Recovery. What is it? Sometimes called "revival", although revival is usually a brief spike in religious fervor which soon fades. Sometimes called "renewal" or "reformation", a return to the original doctrine, faith, and practice of the early church. The protestant reformation, while it started as a reformation, ended up as more of a rebellion against the Catholic Church than it was a reformation of it. It created an entirely new and different Christian animal from what the Catholic church continued to be. There have been several "Great Awakenings" whose affect lasted for a decade or two. What are the odds of a "Great Awakening" in our time?
"Recovery" in the sense of the role of Christianity in America requires three things: 1) A renewal of understanding of the Christian foundation of this nation; 2) A clear understanding of the necessity of perpetuating the founding Christian principles in order to maintain our religious and personal freedoms; and 3) Reversal of the liberalization of the Church.
Most denominations have adopted an apostasy-like liberalization of Christian doctrine. We know Christianity is in trouble when at least half of all Christians belong to liberal mainline denominations, including Evangelical Lutherans, Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUSA), United Methodists, United Church of Christ (Obama's church for 20 years) and the Episcopal Church (aka Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America) . All of these denominations have dismissed most of Scripture as allagorical or no longer applicable to todays culture. This is apostacy! Granted, there are a number of conservative offshoots of each of these denominations as well older denominational versions that have remained faithful. Examples of these are the Presbyterian Church in America and the Lutheran Wisconsin Synod. But most are struggling for membership and relevance.
I would like to provide a list of conservative churches and denominations that are providing a Biblical message clearly directed toward and applicable to our times. But few exist, especially in my corner of the world. Most of the conservative churches I've experienced teach the Bible as a history book and don't bother, care, or know how to connect it to the needs of our declining culture. Or they teach a Biblical lesson based on needs that rank number 587 compared to the real and present dangers facing individual Christians Christianity in America. HERE is an example of that. If you can recommend a church that clearly connects Biblical teaching with the liberal moral, political, economic, social, and Islamic challenges facing our nation, I would love to hear from you.
What will it take for recovery of Christian influence in America? A partial answer was provided by a priest from Latvia who described the differences between the churches in western and eastern Europe. The Church in Western Europe has become very liberal, with a large and growing proportion of the population choosing not to attend church at all. Western Europe has been subject to very little hardship or persecution for over 50 years. Things are changing for the worse. In contrast, the Church in Eastern Europe has remained relatively conservative and maintains a high proportion of church attendance among the population. Eastern Europe has been subject to a great deal of persecution and hardship over the past 50 years. Things have been changing for the better. Do you see a correlation here?
The Pride/Self-satisfaction cycle has much to do with the population's trust in God and His precepts - or lack thereof. The more successful, prosperous, self-satisfied, and self-absorbed a population becomes, the less it feels a need for God. The more free it feels to dismiss millenia of Godly wisdom. That is a population ripe for a very painful and long-lasting fall. But history has shown that such fall is what it takes to bring a culture back to God. The course needs to be run. Short term "blips" of revival only buy a few short years until the downward spiral of morality, faith, and obedience to God continue to their inevitable abyss. This sounds like a defeatist view. And I understand that "all things are possible with God." But it is a realistic view based on history and human nature.
The devout and dedicated Christian population is shrinking in America. So is our influence. Check out the parallels in ancient history HERE and HERE. The number of liberal and apostatized "Christians" who assimilated into and feel at home in our corrupt culture and politics is growing. Most no longer have the faith or discernment necessary to even appreciate what is Godly and what isn't. Tolerance is the new "ideal"; tolerance of every form of perversion and corruption so that we don't offend anyone. And few seem offended because no one has the sense or will to speak out anymore. We are goaded into silence because the highest Biblical value is now 'judge not lest ye be judged.' Judging is now considered to be the greatest sin; greater than homosexuality, pornography, occultism, lying, murder, or blasphemy.
The trend away from traditional Christianity not only appears to be irreversible, but it appears to be gaining momentum into a a slow descent where poverty, uncertainty, loss of hope, lawlessness, disease, wars, and destructive natural events all beat us into submission.
There is one event that could reverse this trend: A miracle from God involving millions of changed hearts. This miracle could occur through peaceful or dreadful means. I'm not sure what "peaceful" or "kind and gentle" means are likely and why that would be justifiable to God - but all things are possible. Most often changed hearts result from dreadful means such as a result of an instantaneous cataclysm that thrusts us into total, hopeless submission, when all our own means and efforts are no longer available or of use.
Click HERE for an example of one of the things that could quickly humble us. Equally humbling for our society at large would be a financial collapse, an untreatable and virulent plague, or a widespread EMP or dirty bomb terror attack. The rapid growth of orthodox Islam, a fascist and horrendous ideology, might very well fill the vacuum left by vacuous Christians.