Radio talk show host Dennis Prager is fond of saying that “boredom, affluence and secularism” have produced a nonsensical and selfish society.

You and I know that this selfishness—along with a strong dose of apathy—has also affected the Christian community.

You and I also know that Christian conservatives could have a greater influence on our culture and the political process if only more of us were willing to engage in prayer and activism.

Scripture exhorts us to do both: Pray for our leaders (1 Timothy 2:1-7), and live out our faith (James 1:22).

I believe that if every conservative Christian did this, our state and nation would not be submerged in the cesspool in which we currently find ourselves.

But the reality is only a small number of our readers took us up on the opportunity to join the IFI Prayer Team when we announced it back in 2013 and then again in 2016. (Maybe you didn’t see those emails and would like to join today?).

Here we are, smack dab in the middle of the winter of 2021 still smarting from the challenges of 2020. As we enter this season of Lent, it is important that we practice the disciplines of prayer, confession and fasting.

We also have to recognize that God calls His children to a spiritual warfare. Each one of us are called to fight this battle in different ways, but we are all expected to fight each battle on our knees and in fervent prayer. We need God to strengthen us, to defend us, and to give us wisdom. We cannot do it without His help.

Of course, this includes the public square and the political arena. Christians have got to become serious about praying consistently for our political leaders. Not only are we instructed to pray for our leaders in 1 Timothy 2:1-3, but we are taught that God can change the heart of a king just as easily as He turns a stream of water in Proverbs 21:1. And in James 5:16, we are told that the earnest prayers of God’s people are powerful and effective.

Throughout the legislative session, we send subscribers email alerts, and throughout the entire year we send cultural alerts (e.g., the Target Boycott alert), asking our supporters to use our turn-key Action Center to send emails or faxes to key decision-makers. The entire process takes between 60-90 seconds to complete. Are we so busy that we don’t have 90 seconds to engage in the process that may help reverse prevent the passage of laws and policies that undermine human flourishing in Illinois?

It is simple, convenient, and quick to use. Increased use of our Action Center could be the difference between winning and losing a legislative battle by one or two votes.

In an effort to change that trend, we launched an initiative that we call “Gideon’s Army.” We are looking for Christian men and women who have a heart for truth, and a deep concern for a culture that continues to buy the lies of the Left—a debased culture that we are leaving as our legacy to our children and grandchildren.

We are looking for subscribers who are willing to commit to the battle in the public square by committing to prayer and action on every alert we send out.

Will you volunteer to be part of IFI’s Gideon’s Army?

As we work to educate and encourage key lawmakers on these issues in the hope they will vote the right way, it is imperative that residents back home in their respective districts also speak out on these issues. Believe me when I say that most lawmakers sit up and take notice when they get a significant response to any legislative proposal. When Christians fail to be bold and take action choosing instead to remain silent, humanists and atheists fill the void with their voices and often win the day.

After a quick survey of some of our subscribers, we heard two main excuses why like-minded Christians do not act on our action alerts:

1.) We assume others are doing it.

2.)  We don’t have the time.

Well, after reading this article, I hope you understand that most others are not responding to our calls for action. It is incumbent on us to act!  You and I need to do it.  We all need to do it. And it takes only 60-90 seconds of your time.

I know you are concerned about the degradation of our society on many fronts, but we must do more than feel concerned. We must respond in prayer and action. God requires it!

IFI does all the homework on these issues for you. We tee up these action alerts for you. It will take only 90 seconds of your time to say a pithy prayer and take action!

If you are tired of the deafening silence coming from our churches, you are the type of activist we are looking for to fight for children, the family, religious liberty, and decency alongside us in the public square.

Judges 7 tells us the story of Gideon’s Army. God assembled 300 soldiers to take on 135,000. I am hoping that we are able to enlist significantly more who are willing to stop the rapid erosion of truth.

If you and other subscribers will commit to take action on our email alerts, we trust that we can win more battles for the hearts, minds, souls and lives of real people!

Surely you have the time to spend a few minutes a couple of times a week to make your Christian voice heard. There’s so much at stake!

As a member of IFI’s Gideon’s Army, we are asking you to commit to responding to every action item we send out as soon as you get it.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to sign up for IFI’s Gideon’s Army! If all of our subscribers prayed and took action on each and every call to action we sent out, we firmly believe our state would change!

I realize the tone of this message is strong, but it needs to be.  We need your help. We need your involvement.

And we need the encouragement your participation in this effort brings to us! Our work here in Illinois can at times be discouraging. When IFI subscribers respond to our action alerts, we are encouraged and energized.  It is good to know that we are not alone in this battle.

And if you know any like-minded, God-fearing, truth-proclaiming, disciple-making believers, please recruit them to this cause by encouraging them to sign up for our email alerts. Send them HERE.

Thank you for your partnership and for prayerfully considering joining Gideon’s Army!

Written by Dennis Prager

There are many recent developments in the godless West. To name a few:

–The Supreme Court of Italy last week ruled that public masturbation is legal (except in front of minors).

–The New York City Council voted in May that public urination is not a criminal act.

