Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro recently instructed the Brazilian Ministry of Education to draft a bill that prohibits 'gender ideology’ in Brazil’s public elementary schools. “We are going to unite the people, rescue the family, respect religions and our Judeo-Christian tradition, combat gender ideology and preserve our values,” Bolsonaro said.
President Bolsonaro’s resolute courageousness to speak up makes one wonder where the prophetic voices in America are. We are referring to those weeping “between the porch and the altar” (Joel 2:17) over the spiritual condition of a nation founded “for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith” (Mayflower Compact).
President Bolsonaro’s likely problem with “gender ideology” concerns its glaringly discreditable feature of intolerance for any viewpoint but its own. This intolerance has been driven so far as to incorporate something so unsubstantiated as “gender ideology” into the very foundation of government-run preschool through third-level education. Until this scheme has been exposed and resolved, we should not expect God’s favor on public education (Dan Smithwick, Foreword, Political Correctness).
The reason why America’s godly heritage had to be eliminated from public education becomes clear from the following:
“Reality must be suppressed. If the ideology has power, it uses its power to undertake this suppression. It forbids writing or speaking certain facts. Its goal is to prevent not only expression of thoughts that contradict what ‘must be true,’ but thinking such thoughts. In the end, the result is inevitably the concentration camp, the gulag and the grave.
“While some Americans have believed in ideologies, America itself never had an official, state ideology - up until now. But what happens today to Americans who suggest that there are differences among ethnic groups, or that the traditional social roles of men and women reflect their different natures, or that homosexuality is morally wrong? If they are public figures, they must grovel in the dirt in endless, canting apologies. If they are university students, they face star chamber courts and possible expulsion. If they are employees of private corporations, they may face loss of their jobs. What was their crime? Contradicting America’s new state ideology of ‘Political Correctness’” (William S. Lind, Introduction, Political Correctness: A Deceptive and Dangerous Worldview).
Where are America’s prophets with the ability to discern God’s plan to expedite an all-out exodus from impious, dissolute, “sexularized” public schools? Imperious bureaucrats now demand compulsory sexual inculcation of America’s youth, regardless of parental objections. It will be understood that this is merely the overture to the main event.
If America is to survive, Christians must move away from public education as they go up against Washington bureaucrats’ idolatrous crusade on children, capped off with the instilling of state-directed values over the objection of parents. We must adopt an attitude of resistance, resilience, and repentance; the latter over what we Christians have allowed to let happen to public education and culture.
If virtue is a component to sustainable freedom, as pertinently delineated by America’s Founders, public education has run its course. Any method or system that threatens long-term liberty must be relinquished.
Political correctness - a baneful plague - became epidemic in academia and culture in the mid- to late 19th-century. In 1963, its co-factor, secularism, was categorized as law by the liberal Warren Court in the Abington School District v. Schempp case. Making their own religion out of whole cloth, eight radical “supreme beings” launched secularism as the “official religion” of America. In the 8-1 decision, lone-dissenting Justice Potter Stewart’s prophetic objection is worth remembering: “[Abington School District v. Schempp] led not to true neutrality with respect to religion, but to the establishment of a religion of secularism.”
Theologian Archibald Alexander Hodge [1832-1886], the principal of Princeton Seminary from 1878 until 1886, predicted early on the danger of America’s newly formed public school system:
“I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.”
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield [1851-1921], Hodge’s successor as principal of Princeton Seminary, saw cultivating correct doctrine as the primary means by which Christians influence the surrounding culture, in this case, the calamitous, idolatrous ideology thrust upon the biblically-based culture.
This brings us to Jesus’ ekklesia model of Matthew 16:18. Recall that New Testament ekklesia was a secular term designed to be centered in the public square, in order to affect the cultural mountains of influence and the discipleship of nations. Creating and maintaining a healthy culture required the across-the-board insertion of the ‘leaven of Heaven’ through the ekklesia.
It comes down to this: 99% of pastors are not called to run for local office, but 100% are called to the public square as prescribed by the Son of God in Matthew 16:18.
“Three major institutions shaped the life of the Jewish people: the Temple, the synagogue, and the ekklesia. The first two were religious. The third was secular.
“Jesus did not state, ‘I will build My temple’ or ‘I will build My synagogue’, the two most prominent Jewish religious institutions at the time. Instead, He chose a secular entity first developed by the Greeks when He said, ‘I will build my Ekklesia’ [Gr. ekklesia – called-out ones] ‘and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against [them],’ Matthew 16:18” (Ed Silvoso, Ekklesia.).
There is hope for America. Her youth must be kept free from public school indoctrination. Following a century of Christian retreat from the culture, the showdown commences as it comes to a head-on collision between the disciples of the false god of secularism and Ephesians 1:5 “predestined, adopted” sons and daughters of Jehovah, the living God.
Amalek comes to mind as to what to do concerning public education. “Instead of utterly destroying Amalek and all his possessions, as commanded when God delivered them into his hands, Saul permitted the people to spare the best of the sheep and oxen that they might offer them in ‘sacrifice unto the LORD’” (A.W. Pink). This misstep is frequently exemplified in Scripture.
Contemporary American Christendom will have to completely restructure its mindset and theology as to the role of the church in America. That is if America is to survive. R.A. Torrey said that “All that God is and all that God has is at the disposal of prayer.” Once prayer is reestablished in America’s churches, the church must move from the meetinghouse to the marketplace, thus becoming the ekklesia as described in Matthew 16:18.
A lasting spiritual awakening will then be set in motion in America.
The only chance for America’s survival is a return to God and the re-establishment of the Christian culture established by the American Founders.
Since “culture is the public manifestation of religion,” (Joseph Boot) the glory of a nation lies in its righteousness.
Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to stand.
