Understanding that future generations are the key to building political power and lasting change, socialists and totalitarians of all varieties have gravitated toward government-controlled education since before the system was even founded.

The communist “Frankfurt School” was no exception in its affinity for “educating” the youth.

Almost 100 years ago, a group of socialist and communist “thinkers” led by Marxist law professor Carl Grünberg established the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. From there, they would move to the United States. And from their new home in New York City, the subversive ideas they espoused would eventually infect the entire planet like a deadly cancer—mostly through the education system.

A Cultural Revolution

The group actually had its genesis in Moscow before officially being founded in 1923. By the early 1920s, the Bolsheviks—as Antonio Gramsci would later conclude from his Italian prison cell—realized a change in tactics was needed. The much-anticipated violent revolution of the proletariat predicted by Karl Marx to bring about communism, it turned out, would be much more difficult in Western Europe and the United States than previously anticipated. In fact, it wouldn’t be possible at all without first breaking down the cultural barriers to collectivism, they reasoned.

As such, the Communist Internationale and mass-murdering Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin’s minion Karl Radek arranged a meeting at the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow. Among the participants, according to historical records, were Soviet secret police boss Felix Djerzhinski, Hungarian Bolshevik “cultural commissar” Gyorgy Lukacs, and Communist Internationale (Comintern) bigwig Willi Muenzenberg.

At the Moscow meeting, the conspirators decided that what was needed was a more gradual “cultural revolution,” or what eventually came to be known as “cultural Marxism,” in the West and beyond. To advance that program, the subversives agreed on a sinister but brilliant plan. This would involve the destruction of traditional religion and the Christian culture it produced, the collapse of sexual morality and the deliberate undermining of the family, and a wrecking ball to infiltrate and demolish the existing institutions.

Some of these men had experience. For instance, Lukacs, who served as “minister of education and culture” in the Bolshevik Hungarian regime of Bela Kun, had introduced all manner of perversion and grotesque “sex education” in public schools, starting in elementary school. It was part of a campaign to destroy “bourgeois” Christian morality and sexual ethics among the youth. The objective was to eventually de-Christianize Hungary, thereby facilitating a total communist restructuring of the human mind and all of society.

Moving to America

A key tool of these conspirators in Moscow would come to be known as the Frankfurt School. From the Institute in Frankfurt, and later in New York, these cultural revolutionaries would promote feminism, communism, atheism, mass migration, globalism, humanism, multiculturalism, nihilism, hedonism, environmentalism, and all sorts of other “isms” that tended to undermine individual liberty, traditional culture, and morality. Rampant morality-free sexuality and Freudian pseudo-psychology were central to the agenda.

To anyone who has studied America’s public education system today, which spends far more time peddling these “isms” to captive children than providing actual education, the stench of the Frankfurt School’s machinations is unmistakable. In fact, the whole system reeks.

Despite some differences, the group maintained close ties with the Soviet Union. Ironically, though, analysts have long argued that the work of the institute peddling Nietzsche and others helped lay the foundation for the National Socialist takeover of Germany. As the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler gradually parted ways with the more internationally minded socialist tyranny of the butchers in Moscow, the civilization destroyers at the ISR fled to the United States.

There, with crucial assistance from socialist and humanist “education reformer” John Dewey and his disciples, these characters attached themselves to Columbia University’s important Teachers College in 1934. Dewey had been a leading “philosopher” and “educator” at Columbia, retiring just a few years before the Frankfurt School influx was in full swing. Others settled at Berkeley, Princeton, and Brandeis.

With Rockefeller money, Dewey would play a key role in helping the Frankfurt School’s operatives put down roots in America. More on the role of the major foundations in subverting American education will be detailed in an upcoming piece of this series.

The importation of Frankfurt School luminaries was a match made in totalitarian heaven, as Dewey and his disciples had much in common with the cultural Marxist social revolutionaries.

As previously recounted in this series on education, for instance, Dewey was a devoted fan of the Soviet model. In fact, he wrote glowing reports about the supposed successes of Soviet communism in the “New Republic” magazine. Dewey was especially infatuated with the indoctrination centers masquerading as schools—and particularly how they were instilling a “collectivistic mentality” in the children. Dewey’s collectivist, anti-Christian “religious humanism” also appealed to the Frankfurt operatives.

Once the institute’s minions set up shop at Columbia and other prestigious U.S. academic institutions, the Frankfurt School’s rhetoric had to change, at least superficially, as Americans were still ardently devoted to God, country, family, and individual liberty. And so, instead of speaking openly of Marxism and communism, Frankfurt School subversives spoke of “dialectical materialism.” Instead of attacking the family, they attacked “patriarchy.” But the agenda remained the same.

Fighting ‘Fascism’

Almost as soon as they arrived, they began plotting the destruction of America’s traditional values, religion, and form of government under the guise of fighting “fascism.”

Indeed, the luminaries of the Frankfurt School, who represented a wide variety of disciplines, used “education” as a crucial tool for advancing their totalitarian, civilization-destroying philosophies. But they infected much more than just the education system, with their sick ideas spreading out like a poison throughout the intellectual veins of America: the social sciences, entertainment, politics, and beyond.