–The San Francisco City Council decided, by one vote, to continue the city’s ban on public nudity — not, of course, on the grounds of “decency” but on the grounds of public health. Since that can easily be resolved by use of a towel on public benches and chairs, it is only a matter of time, probably a couple of years, before people will be permitted to walk around naked in San Francisco.

–A few weeks ago, teachers in Charlotte, North Carolina, were instructed not to refer to their elementary school students as “boys and girls” but as “students” and “scholars.” The reasoning is presumably for inclusivity — there may be a student who has no gender identity — and that adults should not impose a gender identity on young people.

–In a New York Times op-ed column, a professor of philosophy noted his shock at learning that most young Americans do not believe that moral truths exist. They are incapable of asserting that anything, including killing for fun, is wrong beyond personal opinion.

These are all inevitable consequences of the death of belief in God and Judeo-Christian values, and of the Bible as society’s primary moral reference work.

The West has been in moral decline since World War I, the calamity that led to World War II and the death of national identity and Christianity in most of Europe.

There has always been one exception: the United States. But now that is ending. The seeds of America’s decline have been sown since the beginning of the 20th century, and they came to fruition with the post-World War II generation, the baby boomers.

Radical and aggressive secularism and atheism have replaced religion in virtually every school and throughout American public life.

We have gone from President Abraham Lincoln reading the Bible every day to Alaska Airlines feeling forced to stop passing out prayer cards with meals. In a hundred years, we’ve gone from near-total biblical literacy to near-total biblical illiteracy. One wonders whether half of America’s college seniors could correctly identify Cain and Abel, or whether more than 1 in 10 Americans could cite the Ten Commandments. We have gone from President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaiming the need to save “Christian civilization” in World War II speeches to a virtual ban on American presidents mentioning the word “Christianity.” And, as is widely noted, Americans are no longer supposed to wish strangers “merry Christmas,” and they must refer to a Christmas party as a “holiday party.”

Similarly, the European Union constitution never mentions Christianity, despite the fact that it was Christianity that formed Europe.

The prices that we Americans and Europeans are paying for creating the first godless societies in recorded history amount to civilizational suicide. Boys and girls are not to be referred to as boys and girls; Western elites dismiss national identity as protofascism; the belief that moral truth exists has been destroyed and replaced by feelings and opinions; fewer people are marrying; and more people live alone than at any time in American history.

Western European countries have become empty, soulless places. They are pretty and appear materially secure (for now), but they stand for almost nothing (except “multiculturalism” and “tolerance”). They have replaced a Jewish population that overwhelmingly wanted to assimilate with a Muslim population that does not want to. And nearly all European countries are headed to Greece-like insolvency as fewer and fewer workers pay enough in taxes to support those who collect welfare, and as tensions with their Muslim inhabitants increase.

But the good news is that now, beginning with Italy and New York, citizens can watch each other masturbate or urinate in public.

There is no way to prove that God exists. But what is provable is what happens when societies stop believing in God: They commit suicide.

This article was originally posted at TownHall.com

Written by Becky Akers

Those stodgy Founding Fathers! Not only did they study hard, work harder, and marry one woman for life, they also insisted on – get this – morality. As in obeying the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, and the basic moral teachings of the Bible in general. So strongly did they venerate morality that they frequently observed its unbreakable link with liberty. They believed that moral people alone remain politically free.

It’s often said, “There is only one race – the human race.” While the phrase has become almost cliché in repetition, it happens to be 100 percent accurate, both scientifically and theologically speaking.

From Ferguson to Baltimore, Tulsa to Charlotte – and on college campuses from coast-to-coast – a great divide is sweeping America. It is fueled largely, if not entirely, by half-truths and outright lies. Truth is irrelevant. Only the narrative matters. When “Hands Up Don’t Shoot™” can do so very much to further “the cause,” it matters not that it represents a holocaust-denial-level of detachment from reality.

Which tells you everything you need to know about the cause.

This is by design. These embers of racial division are purposely fanned to a red-hot flame by certain political leaders, “social justice” warriors and “community organizers” (cut principally from the same ideological cloth) in order to permanently ingrain a turbulent level of cultural division based solely upon the varying shades of people’s skin. This, in turn, is intended to provoke widespread governmental dependency and, thus, one-party political control in perpetuity.

Yet, even at its core the idea of racial division, of race itself, is a myth. To sub-divide humanity based upon nothing more than varying levels of skin pigmentation is to rely upon the weakest of genetic markers.

And “race” really does signify nothing more than skin color.

Science dispels the myth of ‘race’

In a Feb. 5 Scientific American article titled, “Race is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue,” journalist Megan Gannon writes, “Today, the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning. And yet, you might still open a study on genetics in a major scientific journal and find categories like ‘white’ and ‘black’ being used as biological variables.”

“In an article published today (Feb. 4) in the journal Science,” continues Gannon, “four scholars say racial categories are weak proxies for genetic diversity and need to be phased out.”

