“Bad men cannot make good citzens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principals.”
- Patrick Henry
Threats to the security of the United States of America abound. Muslim extremist terrorism, North Korean communism, and Second and third world dictatorships would all love to see America go away. Yet with all of the dangers to our Republic, the greatest danger may very well be of our own making.
America is in grave danger of losing its liberty because of the deterioration of its faith. A study published by Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut purports some startling trends. According to their findings, in 2008 15% of the population of the United States claim no faith affiliation up from 8.2% in 1990. Also, 27% of Americans do not expect any faith based funeral when they die. The trend is definitely in favor of an increasingly uncommitted, secular electorate.
The long term effects of this shift of faith do not bode well. A cursory study of western European nations that have embraced secularism demonstrates an equal embracing of socialism. It is an unstated axiom that a secular state doesn’t eschew worship it just transfers its worship from God to the state. If one is inclined to believed that man was created by God to worship God, when God is supplanted then any other god (including the state) will have to do.
So what is the greatest threat to liberty? The answer to this question may be subject to debate, but history makes it abundantly clear that where God is honored and the gospel is received there exists a free people indeed.
