The Rootless Generation

 

 

 

Pastor Dan Gayman

 

YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE!

 

Many believe that the moral decadence proliferating throughout every corner of American society results from our nation’s disconnection from spiritual and biblical roots and from the lack of geographical attachment and commitment to community. The homeless population of America is not limited to those vagabonds who live in cardboard boxes underneath the overpasses and in vacated buildings in the dejected sections of cities. In truth, millions of Americans who live in actual houses—with jobs and material affluence—are indeed homeless. They have no spiritual and geographical roots, but live without a commitment to a transcendent God Who speaks an absolute Word. They have no sense of belonging or commitment to a community in a fixed geographical place.

 

 

THE ORIGIN OF OUR ROOTLESSNESS

 

Welcome to the new America! This is the 21st Century. Many of the 280 million Americans can now be considered homeless by historic definition and traditions that reach back to the early foundations of our country. Sadly, growing numbers of Americans, even within our own families, can technically be classified as the modern homeless. Increasingly, Americans are finding themselves without any spiritual ties to God and the Bible or any commitment to a community in a given geographical point. To be specific, we are a rootless generation, a generation that is fast becoming mere nomads on wheels, moving from one place to another without being rooted in the tradition of a religious belief, a definitive moral code, or a commitment to a specific community.

 

The scale of this homelessness has been building for a long time. America’s disconnection from the Bible and from commitment to community in a fixed locale did not happen as an event, but as a process. The roots of our spiritual and geographical rootlessness date back to the birth of Philosophical Rationalism in the 1600s. This philosophy stressed the power of reason as opposed to sensory experience. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and Rene Descartes (1596-1650), along with others including Gottfried Leibnitz and Baruch Spinoza, advocated deductive reasoning as the basis for their philosophical systems.   Deductive reasoning is a logical process in which a conclusion drawn from a set of premises contains no more information than the premises taken collectively. The truth of the conclusion is dependent only on the method. Consider this example of deductive reasoning: all men are apes; this is a man; therefore, this is an ape. The conclusion is logically true, although the premise is absurd!

 

Cultural Rationialism championed human reason over faith and belief in God in creating a theory of man and his destiny. Both Voltaire (1694-1778) and Thomas Paine (1737-1809) were leading advocates of reason above faith. The idea that human reason trumped faith in God and the authority of Scripture was an assault upon the foundations of two thousand years of historic Christian, Western Culture. We will return to two of these well know philosophers, Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, a bit later in this treatise.

 

 

CONFIRMATION AT LAST

 

Since 1960, the pulpit and the pen at Watchman Outreach Ministries has been advocating that God-fearing, Bible-believing Christians give earnest consideration to building a church community based on biblical morals and spiritual truths in a fixed geographical point in Western Missouri. From the genesis of this idea in 1960, the goal was to plant deep spiritual roots in a Bible-based belief system and corresponding roots in the geography of Vernon County. Although the idea has been persistently pursued in a small way here, the idea has elicited almost zero attention or confirmation from Christian believers around the nation.

 

Perhaps you can imagine my surprise, then, when The Intercollegiate Review, A Journal of Scholarship & Opinion published by Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., Spring 2006 edition, 3901 Centerville Rd., P. O. Box 4431, Wilmington, DE 19807-0431, included among other articles the essay titled “The Homeless Modern,” pages 13-22, written by Mark T. Michell, Professor of Philosophy and Political Theory at Patrick Henry College. My first and subsequent readings of this article allowed me to see our own church/community framed in a scholarly fashion, something that gave me new hope for our community which was established here in 1941. The importance of this thesis by Professor Michell is such that I urge all readers of the Watchmanto consider sending for the Spring issue of The Intercollegiate Reviewso you can studiously reflect and hopefully act upon the truth advanced in Professor Michell’s article.

