Before the country forgot what America is, the American church forgot who God is.
In this episode I look at why political fixes alone cannot rescue a republic whose moral foundation has been hollowed out from within. The through-line runs from John Adams’s October 11, 1798 address to the Massachusetts Militia, to Jesus on salt and light in Matthew 5:13-16 (ESV), to the 2007 Willow Creek REVEAL study and its confession that the seeker-sensitive model had been a mistake. It also takes up King Saul in 1 Samuel 15:24 (ESV), “Because I feared the people and obeyed their voice,” Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, and the biblical call to remember in Deuteronomy 8 and Joshua 1:9 (ESV).
The wall Jefferson described was meant to keep the government out of the church, not to keep the church out of public life. A free people still needs a church that fears God more than it fears the crowd.
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