What can churches do by David Barton and Rick Green
There are several things churches can do.
(1) Churches can educate about America’s Godly heritage. Our heritage can’t be upheld if citizens don’t know what they are upholding.
(2) Churches can educate citizens in a full Biblical worldview. Today, we live in a society that compartmentalizes our faith, telling us that it is applicable for home or church but not for school, law, government, or the public arena in general. We must return to an understanding that it applies to all aspects of life – that the Bible just as surely offers specific guidance on the minimum wage and capital gains tax as it does on the salvation of our souls or the preservation of our family. Citizens should know what the Bible teaches about education, medicine, taxes, the military, and every other area of life. If we don’t understand that the Bible applies to government, then we will make no attempt to uphold America’s Godly heritage, which – from an historical standpoint – has been especially demonstrated in the arena of government.
(3) Churches can equip citizens to preserve our foundations (“If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Psalms 11:3). Each of us can preserve America’s Biblical foundation in two ways. First, we can preserve it through what we do in our own lives. This is preserving America’s foundations from the bottom up – rising upward from individuals in every home and community. But the second way to preserve America’s foundations is from the top down – that is, not just in individual citizenry but also in our collective public policy. We can do this by electing individuals to office who fulfill the requirements for elected office first set forth in Exodus 18:21, which instructs: “Choose out from all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness.” These are the Biblical qualifications for office-holders. Other verses provide similarly important instructions for a nation’s preservation – for example, Proverbs 14:34, which declares that, “Righteousness exalts a nation.” Yet Proverbs 14:34 is not independent from Exodus 18:21; these two verses are actually related. That is, America can’t be exalted without righteous policies; but she can’t have righteous policies without righteous leaders. And America won’t have righteous leaders unless righteous citizens are willing to vote for leaders according to the Biblical guidelines set forth in Exodus 18:21. After all, Proverbs 29:2 succinctly tells us that, “When the righteous rule, the people rejoice; but when the wicked rule, the people groan.” In America, whether the righteous rule or whether the wicked rule is totally our choice – we are the ones who place either of them into office. A challenge given to early Americans by the Rev. Mathias Burnet in 1803 is still applicable for us today. He admonished believers in that generation:
Let not your children have reason to curse you for giving up those rights and prostrating those institutions which your fathers delivered to you.
Churches can uphold America’s Godly heritage by equipping members to be good stewards of the nation and of the blessings that God has entrusted into our hands.