 

 

TOCQUEVILLE: A VOICE FROM THE PAST

        

Professor Michell initiates his thesis by evaluating portions of Democracy in Americaby Alexis de Tocqueville, 1848, translated by George Lawrence, ed. J.P. Mayer (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1988) xiii. Tocqueville had described what he believed would be “the approaching irresistible and universal spread of democracy throughout the world.” Michell goes on to underscore the fact that in spite of what appears to be a growing surge in democratic governments around the world, the event of 9/11 has jolted the Western world into the reality that not all the world, and certainly not all of the Islamic nations, is ready for democracy. The radical elements within Islam, and there are plenty, see the freedom that democracy brings as being responsible for the moral decadence of America and all of Western society.

 

Professor Michell begs the question of whether democratic societies can in fact perpetuate the freedoms that are typically associated with the rise of democracy in a given country. Something appears to be strangely absent among the very people who imbibe in the freedom that democracy brings. Back in 1848, Tocqueville noted the “strange melancholy often haunting the Americans” (Democracy in America, p. 538). Professor Michell draws a parallel in the weaknesses already appearing as early as 1848 in American society and goes on to declare that there is “an underlying dissatisfaction that today manifests itself in a variety of ways: restless mobility, consumerism, frenzied sexuality, substance abuse, therapy, and boredom” (The Intercollegiate Review, Spring 2006, Professor Mark Michell, p. 13).

 

 

LET THE PROFESSOR SPEAK

 

To cut to the chase, Professor Michell ventures to point out that American democracy has not created a happy and contented society. To the contrary, America is besieged with a population that even with all the freedom to pursue happiness and contentment is anything but happy. The very institutions that have inspired freedom for the individual have in themselves become increasingly responsible for diminishing happiness and contentment among the American population. Professor Michell then proposes the idea that there might need to be “preconditions necessary for the success of democracy” (The Intercollegiate Review, Mitchell, p.15). Without these pre-conditions in place, America should not be seeking to export democracy abroad. At present, the Islamic world perceives American democracy and the ultimate freedom of the individual as the source for the moral rot and spiritual decadence of the American populace.


In describing the pre-conditions that are necessary for the long term success of democracy and the individual freedom associated with this type of government, Professor Mitchell quotes from Simone Weil, a French writer, and her book The Need for Roots to underscore at least some of the pre-conditions that insure the long term success of a democracy. Weil argues that “to be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul . . . A human being has roots by virtue of his real, active, and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future” (The Need For Roots,Simone Weil, New York: Routledge, 1995, p. 41).


Weil goes on to say that rootlessness in the modern age is not only geographical, but also spiritual. Although Weil was describing mid-twentieth-century France, she might as well be writing about 21st Century Americans. Americans are a rootless generation. Most Americans have neither spiritual nor geographical roots. The typical American is involved in hyper-mobility, uprooted from traditions and authority of the past, disconnected from a transcendent God and the authority of Scripture, and isolated from the environment that once characterized American society and made this country so strong. Americans were once rooted in the moral truth of God and Scripture, anchored in Church and Community, and committed to a specific geographical point, usually the community in which they grew up. Now, however, Americans are mostly separated from closely-knit communities, constantly on the move either because of better jobs or the desire for a more attractive location.

 

 

THE BIBLE & ROOTEDNESS

 

The concept of spiritual and moral rootedness, a community of people sharing their lives in service to one another (please do not confuse community with communal) in a fixed geographical point, has its origins in Scripture. Examples in the Bible are plentiful and need not be multiplied for those who are familiar it. Jacob’s family, numbering seventy souls, constituted a community of souls sharing a spiritual and moral communion with Jehovah in a fixed geographical setting in Canaan. When the time came to move to Egypt, Jacob moved his entire family. As far as anyone can ascertain, every last soul in that family moved to Egypt with Jacob. This family remained as a community of souls in Goshen, sharing a spiritual and moral communion with the Living God in a fixed geographical point for the next two hundred and fifteen years before the great Exodus from Egypt. The spiritual and physical rootedness of Jacob and his family was the precondition for building the great nation of Israel. Without the preconditions of moral absolutes, spiritual communion with God, and a fixed geographical point where a community emits a sense of belonging, no nation can long endure. A nation cannot survive without communities. What are communities? They are geographical locales that share morals, culture, and traditions.


