It
is an idea Darwinist Richard Dawkins would not like. His
answer to the question posed by Dr. Kennedy’s new book,
What if America Were a Christian Nation Again?, would
most likely be that it would end democracy and introduce
theocractic rule in its place.
Dawkins, a best-selling author and Oxford professor,
believes that, “The fundamentalist Christian right is
America’s Taliban.” Conservative Christians, according to
the world’s leading apologist for evolution, represent,
“organized ignorance, organized bigotry, organized
nastiness—and these people are on their way to taking over
the Republican Party.”
Dawkins is not alone in his fevered stereotype of
evangelicals as intolerant right-wing zealots eager to
impose religious rule on everyone else. Hollywood has also
indulged the idea. The 1990 theatrical release, The
Handmaid’s Tale, depicts a patriarchal twenty-first
century society that suppresses women and is run by men
called the Commanders of God.
Not a
Theocracy
So what would it be like if America were a Christian nation
again? It would not be a theocracy, said Dr. Kennedy, but a
return to the faith of our nation’s founders. “Those who
advocate America as a Christian nation are not advocating a
theocracy—in other words, a state-run religion,” he said.
“Christianity flourishes best without state support. But the
founders of our nation clearly did not advocate what many in
our culture are trying to achieve: state-sanctioned
atheism.”
The campaign to create secular America has wreaked
havoc on our culture. Dr. Kennedy writes in What If
America Were a Christian Nation Again? that our nation
“has gone from the strong family values of a society with a
Christian consensus to a society that glorifies violence,
illicit sex, and |
rebellion…. We have
gone from Leave It to Beaver to Beavis and
Butthead in some thirty to forty years.”
Secular America has an established and dismal track
record, but what would Christian America bring? That’s the
question explored and answered, both in Dr. Kennedy’s new
book and in the October 26 Coral Ridge Hour
documentary with the same title.
A good place to begin the search for Christian America is
the Texas prison system. There, Prison Fellowship has run a
program since 1997 that has immersed prisoners in character
development, educational classes, life-skills training, and
Bible study.
The program, InnerChange Freedom Initiative, is a
public-private partnership in which Prison Fellowship
provides 24-hour staffing and the state takes care of
security, housing, and food. The results have been
spectacular. Of the 1,471 prisoners who have completed the
two or three year program, 85 percent have not returned to
prison. If this kind of success “happens here, in prison, it
can happen to society,” Prison Fellowship Founder Chuck
Colson has said. “Who says Christ isn’t able to change a
society?”
More
God, Less Crime
The results in Texas match other studies that find that
faith correlates with less crime, according to Dr. Byron
Johnson, director of the Center for Research on Religion and
Urban Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania, and
author of the forthcoming book More God, Less Crime.
Johnson found that as religious commitment goes up,
“the likelihood of crime goes down.” His research on youth
in Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia shows that those who
attend church are less likely to use drugs and to be
involved in gangs, and more likely to stay in school and get
better grades.
Please see
Christian Nation Again?, page 4
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