“It’s a concept we think is too crude to provide useful information, it’s a concept that has social meaning that interferes in the scientific understanding of human genetic diversity, and it’s a concept that we are not the first to call upon moving away from,” notes Michael Yudell, professor of public health at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Under the latest genetic research, race is “understood to be a poorly defined marker of that diversity and an imprecise proxy for the relationship between ancestry and genetics,” he adds.

While not directly involved with the research, Dr. Svante Pääbo, a biologist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, agrees wholeheartedly with its findings. “What the study of complete genomes from different parts of the world has shown is that even between Africa and Europe, for example, there is not a single absolute genetic difference, meaning no single variant where all Africans have one variant and all Europeans another one, even when recent migration is disregarded.”

Still, as the researchers likewise note, “Assumptions about genetic differences between people of different races have had obvious social and historical repercussions.” Indeed, there are those on both extremes of the political spectrum with a vested interest in making sure these social and historical repercussions remain as inflamed and catastrophic as possible.

“Race” is a divisive means to a selfish political end.

It is not a scientific reality.

God’s final word on ‘race’

We love labels. We love to pit people against one another and lump them into neat, fixed little categories of put-upons, most often based upon outward appearances: black vs. white; Hispanic vs. Asian; tall vs. short; skinny vs. fat; old vs. young; abled vs. disabled, and so on.

Yet these divisions are artificial. They’re man-made. Every human being is created by a holy God, in His image and likeness, and imbued by Him with infinite worth and import. There is only one true and transcendent physical division, and that division was both created and intended by God to become reconciled (as one flesh) through the holy bonds of marriage – this, to propagate the human race: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Male and female. The XY and the XX. Immutable distinctions with a beautiful and bountiful difference. That’s it. All other physical divisions, especially racial divisions, remain artificial.

Our bodies, you see, are merely outward shells. As the great Scottish author and theologian George MacDonald once wrote, “Never tell a child ‘you have a soul.’ Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body.”

We are souls. We have a body – an outward shell or “earth suit” as one of my favorite professors used to say. Why on God’s earth are we so deceived to believe that we must separate ourselves and hate one another based upon superficial, almost cosmetic outward appearances?

“I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them” (Romans 16:17).

To be sure, Christ Jesus alone can dissolve these divisions. “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him” (Romans 10:12).

These are not financial riches, but riches of love, life Spirit and salvation.

As a man with an Italian wife, a black sister-in-law, a Filipino uncle and biologically related half Filipino cousins, a step-grandmother who illegally immigrated from Mexico, biologically related half Mexican aunts and uncles, and dozens of foster brothers and sisters from across the globe, I have learned firsthand throughout my life that “race” is truly meaningless – it’s less than skin deep.

Until we learn this as a nation, we will remain a nation divided.

Yes, love is the answer. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34).

There is no political fix to this problem.

It’s a spiritual problem, requiring a spiritual fix.

And His name is Jesus.

A few months ago on BreakPoint, I mentioned a Pew study that demonstrated Americans’ increasing ignorance of the vital role played by religious institutions in this country. Between 2001 and 2016, the percentage of Americans who think that religion plays a role in solving important social problems fell from 75 percent to 58 percent.

As I said at the time, “part of the problem is that the religious contribution to the common good is so woven into the fabric of American life, most people these days just take it for granted and never stop to think about how prevalent it really is.” In fact, according to another study, half of Americans think that the government could replace religious organizations with no problems and nothing lost.

And now, a new study quantifies just how wrong half of Americans are.

Published in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research in Religion, the study quantifies that “religion in the United States today contributes $1.2 trillion each year to our economy and society.” That’s “trillion” with a “tr,” or “more than the top ten tech companies combined—including Google, Apple, and Amazon.”

Put another way, if American religion were a country, it would rank 14^th or 15^th among the world’s economies, just ahead of Russia and just behind Australia. Put still another way, religion accounts for a little under seven percent of our economic output.

Now you still think that religion can just be replaced?

The study conducted by Brian and Melissa Grim of Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs reminds those willing to listen that the nation’s 344,000 religious congregations aren’t just houses of worship, “they are also the nucleus of many communities.” They are the “centers for job training, charity, child care, and social events.”

They employ “hundreds of thousands of people, creating jobs, and spend billions of dollars on goods and services, which support local businesses.” And finally, they fund 1.5 million social programs and gather 7.5 million volunteers.

As Brian Grim put it, the benefits of religion aren’t intangible, nor are they limited to the members of these congregations. People of faith serve the vulnerable because of their faith.

A little-known example of this outreach are the 78,000 programs that help “people struggling with mental illness.” That’s three times as many programs as there are Starbucks in the entire world! Yet, while people joke about how ubiquitous Starbucks are, no one takes note of how all-pervasive these programs are.

Without these programs, the communities that rely upon them would be far worse off than they are. And yet an increasing number of Americans think religion can just be replaced.

In light of these findings, think of the recent attempts to force churches to go along with the sexual revolution in places like Iowa and Massachusetts. Both efforts assume a private/public distinction that, as the report documents, just doesn’t exist.

For many congregations, what it means to be the Church isn’t limited to the four walls of their sanctuaries, and their understanding of what it means to love their neighbor isn’t limited to the folks in the pews. That’s why churches form the nucleus of so many communities.