A cursory reading of Scripture, Genesis to Revelation, reveals the urgent necessity of moral truth, values based upon God and His absolute Word and perpetuated by a people committed to loving and sharing their lives with others of like mind, faith, and ethnic heritage in a fixed geographical area. Examine the New Testament Churches at Rome, Corinth, Philippi, Colosse, Laodicea, Thessalonica, and elsewhere. These church communities rested on a foundation of moral and spiritual truth, the absolute sovereignty of God and His Word, a strong sense of community and spiritual love and regard for each other, where individual freedom was bridled and limited to the best interests of the entire congregation of saints. The flourishing church communities in a fixed geographical region insured the triumph of Christian liberty and freedom over the despotism of Imperial Rome.

 

The biblical word commonwealthfound in Ephesians 2:12 is from the Greek root politeia, pol-eeti’-ah, meaning citizenship, a community, freedom, commonwealth. It is related to still another Greek word, polis, pronounced pol’-is, meaning a town or city. The Bible is rooted in the concept of people sharing a common spiritual, moral, and ethnic oneness within communities where each individual lives to serve the other and plans his life around the greater good of all, rather than his own selfish desires. All of this, of course, is rooted in a fixed geographical place. Without this spiritual, moral, ethnic, and geographical rootedness, no community, no state, and certainly no nation will long endure the corrosion to come.

 

 

THE MODERN AMERICAN: A ROOTLESS VAGABOND

 

The foundations of American freedom were established upon moral and spiritual truth, a belief in the transcendent, triune God of the Bible, community, and the willingness of the individual to practice self-denial and surrender private, personal ambition for the higher commitment to and perpetuation of the spiritual, moral, and ethnic future of the community. This America is no more! Instead, Americans are a rootless generation! We are a nation of vagabonds, with no fixed geographical attachment to the earth. We feel no sense of belonging to a community, and most reprehensible of all, we are disconnecting from the spiritual, moral belief in the transcendent God Who is sovereign and Lord of all creation.

 

The typical American is now a profound existentialist. He lives solely for himself and knows nothing of self-denial or self-sacrifice for the greater good. He pursues life as if there were no tomorrow. He lives only for the moment. He has no attachment to community, belongs nowhere, and is solely concerned with himself, the center of his universe. He has cut himself off from any obligation to moral absolutes, and spiritual truth has little or no meaning for him. He is solely preoccupied with his own happiness and barely concerns himself with the well being of others, including his own loved ones. His personal freedom trumps the good of his family, his community, his church, and all other institutions that once made an American unique among the peoples of the earth.


At one point in his marvelous essay, Professor Mitchell quotes Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer and writer who clearly understood the correlation between a long enduring society of free men and the need for being rooted in community. In preparing to quote Wendell Berry, Professor Mitchell writes: “Unlike those who use the term ‘community’ rather loosely to refer to anything from a collection of houses situated in the same suburban development to the grossly abstract notion of a global community, Berry writes that ‘by community, I mean the commonwealth and common interests, commonly understood, of people living together in a place and wishing to continue to do so. To put it another way, community is a locally understood interdependence of local people, local culture, local economy, and local nature’”(The Intercollegiate Review,Spring 2006, Mitchell, p. 14, and Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991, pp. 119-120).

 

 

THE LOSS OF COMMUNITY

 

Wendell Berry proceeds in his book to write about the corrosion and breakup of the once flourishing communities that held American society in check. The disappearance of these communities that once preserved the moral, spiritual, and social fabric of American society has caused them to be replaced by a surging population that places individual rights over personal responsibilities and personal economic gain over long-standing relationships with family, friends, and community. In addition, anyone reading Wendell Berry’s book can quickly see that the willingness to sacrifice personal commitment to God, the world of the spirit, and moral values as long as it brings even short-lived happiness to the individual. Americans are selling their birthrights wholesale!