One of the ways in which Frankfurt School operatives and academics advanced their desired social changes via education was through so-called critical theory. In his 1937 work “Traditional and Critical Theory,” ISR Director Max Horkheimer argued that critical theory—a neo-Marxist tool used to demonize the market system, Christianity, and Western civilization—was aimed at bringing about social change and exposing the alleged oppression of people by capitalism.

Another useful tool for undermining freedom and traditional society was the 1950 work by key Frankfurt School theorists known as “The Authoritarian Personality.” These social “researchers” claimed to discover that the traditional American male and father was actually “authoritarian” because, among other reasons, he held traditional values. Thus, the “patriarchy” and the traditional family—among the most important barriers to tyranny—came under relentless attack as a precursor to “fascism.” Public schools were viewed as tools to combat this alleged problem, and they did so vigorously.

Influence

To understand just how central Teachers College (infected by Frankfurt School and Dewey ideas) would become to the public education in the United States, consider that, by 1950, estimates suggest that a third of principals and superintendents of large school districts were being trained there. Many of these left the college with radical ideas about reality, government, society, family, and economy that came straight from Dewey and the Frankfurt School.

Of course, the damage to America from anti-God, anti-freedom German “intellectuals” began even before the Frankfurt School migrated to Columbia. In fact, Dewey was trained by G. Stanley Hall, who was among the many Americans to study under professor Wilhelm Wundt at Leipzig University.

Among other notable highlights, Wundt pioneered the idea of the human being as a soulless animal. Essentially, he viewed people as biological stimulus-response mechanisms that could, and should, be trained in a manner similar to circus animals. This Darwinian, materialist view of the human being reigns supreme today in the education system but has been catastrophic.

Fringe left-wing extremists who support the Frankfurt School’s anti-American agenda have dishonestly attempted to paint criticism of the relevant institutions, academics, and their ideas as “anti-Semitic.” But in reality, the dangerous ideas pose a major threat to Judaism, too, and so countless patriotic and liberty-minded Jews have also joined the fight against the Frankfurt School’s poison.

The threat of these subversives and their cultural Marxism has been recognized at the highest levels of the U.S. government, even recently. Former National Security Council Director of Policy and Planning Richard Higgins, for instance, blasted it in his now-notorious 2017 “Higgins Memo” to President Donald Trump about the ongoing war against the administration and the United States.

The wars against Trump and America “cannot be separated from the cultural Marxist narratives that drive them,” warned Higgins, saying cultural Marxism was most directly tied to the Frankfurt School. “The Frankfurt strategy deconstructs societies through attacks on culture by imposing a dialectic that forces unresolvable contradictions under the rubric of critical theory,” he warned. Higgins then quotes Herbert Marcuse, a leading Frankfurt thinker, on how to crush the political and cultural right through persecution and phony “tolerance.”

To this day, reflecting the ISR influx of the early 1930s, Teachers College remains a leading purveyor of socialist poison masquerading as “education.” Its recently released book list includes titles by Bill Ayers, the communist terrorist whose terror group Weather Underground, working with communist Cuban intelligence, bombed the State Department, the Pentagon, Capitol Hill, police stations, and more. The Teachers College Press fall selection also includes endless nonsense on “social justice,” racialism, multiculturalism, and other “isms” with roots in Marxism and Frankfurt School strategies.

With society and civilization becoming increasingly unstable as the final vestiges of traditional education are destroyed, the Frankfurt School and its American allies such as Dewey would be pleased with their handiwork. After all, cultural Marxists including Gramsci and ISR thinkers believed that once the old order was destroyed via a “long march” through society’s institutions, Marxism could eventually triumph. On the education front, they now appear largely victorious.

But their overall victory is hardly assured. What comes next depends on whether Americans can be roused from their slumber in time to restore civilization. As the socialists and totalitarians understood well, education will be the key either way.

This article was originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.

There’s a reason that the first openly bisexual senator did not take her oath on the Bible. There’s a reason that an atheist website rebuked me for “misgendering” someone. Simply stated, to embrace the God of the Bible means to embrace His standards. To reject the God of the Bible means to reject His standards. Conversely, to reject His standards is to reject Him. This is really not rocket science.

Breitbart reported that, “Newly elected Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema refused to be sworn in on a Bible, opting, instead, to place her right hand on a book of laws, including the U.S Constitution and the Arizona Constitution.”

It is no coincidence that she is our first openly bisexual senator as well as the only member of the U.S. Senate who has no religious affiliation.

This doesn’t mean that she is a terrible person or that she has no moral values at all. And it doesn’t mean that she cannot serve the government. Of course not. There is no religious test for leadership either way (in other words, you can’t be disqualified for being a Christian or disqualified for not being a Christian).

But it does mean that her lifestyle and identity are at odds with the God of the Bible, hence her lack of religious affiliation and her refusal to swear in on the Bible. That is perfectly consistent.

Over at the “Friendly Atheist” site, a site which is certainly atheistic if not always friendly, Sarahbeth Caplin wrote an article titled, “Christian Writer Deliberately Misgenders Trans Woman to Defy ‘Social Madness.’” She accuses me of “faith-based bigotry masquerading as Christian love.”

