Call to Arms

Is God dead … and have we killed him? My point is not that God went the way of the Tasmanian Tiger or Dodo flightless bird, but that too many people in America no longer believe inJesus Christthe Son of God or Jehovah God, and that this corruption of faith will in all probability only increase. In other words, will likely continue. Have we not seen this scenario, for the most part, turn out to be the case in Western Europe, where only small percentages of people say they believe in God? But has not America been an exception to this trend and remains so today? Not so fast my friends.

IAW Pew Research data, a slight majority of Americans say they believe in God with absolute certainty. Conversely, just over a half of Americans say religion is important to them. More, recent data shows that roughly “half of Americans say they favor a greater role for religion in society, compared to only 18% who say they oppose that.” That’s a startling stat, especially when set side by side with our West European brethren, which are not so keen on any faith-based religious belief much less Christian faith-based religion. But before we start going head over heels for American exceptionalism, we need to recognize something is acutely off-center. Despite America’s perceived strong religious feelings or beliefs, we continue drifting aimlessly in the direction of Western Europe’s tumultuous secular seas.

Consider this. Did not same-sex marriage take hold in much of Western Europe before it reached America? The U.S. trailed behind, but not for long. Has not the views that were once prevalent among the general public changed over the last several years from a majority opposing same-sex marriage to a majority now supporting it. Let us cognate on gender and how grammatical gender is now only loosely associated with natural distinctions of biological sex. Americans are becoming more accepting of a person’s identity that does not conform unambiguously to conventional ideas of the male or female gender. Why support? Transgenderism pop culture, media, academia and many within today’s Democrat Party promotes it. The idea that gender is based on feelings, rather than an objective standard tied to biology is now vogue. The result: a large percentage of Generation Y now say gender identity is a matter of choice. From what I have read and heard many Americans are fine using transgender pronouns. This cultural change was fast in coming. So much so, it is like being spun around on a fast circling merry-go-round amusement park ride and it raises the obvious question: If America is so faithful, why does it keep acquiescing on all the highly charged sociopolitical cultural issues? Pardon the insensitivity, this being the case, what good is our religious convictions? The answer, it appears, is not much good at all. Though we may not be secularizing like the rest of the West, we aren’t stringently observing traditional forms of Judeo-Christian beliefs. This being as it is, does this make America, a nation of people practicing religious heresy? Stop the ride, you want to get off? Too late!

If Americans increasingly view religion as a subjective thing with no bearing on the actual world, by inference, these same Americans must reason that religious belief is a matter of opinion, not objective truth. Herein lies the essential problem and it explains the contradiction of America as a nation with both vibrant faith-based religions and defining culture.

What we have in America is a root-and-branch separation of God from reality. We as a culture have rejected a God who created and gave order to the universe, sets moral norms, defines our being and binds our consciences to a moral code in today’s world. Essentially, we have kept God but discharged the long-established traditional package.

By discarding the package are we not rejecting God completely? If believing in God has no impact on the way we view realities in this world, whether they be gender, marriage, or who counts as a person worthy of dignity and respect, then what God are we even paying homage to? Could it be that the anti-theists are right when they accuse us of worshipping a God of our own making or production?