 

Authorities who define what a community is, and must be, if a democratic society is to be long tenured, agree that two definite kinds of rootedness must be insured. Authorities are agreed on both the spiritual and physical aspects of rootedness. For the Christian this translates into first, the spiritual roots anchored in the belief in a transcendent God, the moral absolutes of His Word, and the importance of a spiritual communion with God through the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, there must be a physical rootedness in a fixed geographical point where community, attachment to family, friends, and people of the community transcend personal and individual preferences in regard to economic gain and other personal desires and perceived freedom.

 

There is an urgent need for the posterity of Adam to be located, that is, to be rooted in a fixed geographical point so that continuity can build a lasting sense of belonging, of community. At the same time the people must be rooted in the spiritual and moral sense of communion with the transcendent God. The present generation of Americans has essentially lost both the physical and the spiritual sense of being rooted. In the words of Professor Michell, “Over the course of a lifetime, the average American will have thirteen different addresses . . .We are rootless because we have traded a commitment to a particular place for the promise of a better job, a better standard of living, a better climate, or perhaps the variety that relocating affords. We Americans are experts at moving” (The Intercollegiate Review, Spring2006, Mitchell, p.15).

 

In the last century, America has become a nation of self-serving individuals who place their personal freedoms and desires above the greater good of the community, including our own families and those whose lives should be precious to us. The typical American is one who can cut loose from family, community, and self-sacrifice for the common good, placing his own welfare above all other considerations and if necessary forfeiting spiritual and moral communion with God in the pursuit of temporary happiness and the exploitation of individual freedom. These words of Professor Michell are compelling: “Just as physical roots are important, so too are spiritual roots. Our spiritual rootlessness manifests itself in a variety of ways, not the least of which is skepticism about moral, religious, and aesthetic truth. For example, religion can give explicit and authoritative voice to the moral principles governing a community. Even if not all citizens are equally committed to the formal doctrines of a particular religion, the habits and practices grounded in the religion and embodied by a community create a coherent, though largely tacit moral framework. Such a frame-work provides the preconditions for members of a community to appreciate that there are some goods that transcend the individual; there are some goods that justify self-sacrifice; indeed, there are some goods that require it” (The Intercollegiate Review,Spring 2006, Mitchell, p. 15).

 

Returning to Alexis de Tocqueville, he could foresee that any democracy is likely to self-destruct without the urgent need of people living in strong communities, where associational life can bind people for the greater good of all. In the absence of people rooted in physical and spiritual communities, the State will dissolve into chaos. When its citizens are in a state of constant mobility, running down the fast track without enduring friendships established among family, friends, and people in a fixed community, the future of any country (including those which the media call democracies) is moving toward dissolution and death.

 

The roots of philosophical and cultural rationalism were planted deep in American soil for the past two hundred years. The philosophy of Bacon and Descartes (along with others) became the seeds of humanism scattered across our landscape. These seeds have now flowered in a major way across America. The seeds of humanism germinated and then flowered in the pulpits, public schools, universities, and all forms of media technology, including radio, television, cinema, and the Internet. They have resulted in the complete breakdown and dissolution of the moral, spiritual, and aesthetic qualities that make for continuity in a people, a community, and a nation.

 

 

FIVE DEADLY PARADIGM SHIFTS

 

Bacon and Decartes, as Professor Michell points out, championed the following causes, all of which have occurred in modern America: 1) the desire to overturn the received tradition and begin anew; 2) the denigration of authority; 3) radical individualism; 4) skepticism; and 5) the centrality of method. Each of these serves to undermine the possibility of community, for each in its own way underminds the commitment either to particular places or to the transcendent” (Intercollegiate Review, Spring 2006, Michell, p. 16). Consider if you will how the assault upon each of these five important areas has impacted the corrosion of the family, the church, the community, and our nation.