As for one of the websites which published my article, she said this: “The folks at Charisma are eager to start off the new year with yet more doses of the only things they have to offer: fear-mongering and anti-LGBTQ bigotry.” (See here for my article.)

The truth be told, it is not bigotry to affirm biological realities, and the average transgender activist does not have science on his or her side. (By this I mean that the average person identifying as transgender is clearly of one biological/chromosomal sex but identifies as the opposite.)

Yet an atheist website that certainly claims to be rational and science-based embraces transgender activism with enthusiasm, vilifying those who reject it. Why?

And why is it that, according to a Pew Research poll, 92 percent of American atheists support same-sex “marriage”? Or, according to this same poll, 87 percent of these atheists believe that abortion should be legal in most or all cases?

A recent article by Sally Hunt on the Friendly Atheist website critiques the video arguments of pro-life atheist Terrisa Bukovinac. Hunt writes, “I watched [the video]. I’m not convinced. And that’s because it seems abundantly clear that the atheist ‘pro-life’ argument is identical to the religious one, except Bukovinac didn’t invoke ‘God’ throughout the monologue. Both arguments are logically flawed, though. An atheist who opposes abortion essentially says Abortion should be illegal because of my feelings, while a religious person would say Abortion should be illegal because of my feelings, which also happens to be what God wants.”

Obviously, Hunt misrepresents why Bible believing Christians so strongly oppose abortion. It’s not that we have our feelings, which happen to be what God wants too. Instead, we are convinced by God and His Word that the baby in the womb is a real human being, and therefore we align our feelings with the Word.

Hunt, however, rightly represents the atheistic worldview by stating, “Not every form of life is inherently precious, sacred, and valuable. That includes human forms of life.” Indeed, she states, “To say otherwise is arguably a religious position. (It’s religious people who believe we possess souls from conception thanks to God.)”

And with that observation, we come full circle to our premise: If we fail to recognize God and His Word, we will inevitably stray from biblical morality. We will reject the idea that He created us male and female. We will reject the idea that men and women are uniquely fashioned for each other. We will reject the idea that human life is sacred, beginning in the womb. And we will certainly reject the idea that human beings are created in the image of God, with all that implies.

That’s why I have argued that the only type of conservatism that can bring lasting change to America is a biblically-based, God centered conservatism. All other efforts will fall short in the end.

It is true that there “is far too much diversity among both atheists and theists to assume that they stand on opposite sides of any particular issue.”

But it is also true that general patterns apply and that the worldview of an atheist will be a very different than the worldview of a Bible-based theist. And that means that any true moral transformation in America will start with a “back to God” movement. It is the absence of God that is our greatest problem today.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org

Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx are the mid-19^th century philosophical fathers of Communism.  Both men epitomized the rally cry of Atheism which is “God doesn’t exist, and I hate him.”   They saw religion as a competitor to their agenda of a government-based socialistic society.

In disparaging religious faith, Engels wrote:

“All religion… is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces.”

Regarding this rivalry, Engels observed:

“Both Christianity and the workers’ socialism preach forth coming salvation from bondage and misery; Christianity places this salvation in a life beyond, after death, in heaven; socialism places it in this world, in a transformation of society.”

Do government powers compete with faith?  More specifically, can big government displace religious faith?   When people can get things they want from the government as a provider, are they less likely to turn to God for help?  These are not strange questions.  In fact, researchers have a name for it.  They call it an exchange model of religion.

A new paper compiled by researchers from three universities published April 12th in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin say that the answer to these questions is “yes.”   Big government replaces God for many people around the world.  They conclude that if some of the appeals of faith can be acquired from government, then religiosity declines in that society.

The researchers found a delayed effect between an increase in government services and a measurable decline in faith occurring one to two years later.  “If a secular entity provides what people need, they will be less likely to seek help from God or other supernatural entities. Government is the most likely secular provider,” the researchers concluded.

“The power and order emanating from God can be outsourced to the government,” the researchers claim.  I wonder how many politicians who are drawn to government doing more and more in every aspect of our lives realize that they are making a god out of government.  I suspect that many do know this.

The researchers compared state and country services as a percentage of gross domestic product with data about religion collected by Gallup from 455,104 people across 155 countries.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Life is so precious, and the right to life recognized as a “natural” or God-given right, so much so that it was codified in our Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Note that the “right to life” is given preeminence: without life no other right is necessary. And “unalienable” further emphasizes the untouchable nature of that right: mankind was gifted life by its Creator — the Lord God Almighty — and no man or government can take that right away except in the case of a proven capital crime.

Indeed, within each man and woman is the longing to live as well and as long as possible on this earth, in spite of hardship or physical pain. Even terminal patients, given adequate pain-relieving drugs, don’t wish to hasten death, but to live every moment to the fullest.

Joni Eareckson Tada, paralyzed and a quadriplegic since a diving accident in 1967, speaks to the issue of disability versus death following the release of the awful movie, Me Before You:

In light of the fact that California’s new physician-assisted suicide law goes into effect tomorrow (Thursday, June 9), following closely on the heels of the newly-released film, Me Before You, I wanted to sound an alarm about this egregious legislation and the glamorization of it.