In effect, proposals like the ones in Iowa and Massachusetts punish people of faith for loving their neighbors as themselves. Worse than that, they’re willing to sacrifice the vulnerable among us in the furtherance of the ideological projects of the sexual revolution, a revolution that has already left millions of victims in its wake.

As Brian and Melissa Grim make unmistakably clear, there is no area of life that Americans care about, or at least should care about, in which people of faith, motivated by their faith, are absent. And their presence is making an incredible difference.

Even if people refuse to notice.

Religion, the Great Economic Engine: More Proof Faith is Good for America

When you hear people say we don’t need religion in public life, set the record straight. And be sure to check out the U. S. News and World Report’s article below on the economic value of religion in America.

Could Religion’s Decline Spell Damnation for the U.S. Economy?
Andrew Soergel | US News & World Report | September 14, 2016

No Christianity, No Hospitals: Don’t Take Christian Contributions for Granted
John Stonestreet | BreakPoint.org | July 28, 2016

This article was originally posted at BreakPoint.org.

Forty-three years ago the Warren Burger Supreme Court struck a mighty blow for the powers of darkness: In a 7-2 decision the Justices ruled in Roe v. Wade that the right to privacy was broad enough to “encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

With that one awful decision, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) declared Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey) the victor. McCorvey, a pawn of feminist activists, would later see the horror of Roe v. Wade, and with her decision to follow Jesus, picked up the gauntlet to fight for the unborn.

Over 57 million innocents have been sacrificed on the altar of convenience and the “right to privacy” since Roe was wrongly decided.

But today there’s a righteous spirit, gripping women young and old across America, compelling more and more victims of the abortion deception to come out of the shadows, tell the truth, and reinvigorate a love for the sanctity of life in our nation.

Ricki Giersch is one such woman. In a desperate place — 16 and pregnant — Ricki turned to a Champaign, Illinois Planned Parenthood to solve her dilemma. Then later as a junior in college, with a repeat crisis pregnancy, she turned again to Planned Parenthood.

At age 32 Giersch made a decision to follow Jesus, whose truth began to illuminate the evil of abortion, and whose grace and love began to heal her broken spirit and heart, the consequences post-abortive women often bear.

Now, years later, Ricki Giersch and Catherine Walker co-lead 40 Days for Life in Aurora, Illinois along with team members Katherine Woltering, Sabina Dahl, and Jenine Mehr. They are resolutely committed to this effort to overcome the darkness ushered in by the nefarious Roe v. Wade decision. These women understand this is a spiritual battle against principalities and powers and that the solution, the weapons necessary to defeat this evil, must be spiritual as well.

40 Days for Life, “The beginning of the end of abortion,” is:

A community-based campaign that takes a determined, peaceful approach to showing local communities the consequences of abortion in their own neighborhoods, for their own friends and families. It puts into action a desire to cooperate with God in the carrying out of His plan for the end of abortion. It draws attention to the evil of abortion through the use of a three-point program:

• Prayer and fasting
• Constant vigil
• Community outreach

The 40-day campaign tracks Biblical history, where God used 40-day periods to transform individuals, communities … and the entire world. From Noah in the flood to Moses on the mountain to the disciples after Christ’s resurrection, it is clear that God sees the transformative value of His people accepting and meeting a 40-day challenge.

The mission of the campaign is to bring together the body of Christ in a spirit of unity during a focused 40-day campaign of prayer, fasting, and peaceful activism, with the purpose of repentance, to seek God’s favor to turn hearts and minds from a culture of death to a culture of life, thus bringing an end to abortion.

The Aurora 40 Days for Life Kickoff Event is September 24, 2016, from 9:00AM – 10:30AM at the NE corner of New York Street and Oakhurst Street:

Ricki Giersch and Catherine Walker hope for a huge turnout for the kickoff event, and are praying that local believers and local churches will join in the effort: everyone attending the Kickoff Event can sign up to be part of 40 Days for Life.

Take ACTION:  Folks can sign up to be part of the prayer force on site at the Aurora Planned Parenthood daily while the facility is open from 7AM to 7PM daily. (click the picture below to sign up)

The “enemy of our souls” thought he had won the battle 43 years ago, but God’s people, moved to pray, can defeat this great evil and once again restore a culture of life in our nation.

40 Days for Life will fight quietly, with prayers, mindful of the words written by Moses:

This day I call the heavens & the earth as witnesses against you
that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.
Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. 
~Deuteronomy 30:19~

Historian David Barton calls voting a responsibility that should force Christians to do their homework on the candidates before casting their ballots. He says one of the best election study guides is the Bible.

Please prayerfully consider how you can support
the work and ministry of IFI through a donation.

Written by Pastor David W. Jones

The most common nickname for Chicago is The Windy City.  I used to think it referred to the weather.  But Chicago is not even in the top one hundred cities for wind velocity.  The nickname actually derives from gasbag politicians.  Chicago has a long history of hosting political conventions—infamous for interminable speeches.