 

1) The Overturn of Historic Tradition: Tradition is the collective wisdom and knowledge accumulated by many generations and is expressed in the religion, morals, science, linguistics, arts, and mores of the people of a given community or nation. Tradition plays a significant role in the continuity of a community or the collective whole of a nation. As a repository of knowledge and wisdom, tradition enables every individual to benefit from the capital that has been accumulated by many generations. Every individual, even those who are not blessed with great intelligence, can benefit by being able to connect to this collective wisdom and knowledge. Individuals learn to adapt to the world through the benefits of tradition. The very language one is born into enables the person to tap into the storehouse of wisdom and knowledge that walks with the culture. The moral, spiritual, religious, aesthetics, science, technology, language, and arts all provide an enormous storehouse of tradition.

 

Bacon and Descartes, as well as many others, were particularly concerned with the complete abandonment of tradition. Both of these philosophers viewed tradition as an impediment to individual progress. For these humanists, the entire storehouse of tradition had to be abandoned and a fresh start made at understanding how to proceed. Upon reflection, it is easy to see how philosophical and cultural rationalism, the forerunner of secular humanism, has been at work to destroy the traditions that have so faithfully guided America. The assault upon historic Christianity, biblical morality, ethnic integrity, and the social mores that accelerated the building of strong families, churches, and communities has surged for the past fifty years. Americans who cling tenaciously to any historic traditions are ridiculed, maligned, and even ostracized in many quarters of America.

 

2) The Denigration of Authority: Bacon, Descartes, and their many followers stressed the importance of each individual being autonomous, self-sufficient, without any need of the historic storehouse of tradition. Without tradition and the need to interface with the collective sum of the cultural past, the individual is liberated from the need for authority, according to these philosophers. For both Bacon and Descartes, authority was one more mountain that each individual had to climb and remove as a barrier to finding a new methodology to knowledge and the true destiny of man. The goal of the humanists is to find within every person all the necessary and requisite wisdom to establish new knowledge and chart one’s destiny in a new world—set free from its morbid past.

 

Bacon, Descartes, and other humanists have forgotten that the time-honored authority figures of the father/husband in the family, the pastor in the church, and the community leaders were all necessary to the collective well being of everyone and to the preservation of the cultural, moral, and spiritual values of the family, church, and community, and nation.

 

Sadly, the erosion of religious belief, morality, tradition, and support of authority in modern America is well under way. There is wholesale disrespect for authority, with individuals now being free to disconnect from their families, church, and communities. The concept that each individual is part of a whole, and that loving and serving others provides both corporate and individual blessing has been lost. With the erosion of authority, America now suffers adversely, and the family, church, and community are withering before this assault. The blessings of authority, cherished throughout our history, have been lost to anarchy.

 

3) Radical Individualism: The Age of Rationalism declared war against tradition, authority, and all ideas of a transcendent good embodied in a supernatural God and the veracity of His immutable Word. Demolition crews of rationalism, sparked by the thinking of Bacon, Descartes, and others, have brought an end to the traditions and authority of European society. The French Revolution in 1789 unleashed upon the Western Christian Culture a full-scale war against tradition and authority. Out of this seedbed of humanism sprouted radical individualism; it flourished and spread from Europe to America. The idea of individual self-sufficiency, disconnected from generations of tradition and authority, terminated the need for any commitment to people, community, religion, morals, etc... Physical and spiritual rootedness has become optional.

 

The seeds of this excessive individualism were sown by Thomas Paine and others as they endeavored to emulate in America the radical individualism that had flowered in the French Revolution. Bacon and Descartes, along with many other humanists, earnestly believed that once man was set free from the shackles of tradition and authority, he could be free to ascertain truth solely by applying his mind. Trust in the repository of tradition and the authority structure of Western Christian Culture was traded for trust in the individual mind.

 

Bacon, Descartes, Voltaire, Paine, and others wanted the human mind liberated from the restrictive traditions and authority of the past so the pathway to knowledge would no longer be cluttered, but swept clean for each individual to ascertain absolute truth for himself. Insofar as humanists were concerned, the time had come for man to become his own god (Genesis 3:5).  

