.

Ignorance of the foundational role Judeo-Christian beliefs have played, are playing, and must continue to play in this nation’s existence, is pandemic in our society today. It begins with a generation of educators, celebrities, and other influencers expressing their distaste and distrust for our leadership. It continues with the idealization of the "purity" other nations around the world possess, in comparison with our flawed and "imperialistic" American experience. And it will end with the disaster of our values, our culture, and our way of life being sacrificed on the altar of globalism.

I implore school boards, media moguls, artists, and concerned parents to examine the job we are doing educating the next generation about both the flaws, and the greatness, of this republic. A steady diet of foreign achievements, coupled with American failures, has convinced many in this generation that their country has somehow failed them. The "religious right" has become a convenient scapegoat for part of the blame, it having risen to prominence concurrent with the arrival of the much-maligned Reagan Administration some 25 years ago. Both have suffered greatly from liberal historical revisionism.

Indeed, a proper perspective on the past is the key. And where our faith, our great American heritage, and our sacred institutions are concerned, we must not buy into the "newer is better, latest is greatest" mantra of our day. We must understand fully where we have been, to truly grasp where we are today, and where we must go. And it begins when we draw a permanent, impermeable border around that which is timeless, sacred, and--by its very nature--unchanging.