Politicians are not the only ones tempted to gasbag.  Those of us who pray can likewise be tempted, especially those who pray in public.  Someone calls on us to pray, and we panic.  In our nervousness, we start spewing out anything that sounds remotely spiritual.  We fall into the trap of thinking God will more readily hear a longer or more eloquent prayer.

Christians can have unrealistic expectations about prayer.  We hear that Martin Luther prayed three hours every morning.  Rather than being inspired, we get depressed.  But prayer need not be long in order to be effective.  Pithy, Spirit-led prayers can accomplish much.

Look at what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount:

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.  Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him (Matthew 6:7-8 ESV).

Ancient pagans thought of the gods as capricious and disinterested in human affairs.  So pagans would recite magical incantations, believing that if they could only utter the right words in the right order, then their god would be compelled to act.  It was a transactional approach to prayer.  The human being gave honor, money and sacrifice, while the god gave peace, prosperity and protection.  Quid pro quo.

The God of the Bible is not like that (v.8).  He is omniscient (1 John 3:20), possessing exhaustive knowledge of both past and future (Isaiah 46:9-10).  He knows everything about us (Hebrews 4:13), even the number of hairs on our head (Matthew 10:30)!  And he cares.

The question naturally arises: “If God already knows everything, why pray?”  Jesus was not troubled by this, for the next phrase is a command to pray (v.9).  Prayer is not manipulation—getting God to do what we want.  Prayer shows dependence on God.  Prayer acknowledges that we are finite beings, in need of someone bigger than us to provide for us and protect us.  Prayer also affords us the opportunity to be involved in God’s work in the world.

Jesus modeled concise prayer.  Look at v.9:

Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.  Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (Matthew 6:9-13 ESV).

What is noteworthy about this prayer is its brevity: an address; three God-centered petitions; and three man-centered petitions.  Just fifty-seven words in Greek.  Nearly half of them (26) are monosyllabic, with another 16 having just two syllables.  It takes fifteen seconds to pray aloud.  Fifteen seconds!  Who does not have fifteen seconds to pray?  So Jesus instructs us to get “leaner and meaner” when it comes to prayer.

I got a lesson in this several years ago.  Our family needed another car, but we could not afford one at the time.  So I uttered a simple prayer, “Lord, please give us a car.”  A mere heart sound.  A few hours later, a friend drops by our home and declares, “I’m getting a new car.  By any chance, could you use the old one?”  It was seven years old with less than 100,000 miles.  The best part?  It was free.  My friend had no idea about my prayer or even about our need.  God prompted him to think of us.  God answered a six-word prayer.

Please do not mishear me.  There is nothing wrong with long prayers per se.  Jesus himself prayed through the night on at least one occasion (Luke 6:12).  But note that he did so privately.  My hope is not that you would pray less, but rather more.  Having too lofty of a goal can discourage us from doing anything.  So let’s keep our prayers short and to-the point, and pray more frequently, especially in this tumultuous election season.  When we see something in society that grieves us or makes our blood boil or causes fear, take those concerns directly to the heavenly Father.  He is faithful to hear us and to respond.

But resist the temptation to be loquacious.  As someone has said, “Never use a gallon of words to express a spoonful of thought.”

David W. Jones is Senior Pastor of the Village Church of Barrington.  Before that, he trained pastors in Kenya, served as the Associate Editor of the English Standard Version, and was a member the pastoral staff at Harvest Bible Chapel.  David has a passion for mentoring younger pastors, especially church planters.

You may not like some of the candidates on the ballot, but it’s very important for Christians to do their civic duty and vote. Registering and voting has never been easier. The Illinois Family Institute can help speed you through the process and will soon be providing insights on where the candidates stand on key issues.

IFI Faith, Family & Freedom Banquet

We are excited to have as our keynote speaker this year, former Congresswoman and Tea Party Caucus Leader, Michele Bachmann!  She distinguished herself by not only forming and chairing the Tea Party Caucus in 2010 in the U.S. House but also through her courageous and outspoken pro-life leadership as attested to by her rating of zero from NARAL.

Please register today before the early bird special expires.

Last week there was another proclamation of the death of Christianity in America with a new Pew Research Center study on religious practices in America.   The talking points from the study noted the rise of atheism as many commentators said that Americans are “turning their backs on religion.”

Certainly there were some disheartening findings in the study, but it was also a glass half full or half empty perspective. For example of the 51 percent who say that they regularly attend church, 23 percent say that they have always been regular attendees.  However, 27 percent say that they are attending now more than in the past.

The study focused largely on religious decline, the positive here is that Americans who are regularly attending church now appear to be deepening their faith. More are saying that they are more likely to attend church now than they were in the past.

Also overlooked by many was the finding that of the 49 percent who say that they rarely attend church, most say that this is nothing new, only 22 percent say that they attend less now than in the past.

Written by Anthony Esolen

In his extraordinary book Leftism, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, by way of showing that indeed all cultures are not equal and that colonialism was far from the unmitigated evil that students are now taught that it was, describes a peculiar custom practiced by the women of a tribe in southeast Asia.

