Written by The unremitting preaching of “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) shines a light, since the Fall in the Garden (Genesis 3), on mankind’s central predicament: our critical need for a personal relationship with the LORD God Almighty; a need which is concealed by the distractions and temptations of this morally broken world.
Perhaps in times past, it was easier to find that transcendence – but “there [really] is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Yet today, American society is certainly far more secular than it has ever been in its history, and Marxist opponents of religion in general (and especially of biblically orthodox Christianity in particular) are far more aggressive in their unceasing desire to thoroughly eliminate it from the public square.
Here is the simple fact of it: Many American Believers, including some of our most prominent “Christian” leaders across the denominational spectrum, assume that we live in a country that (in reality) no longer exists.
The refusal to “shrink [back] from declaring” (Acts 20:27) the Holy Scriptures as being the rule and ultimate standard of the Christian Faith offers relief from the forceful polemics of our polarized society with the enduring Truth “of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). Such commitment and courage provide reasoned arguments in defense of the said Gospel, and the strengthening of the Baptized, who gather to share in Our Lord’s great gift of his real presence in His very Body and Blood in the communal celebration of the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Never has there been a greater need for this sacred gathering in our lifetimes.
As secular society claims more and more territory all around us, Holy Communion Anglican Church calmly asserts that immutable truths emanate from the Triune God’s revelation of Himself in Holy Writ – the immutable truths that should be shaping the boundaries of the civil government’s discourse.
Here is the simple fact of it: Many American Believers, including some of our most prominent “Christian” leaders across the denominational spectrum, assume that we live in a country that (in reality) no longer exists – at least, not in the fairytale form they imagine. Meteoric demographic, technological, legal, and cultural changes have transformed the United States since the end of World War II into a different nation from the one that preceded it. But the “delusion” of America as a religious (even as a biblically grounded “Christian”) nation persists. And this belief lingers strongest among millions of still practicing Christians of the so-called Baby Boomer Generation (born between 1946 to 1964) – the last demographic cohort that still has a reasonably accurate knowledge of the facts of the founding of the American Republic (having learned actual civics while in public school!). Members of this age group are now between the ages of 76 and 58 and are dying off with the inevitable greater frequency. Most importantly, for the purposes of this article, Baby Boomers are the people most actively committed to their religious and moral convictions and their faith communities.
I was born on February 28, 1964. Thus, I am literally among the last of the Boomers to have come into this world. Having said that, I know the following to be true.
- The America I came of age in has rapidly evaporated and in most places is already gone.
- Regenerate Baby Boomers must comprehend that the old world has passed away, just as the once mighty Roman and British Empires did. Regarding this second point, perhaps the actual symbolic day and ceremony have not occurred, but the stage has been set and the play is almost over. Therefore, whatever is good and “worthy of praise” and “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable” (Philippians 4:8), must now be snatched up and preserved — the orthodox Christian Faith itself being the most important of all. This is the conversation that must now dominate in the homes and lives of Baby Boomer Believers.
- The Triune God will never abandon those who are faithful.
As the number of the Baby Boomers still alive are precipitously in decline and our Christian practice diminishes, so does the influence of biblical moral thought upon our land. The “common good” for the modern progressive Marxist is ever so different from that of the Christian Baby Boomer. Indeed, no true “common good” can exist without an understanding of who and why the human person exists in the first place, and what defines the proper destiny for the soul of mankind. American culture, in the name of individual autonomy, now overwhelmingly orders itself against any such traditional (biblical) defining narrative. This, of course, has immeasurable civic implications, because dominant political control always builds new models of (oppressive) human anthropology.
Hence, the most important vocation for the Church Universal today is to have a laser focus on forming a new generation of faithful disciples of Jesus – “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12). A vibrant generation, born in this century, who shall effectively and joyfully give witness to their Christian Faith into a decimated cultural environment that is beyond pagan in its perspectives. C. S. Lewis once stated, the pagans of antiquity at least had a sense of an enchanted world and the supernatural realities behind it. The self-described “post-Christian” Marxists of today lack even that.
Hence, the most important vocation for the Church Universal today is to have a laser focus on forming a new generation of faithful disciples of Jesus – “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” .
Ephesians 4:12
This is what we can do. Convert society gradually from within, one person and one community at a time, with no explicit political intentions. That happened once after Constantine’s famous Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. – which legalized the practice of Christianity within the Roman Empire. It can happen again. The same challenge of conversion presents itself today, but, because the supernatural dimension of life is virtually removed from the modern imagination, with an added and serious obstacle. Restoring it is the work of a new generation of leaders in the Church. Forming and sustaining that generation is the work (the final sprint to the finish) of the last of us Baby Boomers – educating their minds and consciences and inspiring them to be the divine agents of the Master. This task is the emphatic and necessary work of Holy Communion Anglican Church and every other orthodox assembly of Christians in America at this moment of history.