In the movie, the quadriplegic says to his loved one, “I don’t want you to miss all the things someone else can give you.” Instead, he took away everything she wanted from him – his love and the essence of who he was – when he decided to end his life. Not only does this movie glamorize assisted suicide; it conveys the distinct impression that marriage to someone with quadriplegia is too hard, too demanding and sorely lacks the joys of typical marriage.

Regardless of whether or not in the context of a marriage, the taking of one’s own life or enabling a loved one with a disability to do so is never the answer. All life is created in the image of God and worth our greatest efforts to preserve and protect, and He alone is the one who should order the length of our days.

Some will assert that pain is an adequate reason for euthanasia, and yet, pain specialists state that properly administered drugs can provide at least good relief in 97% of all cases.

The final reason people may consider suicide is depression. And yet, depression can be alleviated via properly prescribed medicines and/or sound counseling. Thus suicide is a permanent “solution” to a temporary situation or mindset.

Scripture admonishes us to choose life:

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live. (Deuteronomy 30:19)

So, with all the advances in pain meds and availability of rock solid counseling, why is the teen suicide rate soaring?

In a USA Today article, “Teen suicide is soaring. Do spotty mental health and addiction treatment share blame?” authors Jayne O’Donnell and Anne Saker write:

The suicide rate for white children and teens between 10 and 17 was up 70% between 2006 and 2016, the latest data analysis available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although black children and teens kill themselves less often than white youth do, the rate of increase was higher — 77%.

A study of pediatric hospitals released last May found admissions of patients ages 5 to 17 for suicidal thoughts and actions more than doubled from 2008 to 2015. The group at highest risk for suicide are white males between 14 and 21.

Experts and teens cite myriad reasons, including spotty mental health screening, poor access to mental health services and resistance among young men and people of color to admit they have a problem and seek care.

In other words, the experts have no idea.

And yet, for decades the “experts” have been telling students in government schools that they are the by-product of mere chance.

Author Frank Peretti sums up the abysmally depressing instruction:

Kids, welcome to Biology 101. We’re going to learn lots of fun things in this class. We’re going to learn how…we’re going to cut up frogs and we’re going to pick flowers. We’re going to learn about pistils and stamens and all kinds of fun things.

But the first thing you need to know, boys and girls, above all else is that YOU are an ACCIDENT!

You have absolutely no reason for being here! There is no meaning, no purpose to your life!

You are nothing but a meaningless conglomeration of molecules that came together purely by chance billions and billions of years ago.

All the dust and the gas in the galaxy floated around for who knows how long and they bumped into each other and said, “I know! Let’s be organic! So they became organic. And they became little gooey, slimy things, you know, swimming around in the primordial soup.

And they finally grew little feet and they crawled up on the land and they grew fur and feathers and became higher forms of life. And they finally became a monkey and the monkey developed into an ape, and then the ape decided to shave. So he shaved and became what you are today.

From goo to you by way of the zoo!

Add to that thoroughly gloomy “naturalist” teaching the Pew chronicled “Nones on the Rise” and you have a recipe for mental and spiritual utter despondency.

Pew Research reported:

The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.

In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%).

. . .

The growth in the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans – sometimes called the rise of the “nones” – is largely driven by generational replacement, the gradual supplanting of older generations by newer ones.

You may have heard Mainstream Media touting that “religion is dying.” But that’s not the story at all. Rather, affiliation in mainline Protestant and Catholic denominations is dying.

So we have several generations of youth taught from the earliest grades that they are nothing more than the result of a cosmic accident in school and receiving zero countermanding instruction in the home or in church.

That is a recipe for depression.

Add to that the disdain for life itself demonstrated by Planned Parenthood and every pro-abort in America, the implication being you’re an accident of nature, and if you in any way inconvenience your parents (who are also, by the way, just accidents of nature), then they will happily kill you before you’re born in the most painful way imaginable. And they may even allow Planned Parenthood to sell your poor little, mangled body parts for research to save other lives.

That, by the way, is a total enigma: why bother to do research to save lives of people who are an accident of nature and somehow, by random chance, managed to escape the abortionist’s butchery and were actually born!

The real question should not be “Why the high teen suicide rate?” but rather, “Why aren’t more teens taking their lives given an education and society that tells them they are an accident, that life means nothing, and that there is no hope after this life on earth!”

King David wrote:

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139:14)

Which brings us back full circle to our Declaration of Independence, written by the Founders who believed and were informed by the Bible. Those Founders knew what King David knew — that the Creator of the universe designed and breathed life into each person, that life is worth living because of the hope we have in God.

Again we look to the uplifting words of David:

Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42:11)

That is the hope we must share with the youth, and other generations of America. That is the remedy for the epidemic of suicide and depression.

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America’s founders believed in God and His word, and predicated our founding documents on those immutable, biblical principles.

Though Leftists love to spout revisionist nonsense about many of the Founders being deists or worse, those accusations don’t hold water when faced with the weight of those early patriots’ own words and actions.

Thomas Jefferson, often upheld as vying for the least religious spot amongst the Founders, wrote:

I am a real Christian – that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.¹

And Jefferson’s worship habits speak even louder:

Many people are surprised to learn that the United States Capitol regularly served as a church building; a practice that began even before Congress officially moved into the building and lasted until well after the Civil War.

