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A just-released Wall Street Journal/ NBC survey has found that Americans have shifted dramatically on what values matter most.
Patriotism, religion, and having children rate lower among younger generations than they did two decades ago.
Why?
Be informed.
The Wall Street Journal says:
The values that Americans say define the national character are changing, as younger generations rate patriotism, religion and having children as less important to them than did young people two decades ago, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey finds.
When the Journal/NBC News survey asked Americans 21 years ago to say which values were most important to them, strong majorities picked the principles of hard work, patriotism, commitment to religion and the goal of having children.
The shift in values in our country is related to demographics---age. Nearly 80% of Baby Boomers and the previous generation think patriotism is very important. But among Millennials and Gen Z, that figure is a little more than 40%.
Only 30% of the younger generations think God is very important, while 67% of Boomers value religion.
Having children was also low on the value scale for Gen Z and Millennials.
The two pollsters who conducted the survey said this:
"There's an emerging America where issues like children, religion and patriotism are far less important. And in America, it's the emerging generation that calls the shots about where this country is headed."
The Wall Street Journal included a chart which graphically shows how younger generations differ from older ones.
The greatest disparity found in this current survey, compared to a similar one 21 years ago, is the importance of God.
"Why," would be a very important question.
Let's take a quick look at the past, the present, and the future.
As we were.
Founding Father Patrick Henry said, "I know no way of judging the future, but by the past."
The importance of America's past cannot be overstated. Our first President George Washington's prayer for this nation sums up the consensus of the American values at the time:
"Almighty God; We make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in They Holy protection; and Thou wilt incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government; [lawfulness] and entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another and for our fellow citizens of the United States at large...." Calling for America to "imitate" the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, "Grant our supplication, we beseech Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
In those days Bibles were freely distributed in our public schools with no thought of "separation of church and state"---including in the mind of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the letter to the Danbury Baptists, assuring them government is forbidden from meddling in the matters of the church.
In fact, one of the appropriations of the first US Congress was for the printing of Bibles for the conversion of the Native Americans.
America has failed to "imitate the characteristics of the Divine Author of our religion."
Public education has become indoctrination by activists, while the Christian Church pulpits have become silent.
As we are.
This survey gives a very different picture of America than the one seen in Washington's prayer and the US Congress's actions.
Alex McFarland told One News Now:
"It matters that young people believe in God, because our belief in God will inform our belief in morality and right and wrong and [our] personal accountability before God."
He lays the change in values at the feet of public education. I agree.
It's stunning to read Founding Father and father of public education Noah Webster's words:
"Education is useless without the Bible," and, "The Bible was America's basic text book in all fields" and "The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws..."
Webster said the Bible contains the remedy for all "the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war."
All these, he said, result from "despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible."
We have "neglected" and "despised" the precepts contained in the Bible.
His colleague, Founding Father Patrick Henry, said, "When people forget God, tyrants forge their chains."
We have become captives to the tyrants of so-called "progressivism" and their political correctness, multiculturalism, homosexual advocacy of redefining marriage and family, and the normalizing of killing unwanted children in the mother's womb---and calling it "women's health care."
We are lost in the darkness. There is only one way to rediscover who we are and what we're about as a nation.
As we shall be.
The authors of the Wall Street Journal/ NBC survey don't suggest solutions, however, they place importance on the next election. No question the 2020 election will be a "watershed" election for America. We must work and vote and pray that America does not fall into the hands of the far Left, socialist so-called progressives.
There's no question that public education has sunk to the level of social experimentation and far-left indoctrination. Christians and conservatives must seriously consider how we will educate children going forward.
By all informed accounts, the American Revolution was fueled by a spiritual renewal---a Great Awakening. It was the preaching of passionate, biblical preachers in the colonies that brought about a spiritual renewal and the will to declare our independence. To ring the bell for liberty. To stand for freedom.
Faith in God is the path to freedom.
We have "neglected" and "despised" our Founder's faith. And their values.
In an address at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Dr. Laurence White spoke directly to those who were and soon to be pastors--and to the Church at large:
Dr. White told the student pastors about the night in Germany in 1938 when the Nazis ran through the streets killing Jews and destroying their property---It's remembered as "Kristal Nacht"---"The night of broken glass."
Then said this:
My friends, it is happening again. It is happening again today in our beautiful America. So richly and abundantly blessed by a gracious God. It is happening today as the innocent unborn are slaughtered in a Holocaust that has seen millions of little boys and girls brutally killed. It is happening again as families are fractured and marriages are broken, while self-obsessed people pursue the immediate gratification of their every desire. It is happening again as militant homosexuals pursue absolute approval, complete acceptance, and preferential legal treatment for their perversion. It is happening again as our young people lost their way, and often their lives, in a maze of alcohol and drugs and the corridors, and classrooms of the high schools of our land are littered with the bodies of murdered teenagers. It is happening again as the nation's leaders wallow in decadence and deceit, while the people look on in apathetic indifference. It is happening again.
For while the killing goes on and the nation is led down the path of destruction, the church and her pastors stand silent and afraid. This country that we love, our America, is fighting for her life. Not against the military power of foreign enemies, but against the principalities and powers of this dark age. You and I, as sons and daughters of the Lord Jesus Christ, but even more so, those of you here today who are pastors of the church of Jesus Christ, are being called upon to take a stand in this moment of crisis. And let there be no one among us who doubts the urgency of this hour. To compare what is happening in America today to Nazi Germany is no mere flight of rhetorical exaggeration.
This nation is heedlessly stumbling toward third millennium darkness. Look around you and read the signs of the times. Look beyond the walls of our beautiful sanctuaries, and the comfort of our padded pews to see the chaos, the corruption, and the confusion that reigns throughout our culture.
We live in a society where passions are riderless horses, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, in which there is a desolation of decency. In which love has become a jungle emotion, lust exalted to lordship, sin elevated to sovereignty, Satan adored as a saint, and man magnified above his maker.
Dr. White gave this sermon on September 6, 2000.
Will we, too, stand "silent and afraid?" The urgency is even greater today.
Be Faithful. Be Informed. Be Vigilant. Be Bold. Be Prayerful.