 

The radical individualism that has invaded America is not hidden from view. One atheist, Madelyn Murray (Murray v. Curtlett, 371 U.S. 809, 1963) asserted her radical individualism and managed to usurp her will upon millions by having prayer removed from the public schools of this land. This excessive and radical individualism has now worked its way like leaven through our culture. The collective good of our nation now bows continually to the barbaric and unbridled individualism of the humanist minority. The limitations upon individual liberty as a historic principle have been completely abandoned in the onward march of radical individualism, where every man does that which is right in his own mind (Judges 21:25).

 

4) Skepticism: Philosophical and Cultural Rationalism ushered in an era of skepticism in the 1800s, first in Europe and then in the United States. The erosion of tradition and authority, with the triumph of radical individualism, steadily increased in the 1900s and into the 21st Century. As man’s mind became the center of the philosophical universe and the path to truth was found only in the repository of each man’s reason rather than in the capital of tradition, authority, and the transcendent world of the spirit, an era of unbelief began to settle over our land. The belief in human self-sufficiency and dependence on new pathways to knowledge through human reason enabled modern man to elevate the importance of his own mind and resources as the ultimate source of knowledge. Any idea of depending on resources such as the Word of God became irrelevant. Men began to doubt anything associated with belief in a supernatural God Who revealed an absolute Word of truth.

 

In the middle and late 1800s, both Europe and America were beset with the harvest of change that the Age of Rationalism brought. The theory of evolution replaced God and Genesis as the source for all things created. The Higher Criticism of the Bible, first in Europe and then in America, began to assault the idea of a Word from God that was inspired and preserved in the pages of the Bible. Ideas sometimes percolate slowly, and without the aid of radio, television, the Internet, the American population was slow to shift from the traditions and authority of historic Christianity. However, with the passing of time and the advancement of technology, change did come. And, these changes were profound. The last half of the 20th Century witnessed a major shift in the paradigm of historic Christianity in the United States. From 1950 to the end of the century, America underwent a complete cultural transformation. Whatever remained of tradition, authority, and moral values rooted in historic Christianity was violently destroyed by drugs, rock music, and Marxist thinking, thanks to the long-haired, unwashed hippie generation in the 60s and 70s.

 

Belief in the supernatural God and His absolute Word was replaced with science, technology, and man’s self-confidence in his own deity. Now, as America moves into the 21st Century, nothing holds society together. Time-honored traditions, respect for authority, and belief in God are all but gone. Skepticism invariably leads to a surge in man’s love for material things. Hence, daily consumption of consumer goods and services has replaced God and the world of the Spirit. If there really is no God and no authoritative Word from Heaven to chart man’s steps, life is merely about this world—nothing more. The testimony of Professor Michell is compelling: “After all, if we are merely pleasure-seeking creatures who cease to exist with the demise of our physical bodies, then our chief concern will be the enhancement of our pleasures. When the horizon of eternity is eclipsed, individuals will not surprisingly embrace an ethic of mobility, for each person will be quite willing to relocate in pursuit of an abstract promise of worldly affluence. Thus, our homes tend to become merely launching places for economic and hedonistic endeavors, and individuals tend to lose any abiding concern for the long-term future of the local community. Modern people find themselves with a place neither in this world or the next” (The Intercollegiate Review, Spring 2006, Mitchell, p. 20).  

 

5) Dependence Upon Method: Historically, the Western Christian Culture depended upon God and Scripture as the authority for knowledge. God and His Word were considered the first point of reference to any hypothesis. Ultimate reality was posited in a sovereign God Who spoke an unchanging Word from one generation to the next. Each generation, standing on the shoulders of the previous one, added to the bank of traditions (language, morality, religion, science, music, etc.) of previous generations. These traditions were carefully preserved in an authority structure in the family, church, community, and State. The proven method for gaining a meaningful epistemology (theory of knowledge) was encapsulated in the reality of God’s Word. The present world was much connected with the reality of God’s will.