When a woman gives birth to her first child, she goes far into the woods alone, where she dashes its brains out against a rock. Then she takes the remains and feeds them to a pregnant sow. When the sow gives birth in turn, she takes one of the piglets and nurses it at her breast to prove how good a mother she is. If this tribe were to fall a little lower into degradation, they might not wait for birth to kill their children.

I assume that my readers will feel disgust at what I have just related. Many will wish they had never heard of such a thing. This sense of disgust warrants some examination. It seems that the most primitive of our five senses, the one that is least bound up with the intellect, is smell. Our eyes see color, but the mind sees things and their kinds: a dog, a house, a flower.

Our ears hear vibrations, but the mind interprets and hears words, which themselves are signs of things, many of which are abstract at that. But the smell is immersed in chemicals, in stuff—in stuff most urgent for basic animal life: flesh, blood, excrement, hormones for rutting, and other secretions. What smells good to a vulture, flesh rotting in the sun, smells repugnant to us, because eating such flesh would be bad for us. The smell is then protective; it keeps us from tasting even a little of something that would sicken or kill.

In every language that I know of, words that have to do with bad smells are applied to certain kinds of wicked deeds, those that have something deeply and physically unnatural about them. They do not usually apply to sins of the mind, like lying, or sins of omission, or sins of spiritual disorientation, such as envy or impiety.

They apply to sins of a peculiarly nauseating and fleshly sort. Such sins are foul: our English word is cognate with Latin puteri, to stink, from which the Italians derive their word puttana, whore, literally a stinking woman. So the King in Hamlet, who has poisoned his sleeping brother to marry his brother’s wife: “O my offense is rank, it smells to heaven!” So the Duke in Measure for Measure, reproaching Pompey the whoremaster:

Fie, sirrah; a bawd, a wicked bawd!
The evil that thou causest to be done,
That is thy means to live. Do thou but think
What ’tis to cram a maw or clothe a back
From such a filthy vice: say to thyself, —
From their abominable and beastly touches
I drink, I eat, array myself, and live.
Canst thou believe thy living is a life,
So stinkingly depending?
Go mend, go mend.

The Duke does not say, nor does Shakespeare believe, that those abominable and beastly gropings of man and whore are the most wicked sins we commit. But among our sins they are the most immediately disgusting; and so he focuses on what it is to stuff your gullet with food bought by them—it is like eating food besmeared with waste.

Disgust, literally the repugnance we experience when we taste something foul, is to fleshly sins what shame is to dishonor. We should not underestimate the protective power of either. We are not disembodied spirits, or calculating machines. We are souls embodied: we blush, or ought to. What keeps the soldier at his station, when he might run to save his skin while exposing his comrades to enemy fire?

His training, no doubt, but training that has instilled in him a strong sense of honor, and of shame should he expose himself to dishonor. What keeps the unchurched man from signing a false income tax return? Not much, these days; fear, perhaps; but if he knows that he can get away with the false return but refuses to cheat anyway, you can depend upon it, he has a strong sense of honor. It would be low, base, beneath him, unworthy of him, to lie. His brand of honesty may not be the best, but honorable pagans are not the worst people in the world, either.

I assume that we want to raise children who would be ashamed to be caught in a petty and self-serving lie—cheating on a test, buying a term paper, and so on. We want them not only to know that such things are wrong. We want their sense of honor and truth to rise up against those things, in the way that righteous anger rises up against a villain beating a woman or a child. We do not depend only on theological and philosophical conclusions, or on instruction from a catechism. We want the body also to be involved: the blood, the adrenal system, the muscles, the stomach. We want men with chests. The Lord, says the psalmist, teaches our fingers to fight.

What is true of shame is more obviously true of disgust. Sometimes, surely, we must overcome a physical repugnance in order to perform a work of charity, as Saint Francis kissed the leper, and Mother Teresa cleaned the purulent sores of pariahs in the ditches of Calcutta. But moral repugnance should never be overcome. It should be fostered. It is protective of the individual and of society.

I shudder to give examples, but these days we cannot avoid it, we have become so numb to the indecent and obscene. A friend of mine was a student at the local state university. One night she was walking down the hall of the dormitory, minding her own business, when she stumbled upon a young man, stark naked, passed out on the floor in a drunken stupor. She called security.

That was unusual but not all that surprising. Her hall director one night walked past an open door of a room with a bisexual orgy going on, three or four men and a woman, giving a free porn show to all passersby. He shut the door, telling them that what they did was their own business, but they could at least have the courtesy to keep it to themselves.

In a world not gone psychotic about sex, the people involved would be promptly and severely disciplined. Where in the United States in 1950, even in the most liberal and agnostic universities, would the orgiasts not have been suspended or expelled? But now, nothing; the sense of disgust is gone.

Or rather it has not gone, because it cannot really ever be obliterated from our systems. Gangrene smells bad to us. We can, however, make a fetish of the disgusting: we can pervert ourselves so that we delight in what is foul precisely because it is foul. That was the “genius” of the Marquis de Sade, the unacknowledged master of ceremonies of the French Revolution.