On December 4, 1800, Congress approved the use of the Capitol building as a church building.

The approval of the Capitol for church was given by both the House and the Senate, with House approval being given by the Speaker of the House, Theodore Sedgwick, and Senate approval being given by the President of the Senate, Thomas Jefferson. Interestingly, Jefferson’s approval came while he was still officially the Vice- President but after he had just been elected President.

Jefferson attended church at the Capitol while he was Vice President and also throughout his presidency. The first Capitol church service that Jefferson attended as President was a service preached by Jefferson’s friend, the Rev. John Leland, on January 3, 1802.

Significantly, Jefferson attended that Capitol church service just two days after he penned his famous letter containing the “wall of separation between church and state” metaphor.

Now, just over two centuries later, many Americans maintain a post-Christian worldview. As written at IMB.org:

In a Christian culture, the majority of people have been shaped by Christianity, and it shows in how they live their lives. Post-Christianity, just as it sounds, is a culture that was once shaped by the Christian faith and worldview, but has since moved away from the primacy of such a worldview.

In a post-Christian society the Biblical story that once shaped culture is no longer the narrative that gives meaning to life.

The Barna Group conducted studies beginning in late 2016 and ending in mid-2017 concerning young people and their faith worldview; the findings are especially troubling.

The study sampling and definition:

Two nationally representative studies of teens were conducted. The first was conducted using an online consumer panel November 4–16, 2016, and included 1,490 U.S. teenagers 13 to 18 years old. The second was conducted July 7–18, 2017, and also used an online consumer panel, which included 507 U.S. teenagers 13 to 18 years old. The data from both surveys were minimally weighted to known U.S. Census data in order to be representative of ethnicity, gender, age and region.

One nationally representative study of 1,517 U.S. adults ages 19 and older was conducted using an online panel November 4–16, 2016. The data were minimally weighted to known U.S. Census data in order to be representative of ethnicity, gender, age and region.

GEN Z were born 1999 to 2015. (Only teens 13 to 18 are included in this study.)
MILLENNIALS were born 1984 to 1998.
GEN X were born 1965 to 1983.
BOOMERS were born 1946 to 1964.
ELDERS were born before 1946.
NO FAITH identify as agnostic, atheist or “none of the above.”

Some of the findings?

Gen Z is the first purely Post-Christian generation — the percentage of Gen-Z identifying as atheist is DOUBLE the U.S. adult population.

The article presenting the findings (with a related book available for purchase), “Atheism Doubles Among Generation Z,” notes:

For Gen Z, “atheist” is no longer a dirty word: The percentage of teens who identify as such is double that of the general population (13% vs. 6% of all adults). The proportion that identifies as Christian likewise drops from generation to generation. Three out of four Boomers are Protestant or Catholic Christians (75%), while just three in five 13- to 18-year-olds say they are some kind of Christian (59%).

The decline in a Christian-based worldview is illustrated in the graphic posted to the right.

Appallingly, over one third of Gen Z don’t believe it’s possible to know if there really is a God.

What happened to the country whose motto is “In God we trust”?

Noah Webster, the “Father of American Scholarship and Education,” wrote:

The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and His apostles… This is genuine Christianity and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.²

The Christian religion… is the basis, or rather the source, of all genuine freedom in government… I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of Christianity have not a controlling influence.³

And, George Washington, the Father of Our Nation wrote:

While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.⁴

Yet in the span of just over 200 years, the youth of America knows next to nothing about God and the Bible. Church attendance, at least in mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, is declining precipitously.

What is the answer? Is it too late?

The Apostle Peter admonished us:

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. (1 Peter 3:15)

“Always be prepared to give an answer” — the underlying precept of apologetics, the defense of the faith.

And a vital part of Apologetics is knowing your worldview.

Gen Z may be overwhelmingly lost and devoid of hope, but we believers have the answer that restores hope. We must be ready to give that answer to a generation that sorely needs hope.

With that dire need in mind, Illinois Family Institute presents the Fourth Annual IFI Worldview Conference Featuring John Stonestreet.

10 AM – 3:30 PM 

Medinah Baptist Church (map)
900 Foster Avenue, Medinah, IL 60157

$20 per person/$50 per family 

Just who is John and why is he a tremendous resource for such an event?

As President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, John’s passion is to illuminate a biblical worldview for today’s culture. He’s a speaker, writer, cultural commentator, and collaborator of worldview initiatives.

John directs conferences and curriculum projects, speaks to groups nationally and internationally, consults on worldview education for schools and churches, and appears frequently on web and radio broadcasts.

John is the co-host with Eric Metaxas of Breakpoint Radio, the Christian worldview radio program founded by the late Chuck Colson.

Don’t miss this tremendous opportunity to “study to shew thyself approved…”!

The Founders invested their hope and their faith into this burgeoning Republic, infusing our Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution with biblical precepts and a Judeo-Christian worldview.

Now is the time to recapture the explicit understanding of that worldview, and to share that hope and understanding with a lost and hopeless generation.