The Age of Rationalism ushered in a whole new methodology in man’s quest for truth. Human reason, not faith, became the road to gaining knowledge. Bacon, Descartes, and their disciples discarded tradition and authority in their quest to liberate the human mind from the shackles of the past. For these New Age thinkers in the 1600s, the method became all encompassing and important. Human reason, man’s self-sufficiency, radical individualism, and a disconnection from historic, Western tradition and authority opened a new road to discovering knowledge. Now, at the dawn of the 21st Century, the theology of rationalism is the primary factory for the ideas translated into public policy in the Christian West.

 

No longer is the individual bound by the perimeters of tradition, authority, and belief in God’s Word. Man is now free to pursue another method, in this case human reason, as the new path to knowledge. With this new pathway to knowledge, any commitment to a common good, serving others, and building a community with others in a particular geographical setting is no longer relevant. Having discarded the belief that ultimate reality and knowledge are vested in a supreme God and His infallible Word, modern man has assumed the role of deity and presumes to be his own god (Genesis 3:5). Modern science and technology are the result of the new method of gaining knowledge apart from the tradition, authority, and beliefs of the past.

 

 

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

 

These are grim days for Christians the nations of the Celtic, Anglo-Saxon world. Every aspect of tradition and authority is under assault. Every spiritual landmark set by the builders of the Western Christian Culture for the past two thousand years is challenged by the humanist barbarians of this generation. Day by day, this generation is disconnecting from belief in a transcendent God Who speaks an infallible and unchanging Word. Modern America has been cut loose from its spiritual moorings and is now adrift on the high sea of multiculturalism, racial diversity, open borders, an immigration floodtide, and a revival of the old Babylonian moral code that is at war with every moral ethic associated with historic Christianity.

 

Where do we go from here? Professor Michell has this advice: “Only where a particular tradition is embodied in a particular location (and where else can a tradition be embodied?) is a community possible. Our commitment must take the form of membership: we must be members of each other, joint owners of a living tradition embodied in a community that transcends any one person even as all its members, living and dead, sustain it by their fidelity and love care . . . It is only when we commit to rootedness, both physically and spiritually, that we acquire the resources necessary to break out of the dark forest of rootless skepticism. A healthy democracy begins at home” (The Intercollegiate Review,Spring 2006, Mitchell, pp. 21- 22).

 

This pastor once again makes the same appeal that I have been making since 1960. Those people who share the values and beliefs of historic Christianity—a commitment to biblical moral and ethical standards, a love for the traditional family and belief in the historic definition of marriage between one man and one woman of the same faith and race, the multiplication of children, home schooling or private Christian education of their children, strong communities, Christian fellowship, and sharing a vision of the Gospel of the Kingdom—must combine with others and build a church community. These communities must serve one another, advance the Kingdom of God, and preserve the traditions and authority of the past so our youth can perpetuate these ideas in a particular geographical location.

 

The bottom line is this: we have lost our country to strangers who have overthrown historic Christianity. The media and entertainment industry, public education system, and major political parties have sold out to the barbarian humanists. Our best hope is to advance Christian dominion where we can. We must take charge of our own families and local churches and reassemble the historic traditions and authority upon which communities are built. We need a vision for living with those who share our ethnic heritage and biblical values. Beginning at the grass roots level, one family at a time, one local church or community at a time, we must work until we regain dominion of the ground lost in the last fifty years.

 

The far vision is to never give up! “Occupy till I come” was Jesus’ express command (Luke 19:13). Christian, I urge you to continue to exercise dominion till the King arrives! The near vision is to immediately regroup and organize families in local communities or churches that feature the traditions and authority of historic Christianity. About this we read: “Wherefore come out from among them, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (II Corinthians 6:17-18). “And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities” (Revelation 18:4-5). Who can argue with the King?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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