OPINION:
Without God, America looks a lot like a bridge that lies in ruins in Baltimore harbor. The collapse of the Frances Scott Key Bridge is a metaphor for our national decline.
Key wrote a poem that became the lyrics of the national anthem — including the words: “Then conquer we must when our cause it is just. And this be our motto, in God is our trust” — as he watched the British bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.
But as trust in God declines, so does belief in America.
On Easter Sunday, 43% of Americans will be in church. That’s 20 points lower than the number who say they’re Christians. One-third of avowed Christians couldn’t be bothered to go to church on Christianity’s holiest day of the year.
What’s more, 57% of Americans seldom or never go to church. Those who don’t identify with any religion (the “nones”) went from 13% in 2010 to 21% today.
In a recent survey, not quite 50% said they have no doubt about the existence of God, compared with 60% as recently as 2008. The rest think all blessings flow from the Treasury.
Belief has a powerful effect on voting patterns.
According to Pew Research, in the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump got the votes of 59% of those who attend religious services at least once a month, while President Biden was supported by 71% of the nones.
Disbelief is an important weapon in the Democrats’ arsenal. That’s why Hollywood rarely misses a chance to attack or mock religious people.
Fairfax County, Virginia, which is “Woke” Central, is observing Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter Sunday, putting Christian belief on par with the celebration of gender confusion.
As the saying goes, government is downstream from culture.
In movies, Christians, and increasingly, religious Jews, are portrayed as charlatans, hypocrites or fanatics.
Examples include movies like “The Whale” and “Jesus Camp.” Even the 2014 remake of “The Ten Commandments” (“Exodus: Gods and Kings”) cast a skeptical eye on the revelation at Sinai, suggesting that Moses’ encounter with God was a hallucination.
Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are on a mission to eradicate religious expression in public life.
They have powerful allies in the Democratic Party. At the 2012 Democratic nominating convention, at least half the delegates voted to take an innocuous reference to God out of the party’s platform.
As recently as 1962, we had prayer in public schools. Now the left gets apoplectic over a moment of silence for fear some students may think about God.
Our public schools teach neo-paganism — including sex divorced from morality and earth worship. Some teachers think they have a right to help your child get an abortion — infant sacrifice to the gods of feminism — or transition without your knowledge.
This is light-years away from where we started.
The Founding Fathers had a core set of beliefs, including the conviction that rights are endowed by the Creator. You can see it in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and the words of those who shaped our republic.
Our second president, John Adams, declared: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
As he was leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” His answer should haunt us: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
What binds us together if not a biblical worldview — a partisan definition of democracy, neo-Marxism, or diversity, equity and inclusion?
Values have consequences.
Many of us don’t recognize the America we grew up in. It was an America with a strong religious orientation. It was also an America without women being cold-cocked on city streets, riots at the border, squatters’ rights, and a government at war with the fundamental rights of its citizens.
The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies have been turned against ordinary Americans who dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy, while hardened criminals are released without bail to seek fresh prey.
So, while your children are eating chocolate bunnies and marshmallow chicks on Easter, the left is gobbling up your freedoms by removing every obstacle in its way, especially the faith of our fathers.
Without religion, we are on a bridge to nowhere.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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