_____________________

¹ – Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Ellery Bergh, editor (Washington, D.C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XIV, p. 385, to Charles Thomson on January 9, 1816.
² – Noah Webster, History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie and Peck, 1832), p. 300, ¶ 578.
³ – K. Alan Snyder, Defining Noah Webster: Mind and Morals in the Early Republic (New York: University Press of America, 1990), p. 253, to James Madison on October 16, 1829.
⁴ – George Washington, The Writings of Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1932), Vol. XI, pp. 342-343, General Orders of May 2, 1778.

Written by Amy K. Hall

I find it odd when I refer to an atheist’s worldview and he adamantly denies he has one. This sense that “worldview” is an insult has puzzled me for quite a while; why would atheists think it’s an insult to have a consistent, coherent view of reality? As I’ve talked to them more about this, I think I may have finally figured out why many of them view the term “worldview” so negatively, and it has to do with their identity as atheists.

At the root of atheism (i.e., the rejection of God) is an attempt to throw off outside constraints in order to construct a life of one’s own choosing—that is, to become one’s own god. (An atheist might not put it in terms of becoming “a god,” of course, but I think he would agree with the idea.) What I’m finding is that getting out from under God’s authority isn’t enough for the people I’ve talked to. It turns out that even the idea that one of their beliefs (e.g., “there is no God”) might entail other beliefs they didn’t specifically and individually choose on their own is seen as a sort of outside constraint on their thinking.

But the truth is, we are all constrained by reality, and it’s our job to discover what that reality is and submit to it—not piece by piece, but as a whole, noting how the parts relate to each other, and reasoning from one to the next. If reality is coherent, an acknowledgement of reality in one area (say, the idea that we evolved and were not created by God) will necessarily affect our understanding of reality in another area (say, the idea of universal human rights). Rather than being two completely separate ideas, they’re related to each other in a coherent worldview.

It’s not an accident that people who identify as atheists share many views besides a belief that God does not exist; it happens because a great many views flow out of the idea that there is no God and the material world is all there is. Rather than denying this, atheists would do well to think carefully through their worldview—their coherent view of reality—to make sure all their pieces fit together and, as a whole, match the reality they see around them.

If they do this, I think they will find that some of their cherished ideas just won’t fit into the “no God” puzzle. I was reminded of this when I saw this quote from Yuval Harari in Impossible People, wherein he comments on the idea in the Declaration of Independence “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”:

According to the science of biology, people were not “created.” They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be “equal.” The idea of equality is inextricably intertwined with the idea of creation. The Americans got the idea of equality from Christianity, which argues that every person has a directly created soul, and that all people are equal before God. However if we do not believe in the Christian myths about God, creation, souls, what does it mean that all people are created “equal”? Evolution is based on difference, not on equality. Every person carries a somewhat different genetic code, and is exposed from birth to different environmental influences. This leads to the development of different qualities that carry with them different chances of survival. “Created equal” should therefore be translated “evolved differently.” [Read more of the quote in context here.]

Equality and universal human rights come from Christianity, not atheism. There is nothing in atheism that could undergird those ideas (as atheists on this blog have themselves said). Worldviews matter, they lead to myriad consequences, and everyone has one. Make sure you think through yours—and its implications—carefully.

This article was originally posted at the Stand to Reason blog.

Those who deny the existence of their Creator are delusional.

This is not an insult. It’s not a personal attack. It’s not a pejorative.

It’s a fact.

They’re also “fools.”

God’s Word declares, “The fool hath said in his heart ‘there is no God’” (Psalm 14).

When the Creator calls God-deniers “fools,” He’s not saying they’re stupid clowns. Merriam Webster defines “fool” as “a person lacking in judgment or prudence.”

Psalm 19:1 observes: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”

Romans 1:20 likewise notes, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

Yet excuses they make.

In view of the everlasting consequence of carrying God-denial to the grave, such excuses exemplify a distinct “lack in judgment or prudence.”

It’s foolishness.

My friend Ray Comfort is founder and CEO of Living Waters. He’s a best-selling author, movie producer and co-host (with actor Kirk Cameron) of the award-winning television program “The Way of the Master,” seen in 200 countries.

Recently, Ray contacted me and sent me a review copy of a new documentary he’s releasing this summer called, “The Atheist Delusion: Why Millions Deny the Obvious.” He asked me to watch it and give him some feedback. My only regret is that I waited so long to do so. To say the film is powerful is a gross understatement.

“Ray, please forgive me for not getting back to you sooner,” I responded. “I’ve just had a chance to finally watch this. I’m a 260-pound former professional boxer and ex-cop who’s sitting here balling like a baby. This is, bar none, the most compelling and comprehensive piece of its kind. I guess I can’t even say ‘of its kind’ because it’s totally unique. I’ve never seen anything so comprehensive. It’s visually stunning, winsome, compassionate, intellectually unassailable and moving to the extreme. Somehow you managed, in about an hour, to make the case, beyond any reasonable doubt, for the Creator God, and bring it home to the Truth of Christ. This is your masterpiece. Let me know how I can help you get it out far and wide.”

I mean it when I say “The Atheist Delusion” is the most persuasive and captivating answer to atheist questions I’ve ever seen on film. Without giving too much away, let me just say that non-believers and believers alike will be moved emotionally, spiritually and intellectually. I have no doubt that many who claim atheism at the beginning of the film, will be left well on their way to admitting His existence and infinite glory toward film’s end.

