I’m not trying to build a case that churches should disregard our local public health authorities who are trying to reduce the spread of COVID-19. I respect and appreciate their efforts. That being said, am I the only one scratching his head when liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries are listed with essential services while churches are not considered essential? Wasn’t it just a few years ago that you could get arrested for possession of marijuana…but in just a few short years it’s now actually essential for our survival during a crisis? Essential! Wow! How did we make it through all the other plagues, earthquakes, dust bowls, wars, and terrorist attacks over the last 244 years without weed? It must have been nothing short of a “miracle”. Oh wait! Stories of miracles aren’t quite “essential” right now. My bad!
Anyway, we all know the emotional, mental, and spiritual benefits of the “spirits” offered in liquor stores are far more essential than the offerings of the Spirit in our local churches. Besides, those nasty hangovers on Monday mornings after a Sunday morning church service are just crippling. No, getting high and getting buzzed are a much more necessary and gratifying way to deal with stress. They’ve never been known to compound the problem that the imbiber is trying to avoid. Besides, these remedies are widely known to only strengthen families, increase longevity, enhance driving skills, improve parenting and increase one’s work ethic. How could I question?
So, did America always see the church as nonessential? To quote just one of our Founding Fathers on the essential role of the Christian faith in the development of our nation, Noah Webster (1758-1843) wrote, “[T]he Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children under a free government ought to be instructed. No truth is more evident than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.” Noah Webster was known as the father of American scholarship and education and was editor of the Federalist Papers. He also opposed slavery. Maybe that’s because he saw the Christian religion as “most important” to guaranteeing “the rights and privileges of a free people”. Wow, it almost sounds like he’s suggesting the Christian faith is “essential” to the perpetuity of our liberties. I’ve been thinking…I just can’t help but wonder how this upcoming generation of Americans interprets what is valuable and essential during a national crisis like this.
John Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence, one of the two signers of the Bill of Rights and second president of the United States, wrote, “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God”. Wow! The principles of the Christian faith were essential to the achievement of independence for America. Essential…who could have imagined that in light of recent regulations?
Silly me! I beg you forebear with me. Can I confess my foolishness? I actually believe and spend much time praying fervently for a new Great Awakening of the Christian faith and of the values that produced one of the freest, greatest, and most decent nations the world has ever known. I actually believe that an old fashioned Christian revival is important for the survival of our nation and more important for the much-deserved glory of God to be revealed. I pray that “The scepter of wickedness shall not rest upon the land of the righteous; That the righteous may not put forth their hands to do wrong.” (Psalm 125:3) I believe that the moral and ethical principles of individual liberty as revealed through the Gospels might once again be the threads that hold the fabric of our nation together. Thanks for hearing me out.
Trust me, I know we’ve made our mistakes, but most of those can be traced to seasons when we have forgotten God. Abraham Lincoln expressed such feelings when our nation was being torn apart by the Civil War. He called America to a national day of prayer. In calling the nation to humble itself and pray, he wrote the following words in his proclamation, “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
What can I say? I know, Yes, Amen and amen!