Can America survive the assault on its founding from anti-Christian forces?
When will America’s Christians determine that any assault on America’s founding is an assault on Christianity itself?
During the 1992 Vice Presidential debate, Al Gore unwittingly inverted the saying of Jesus, improperly iterating it as “where your heart is, there will your treasure be, also”– yet, not only was he not corrected, it seemed that no one even noticed the error. Similarly, today’s so-called evangelicals are so poorly educated in matters of Christianity that if someone were to poll the attendees of an evangelical church on the significance of the Sunday before Easter, it is unlikely that more than 10% would identify it as Palm Sunday. We can’t blame that level of ignorance on America’s government-managed public school system–they should have learned it in church.
Among those same Christians there is even less awareness of the essential place of Christianity in the formation of America’s founding ideas and institutions and principles of government– the very same ones which have provided for the freedom from government enjoyed by America’s churches. The American ideas of free markets, tax-exemption for churches, representative government, and ownership of private property–among many others to be explored in this magazine– are derived from no other source but Christianity itself, and the culture cannot be stripped of its Christianity and at the same time retain the benefits thereof. Christians seem blissfully unaware of that connection, and of the importance and uniqueness of Christianity in Western Civilization generally and in America specifically. The objective of Salt and State is to aid in the re-establishment of those foundations among influential evangelicals–pastors, teachers, and informed citizens– by reminding those who claim to be adherents of Christianity that in order to be Christian, one must also defend the foundational principles of America itself.