Back in April I wrote a column first published at WND and later at CNSNews. The piece, titled, “The Big Bang Blows Atheism Sky High: Even Science May Eventually Catch Up to God’s Word,” was then aggregated and featured on the main page of Yahoo News where it went viral. In the column I detailed some of the foolishness inherent within the belief that everything came from nothing – that there is no God – a subject I delve into deeper in my new book, “Hating Jesus: The American Left’s War on Christianity.”

“The manifest intentionality and fine-tuning of all creation reveals design of breathtaking complexity,” I wrote. “The Creator is of incalculable intelligence and infinite splendor. As I see it, atheism provides a case study in willful suspension of disbelief – all to escape, as the God-denier imagines it, accountability for massaging the libertine impulse.”

And so, as does world famous atheist Richard Dawkins, they concoct an idol of their own making – a false god, easy to avoid; a “god” who is “arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Indeed, it’s been said that the atheist position is simple and twofold: 1) There is no God; 2) I hate Him.

After watching “The Atheist Delusion,” viewers will be left no more wiggle room as to the undeniable question of God’s existence.

All that remains will be to either love Him – or continue hating Him.

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It’s not enough for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to use its legal clout to halt graduation invocations or prayers before high school football games.

In Florida, the ACLU insists that even a secular school concert in a building that is used for religious services is beyond the pale. As is often the case, a single “atheist” parent complained, and that was enough for the ACLU to threaten legal action over the possibility of attendees catching religion “cooties.”

Of course, the ACLU did not phrase it as such, nor did they liken the church to a leper colony. But they got their way – sort of.

Rather than fight the legal assault, officials at Barron Collier High School near Naples, Florida at first called off their fifth annual fall concert at Moorings Presbyterian Church. As outraged students who had practiced for weeks for the event objected, school officials fashioned a deal. They would move the fall concert to another district high school and then have a second concert at the church in December.

Students were not thrilled, and they let school officials know it. Only about a third of the chorale’s members performed at the other school on Nov. 20, even though absentees were warned they would be given an F and it would count for one-sixteenth of their final grade.

“It was kind of like, ‘take one for the team,’ ” senior Claire Welsh told the Naples Daily News after the performance:

“She was crying right up to the start of the show, which saw only about 60 of the 175 choirs students take part. ‘It’s my senior year and I’ve been doing this for four years. This is a really sad start to my final year of choir.’

“Parents were told if the concert went off Thursday at Gulf Coast, the December concert would be back at Moorings, which parents and students argue has better acoustics.”

The ACLU had contended that because Moorings Presbyterian Church is regularly used for religious services, the atheist parent rightly found the concert location objectionable, even though the event contains no religious content.

Liberty Counsel, a pro-family, constitutional legal group, offered the school pro bono legal representation to fight the ACLU, urging district officials not to cave in to its “campaign of intimidation and misinformation,” according to OneNewsNow.com.

“The courts have held the use of religious property by a school district to be constitutional if there is a clear secular purpose for the use, the use does not endorse or discourage religion, and the ‘reasonable observer’ would not conclude that the school district endorses religion,” Liberty Counsel asserted. “The clear secular purpose to use the Presbyterian church auditorium is for sufficient room to hold the crowd and appropriate acoustics. … The students know that they are simply using a building.”

In an Oct. 30 letter issued to Collier County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Kamela Patton, Liberty Counsel attorney Horatio G. Mihet assured district officials that holding the concert would not put the district in legal jeopardy:

“The ACLU’s legal position and threats are baseless and constitutionally infirm. Collier County Schools does not violate any student’s constitutional rights by simply using or even leasing a church building for the performance of concert music by the High School Chorus. Courts have been crystal clear on this point:

“‘Plausible secular reasons…exist for performing school choir concerts in churches and other venues associated with religious institutions. Such venues often are acoustically superior to high school auditoriums or gymnasiums, yet still provide adequate seating capacity. Moreover, by performing in such venues, an instructor can showcase his choir to the general public in an atmosphere conducive to the performance of serious choral music.’” Bauchman for Bauchman v. W. High Sch., 132 F.3d 542, 554 (10th Cir. 1997).

“Thus, if a church can permanently lease a building for operation of a school without violating the Establishment Clause, then surely two hours in a large, air conditioned, acoustically ideal room is perfectly acceptable,” Mihet wrote.

It would have been nice if school officials had bucked the ACLU’s bullying and gone ahead with the fall concert at the church, which they had done the previous four years.

But at least an anemic version of the show went on, with the promise of another, and lots of students who got an ‘F’ showed that they know something very important: that freedom is not free.

This article was originally posted at the TownHall.com website.

Writing in response to my article “Secularism Declares Open War On Religious Faith,” an atheist has assured his readers that there is no such war and that, more importantly, in order to avoid conflict with the larger society, I should simply keep my religion in the closet. He has thereby confirmed my article rather than refuted it, and the comments from his fellow-atheist readers only bring further confirmation.

Writing in the Thinking Atheist blog, Terry Firma mocked the idea that, “if you’re an evangelical Christian, ‘You have been marked, and you have been classified as a dangerous extremist.'”