What had been unspeakable became a matter of pride: raping women and little girls while slitting their throats, inserting explosive cartridges into their orifices, slaughtering people and then stripping them and placing their corpses in obscene forms of copulation, causing the elder liberal Malesherbes to watch as his children and grandchildren were decapitated one by one…. There is no end to perversion, once the barrier of disgust has been publicly breached. It is not merely that you do not hide it anymore. You take pride in it. You put it on parade. You must: your own repressed disgust compels you.

Our sins are, for now, less likely to shed blood, other than that of the unborn children served up to Moloch for what the Supreme Court is pleased to call our autonomy and economic planning. For now. But consider the depths we have already achieved. One Dan Savage, about whom the least one can say is that he is a psychological wreck, whose advice column is filled with creepy-boy obscenities and creepy-boy delight in sickness, whose least disgusting sin is to promote adultery to stave off sexual boredom—he is a thousand times more likely to address your middle-school students and to be praised by their teachers, than is a saintly man or woman of God.

It is incumbent upon theologians and philosophers and statesmen to spell out the reasons why such behavior is wrong. But it is not incumbent upon the common person to do so. You do not say to someone who has brought himself to dine upon feces, so that it is to him an evil second nature, “You know, you should really check a dietician about that.” Nor do you say anything similar to your children. You rely upon their natural sense of disgust: you corroborate it and you direct it. Everything genuinely natural is your ally.

No apologies about this. Persons must be loved; that includes all manner of sinners, and it also includes the children we are raising, whom we wish to arm fully against the madness of our time. Sins must be rejected—and here all the armory of our psychological and physiological makeup should be polished and ready, for self-defense. Intellect without heart is a man with a sword, but no shield and no breastplate. Disgust is a good thick shield. It is not sufficient for the battle. It is necessary.


Article originally published at CrisisMagazine.com.

Written by Walter E. Williams

One of the unavoidable consequences of youth is the tendency to think behavior we see today has always been. I’d like to dispute that vision, at least as it pertains to black people.

I graduated from Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin High School in 1954. Franklin’s predominantly black students were from the poorest North Philadelphia neighborhoods.

During those days, there were no policemen patrolling the hallways. Today, close to 400 police patrol Philadelphia schools. There were occasional after-school fights—rumbles, as we called them—but within the school, there was order. In contrast with today, students didn’t use foul language to teachers, much less assault them.

Places such as the Richard Allen housing project, where I lived, became some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional places in Philadelphia. Mayhem—in the form of murders, shootings, and assaults—became routine.

By the 1980s, residents found that they had to have window bars and multiple locks. The 1940s and ’50s Richard Allen project, as well as other projects, bore no relation to what they became. Many people never locked their doors; windows weren’t barred. We did not go to bed with the sound of gunshots. Most of the residents were two-parent families with one or both parents working.

How might one explain the greater civility of Philadelphia and other big-city, predominantly black neighborhoods and schools during earlier periods compared with today? Would anyone argue that during the ’40s and ’50s, there was less racial discrimination and poverty? Was academic performance higher because there were greater opportunities? Was civility in school greater in earlier periods because black students had more black role models in the form of black principals, teachers, and guidance counselors? That’s nonsense, at least in northern schools. In my case, I had no more than three black teachers throughout primary and secondary school.

Starting in the 1960s, the values that made for civility came under attack. Corporal punishment was banned. This was the time when the education establishment and liberals launched their agenda that undermined lessons children learned from their parents and the church.

Sex education classes undermined family/church strictures against premarital sex. Lessons of abstinence were ridiculed, considered passé, and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth control pills, and abortion. Further undermining of parental authority came with legal and extralegal measures to assist teenage abortions, often with neither parental knowledge nor parental consent.

Customs, traditions, moral values, and rules of etiquette are behavioral norms, transmitted mostly by example, word of mouth, and religious teachings. As such, they represent a body of wisdom distilled through the ages by experience and trial and error.

The nation’s liberals—along with the education establishment, pseudo-intellectuals, and the courts—have waged war on traditions, customs and moral values. Many people have been counseled to believe that there are no moral absolutes. Instead, what’s moral or immoral is a matter of personal convenience, personal opinion, what feels good, or what is or is not criminal.

We no longer condemn or shame self-destructive and rude behavior, such as out-of-wedlock pregnancies, dependency, cheating, and lying. We have replaced what worked with what sounds good.

The abandonment of traditional values has negatively affected the nation as a whole, but blacks have borne the greater burden. This is seen by the decline in the percentage of black two-parent families. Today, a little over 30 percent of black children live in an intact family, where as early as the late 1800s, over 70 percent did. Black illegitimacy in 1938 was 11 percent, and that for whites was 3 percent. Today, it’s respectively 73 percent and 30 percent.

It is the height of dishonesty, as far as blacks are concerned, to blame our problems on slavery, how white people behave, and racial discrimination. If those lies are not exposed, we will continue to look for external solutions when true solutions are internal. Those of us who are old enough to know better need to expose these lies.