Dismissing my statement that, “secularism has been waging war against religion for centuries,” Firma asks, “Don’t you think you might have that backwards, professor?”

Of course, a war has been raging both ways for centuries, but the point I was making was simple: Secularism in various forms has been in deep conflict with religious faith for centuries – in other words, this is not the first time such a conflict has arisen – but today, it is taking on an especially shrill form, as conservative Christians are being put in the same category as murderous terrorists (like ISIS and Boko Haram).

Yet rather than refute that point, Firma states that the criticism is not that far off target.

With reference to comments made my radio host (and atheist) David Pakman, whom I cited in my article, Firma writes, “I think Pakman’s comparison to ISIS is unhelpful, but it’s not incorrect. What would be incorrect is to say that conservative Christians go around cutting infidels’ heads off with abandon.

Pakman never goes there, obviously. He says the respective ideologies are similar, not identical; nor does he claim that the outcome of religious fundamentalism is the same no matter whether it’s extremist Muslims or hardline-conservative Christians we’re dealing with.”

Actually, Pakman is far less nuanced than Firma, which is one reason I cited him, and it is clear that Firma’s readers are far less nuanced as well, with choice comments like this one, from Debby, appearing at the end of his article: “I think that many of these religious whackadoos are only saying what even many more moderate Christians also feel. The fact is that people are standing up against Christian privilege in the US. The American Taliban (i.e. fundamentalists) simply don’t like having to consider other people have similar rights.”

In similar fashion, PsiCop branded me “an insanely paranoid religiofascist” and Seeker Lancer opined that when it comes to comparing conservative Christians to ISIS, “Maybe it’s unhelpful since it’s intended to incite but I say call a spade a spade.”

Again, this is what I was highlighting with the examples I cited in my article (in particular, the last three examples).

Yet Firma finds the examples to be very weak, even though I cited the UK gay activist (and atheist) Peter Tatchell, who recently released his “Manifesto for Secularism – Against the Religious Right,” in which he issued a “call on people everywhere to stand with us to establish an international front against the religious-Right and for secularism.”

So, a self-avowed atheist can call for a war against “the religious-Right,” by which he explicitly means the Taliban, ISIS, and al-Qaeda along with “the Christian-Right in the U.S. and Europe,” yet this secularist war against religion is merely a figment of my paranoid imagination. Really?

The problem for Firma, of course, is that he basically agrees with this mentality – although stating that Islam is more dangerous than Christianity – and to buttress his point about “the Christian-Right in the U.S. and Europe,” he points to Uganda, of all places. Uganda?

What does Uganda have to do with “the Christian-Right in the U.S. and Europe”?

Following the standard gay activist narrative, Firma blames Uganda’s harsh anti-gay bill on American evangelicals, although the truth is that: 1) The Ugandan leaders categorically deny that Americans were behind this bill, finding this accusation to be racist (since the American leaders in question are white), as if they didn’t have convictions of their own. 2) The main leader accused of inciting the bill, Scott Lively, publicly criticized the most controversial (and even draconian) measures of the bill, especially in its original form. 3) The other leader in question, Lou Engle, led a previously scheduled prayer meeting in Uganda (that had nothing to do with the homosexuality bill) and at that prayer meeting, simply encouraged the moral stand that Christian leaders were taking (without for a moment demonizing anyone or calling for harsh penalties against anyone).

Yet based on this slender thread (it’s not even that), Firma not only dismisses the evidence of the Tatchell manifesto, but he actually justifies lumping murderous terrorists together with godly, caring, conservative Christians in Europe and America.

Yet there’s more. Firma writes, “I’m not aware of any atheists who are interested in waging war on religious faith. Most of us, I’ll bet, are quite happy, if not adamant, to preserve the right to believe and speak as one sees fit for everyone, believer or agnostic.”

Surely, Firma has read the literature of the so-called new atheists like Richard Dawkins and his ilk, and he knows that Dawkins actually decries parents raising their children with religious beliefs, among other things, yet he is “not aware of any atheists who are interested in waging war on religious faith.” Really? (Ironically, Firma’s article was reposted on Dawkins’ website.)

Some of Firma’s readers were not convinced either, as C. Peterson stated that he was quite aware of such atheists, using himself as a case in point: “I am an unapologetic antireligionist who considers faith to be the primary root of all humanity’s problems, manifested partly by the inability to use reason consistently, and partly by the religions that faith spawns. All my ‘activism’ as an atheist is fundamentally a war on religion and on religious faith.”

Others added their “Amen” to his comments. Is anyone surprised?

Firma, however, had a proposal by which we people of faith could live in peaceful coexistence with the secularists: “As long as the faithful keep their religion out of the public square — that is, out of our public schools, and away from the business of a neutral government – we should all get along relatively well. If Mr. Brown seeks a truce between the religious and the non-religious, all he and his fellow believers need to do is (a) tone down the hateful rhetoric, all Jesus-like [in other words, do not express any moral viewpoints based on Scripture, even though that’s what Jesus did all the time]; and (b) keep their worship and their rule books confined to places where they are constitutionally appropriate. Problem solved.”

There you have it. There is no secular, atheistic war on religion, and whatever conflicts do exist can be resolved if we basically keep our religion in the closet.

Don’t hold your breath.