This article was originally posted at the DailySginal.com

Self-control is not a virtue that can be tucked away in one small portion of our lives. We have seen that it applies everywhere, and that when a people are self-governed, they are in a position to enjoy free government. It should be self-evident to us that a huge collection of slaves to sin are not going to be free citizens. Slavery breeds slavery, and freedom breeds freedom.

And a key area for us to examine whether we are self-controlled is the tongue. The Lord’s brother James draws a straight line between governance of the tongue and governance of everything else. He compares self-control here to a bit and bridle that enables a rider to direct a horse where it needs to go. “If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain” (James. 1:26). “For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body” (James. 3:2).

But there are two reasons why we want to be able to direct a horse we are riding. The first is to prevent it from going where we don’t want to go. The first is to keep us on the trail, to keep us from arriving at a destination we do not want. The second is to direct us positively, to actually arrive where we need to be.

When Christians think of sins of the tongue, and of a lack of self-control there, they almost invariably think of the things they wish they hadn’t said, the words they wish they hadn’t said. When horse and rider are off in the bracken, everyone knows about the poor horsesmanship. But what about an inability to get a horse to take more than several paces in any direction?

Men will not be able to speak the truth to governors, congressmen, and presidents when they are unable to tell their wives that they love them, their children that they are proud of them, or their parents how grateful they are. Control of the tongue includes much more than an ability to say whoa—it requires also a mastery of giddyup.

This article was originally posted at the Blog & Mablog site.

Written by John Kristof

Our country has never been so parched for prayer, yet we never have found praying harder.

Prayer is too hard for us, so our country withers.

Our culture’s health intertwines with our prayers, and both contribute to the other’s success.  We conservative Christians are quick to point our fingers at our public school system for discouraging prayer, but how many of us pray for our schools?  We complain about the decline of church leadership in the public square, but who is praying for their leaders’ humility and wisdom?

For the sake of clarity, I do not wish to suggest prayers—or the lack thereof—causes whatever happens in the public square.  God rules the nations (Psalm 22:28, 47:8, Job 12:23), which includes the United States.  No decisions made by voters, church leaders, or elected officials surprise God, nor do they deter him from accomplishing his ultimate mission, the reconciliation between God and man (Romans 5:10, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, Ephesians 2:16, Colossians 1:20). God delegates responsibilities to his Church, however, and those with integrity and obedience answer his call.

How does God expect the Church to affect the world?  Throughout Scripture, we see God expects us to, among other things, pray.  For Jesus and his disciples, the need for prayer was so self-evident that Jesus focused on instructing them on how believers should pray.  At Gethsemane, though he prophesied the disciples would abandon him (Matthew 26:31), he begged them to “watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation” (Matthew 26:41). One of the Apostle Paul’s shortest charges is to “pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), suggesting that we should never hesitate to speak to God, nor should we ever cease heeding words he has for us.

Why is prayer so important to a sovereign God?  This is a deeply theological question, but what’s important for believers to grasp is found in James 5:16—“The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”  Perhaps the greatest example of the power of prayer took place during the birth of the Church.

Just before his ascension, Jesus instructed his disciples to remain in Jerusalem for a time.  We read that the disciples, Jesus’ biological family, and some unnamed women constantly prayed together in a house just outside the city.  Although we don’t know everything they were praying about, it’s fair to assume they were fervently praying for God’s Spirit.  At the Last Supper, when Jesus is explaining to his disciples that he must leave them, he promises to send his followers the Spirit, who will be with them forever (John 14:16, 16:7).  He reiterates this promise just before his ascension, so the coming of the Spirit of God is fresh in the disciples’ minds.  “Jesus is gone, Lord,” I can imagine them praying. “We need your Spirit!”

According to Acts 2, the believers were still gathering together the morning of Pentecost.  At that time, they were “filled with the Holy Spirit,” just as Jesus promised.  As pilgrims to Jerusalem (which were many at this time in the Jewish calendar) began to gather around the commotion, every person was able to hear Peter preach the Word of God, no matter their native tongue.  The Gospel so moved the crowd that three thousand of them believed and were baptized.

How’s that for a revival service?

Indeed, this is the kind of growth Christians today wish to see in America.  In a sense, we work hard for a revival.  We hold conferences and special revival services, we send our children to church camp, we vote for officials who seem to hold Judeo-Christian values. In no way do I intend to denigrate these choices; in fact, I think they are almost always good things.  But I tell the story of the Church’s birth to convey a point vital to the Church’s mission: prayer precedes revival.  

Like the rest of you, I wish to see our culture turn its face toward Truth, to see society adopt a moral code that extends farther than personal desire, to be led by people who genuinely seek to serve their subordinates.  You and I want our fellow Americans to have the same relationship with God that we strive for, but we also understand that achieving such a revival is far beyond our capabilities.  We want to see God work in our culture.  But, as musician NF reminds us, “It’s hard to answer prayers when nobody’s praying to you.”

I therefore call upon the Church to pray.

John Kristof is an intern at the Illinois Family Institute who currently studies economics, humanities, political science, and business administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.  He occasionally blogs and tweets.

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