Just as 'The Great Awakening' Preceded 1776; The Same Is True and Needed for 2026
Since his inauguration on Jan. 20, President Trump has delivered more positive achievements for more of the American people than any other president serving an equivalent time in office.
Yet, Trump has experienced more opposition, including assassination attempts, than any other president since the Civil War. In fact, 67% of all federal court injunctions in the last 100 years have been issued against President Trump.
When opposition and hostility to a national leader, one who’s delivering major solutions for the people is so obviously irrational, it's imperative to understand what is at work to engender such divisive hatred.
With the 250th anniversary of America’s founding only a year away, we can start with identifying the one or two cultural variables which are dramatically different between the first 125 years and the last 125 years of U.S. history.
Two key variables which have dramatically changed from America’s first half to its second half are:
- The marginalization of God and Christianity.
- The rise of malevolent influence and apocalyptic cults.
Because Christianity’s key tenets are forgiveness and love, we should never underestimate the consequences of secularization over the last century and accelerating into the present.
With diminished Christian influence in culture, social and family relations, manners, civility, and honesty are markedly worse off today than a century or two ago.
With the declining influence of the Christian world view, paganism and the worship of nature have been on the rise, with many embracing apocalyptic cult groupthink — often linked to a negative impending doom.
The 2012 Democratic National Convention removed any references to "God" from the party's platform, which was a 24,000-word-plus mission statement.
Concurrently, the Democratic Party, resembles a cult, embracing false and apocalyptic views, like gender fluidity, and man-made CO2 levels are dangerously high and the root cause of climate change.
With Trump's triumphant return, the Democratic cult has gone into overdrive abandoning rational analyses, believing that whatever Trump does is the coming apocalypse which must be resisted and fought by any means.
In America’s first half of its existence, the rise of wholesale evil was mitigated because Christianity permeated our nation's culture.
The country’s Founding came out of 13 separate colonies, which had one important thing in common: a belief that Christianity was the basis for the cultural, social, and political order of each.
Despite denominational, ethnic, geographic, and linguistic differences between the 13 colonies, each expressed a reverence for God in their respective state charters and constitutions.
A recognition that Christianity was central to moral order and social peace.
With the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the colonies became independent states operating under a weak federal government based on the Articles of Confederation.
It took another six years after the final defeat of the British at Yorktown in 1781, before the Constitutional Convention convened for the purpose of forming a new more effective government.
There were 55 delegates to that convention, 95% of whom self-identified as Christian. The Constitution was shaped by Christianity, with the Bible being the most cited source in the debates in and around the Constitutional Convention.
The Framers dismissed any notion of establishing Christian theocratic state because it was contrary to God’s natural order of diversity.
So they set about creating a system that protected individual rights and freedom -- including religious freedom — while also restraining government abuse of power and corruption through:
- Checks and balances.
- A federal system pitting state power against federal power; and . . .
- The codification of frequent elections — to enable regular cleansing by voting out charlatans, corruption, and abuse of power.
America was the first nation in human history based on two simple axioms that government should protect the people’s unalienable God-given rights to be free and protect the people from abuse of power and corruption plaguing all prior governments from the beginning of time.
While the U.S. government didn’t perfectly live up to its constitution on these two requirements, the American people thrived and the Unted States flourished, becoming "A Shining City on a Hill." The greatest economic and military power globally — in just 125 years.
America’s fate in the last century has taken a turn for the worse that is correlated to the marginalization God and Christianity.
The first two presidents, George Washington and John Adams were prescient about our present problems with incivility and ungovernability.
Both agreed that a moral and religious people were necessary for the success of America's constitutional republic.
Washington, in his Farewell Address of Sept. 19, 1796, emphasized the importance of religion and morality as "indispensable supports" for political prosperity.
Adams similarly stated that "our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
The modern-day prophet Jonathan Cahn, author of "The Harbinger," explains that as America drove God out of its culture in the last half of the 20th century right into the present, the protective hand of God and the Holy Spirit was diminished and removed, creating a sort of vacuum that allowed demonic spirits to occupy and influence America.
Taking account of the past and present and arriving at a solution for the future, we can be sure that spiritual revival will be pivotal for our nation’s turn-around.
How that takes place may be unclear, but we can be sure that God has a plan if only we will listen to it — and act upon it.
Scott S. Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. His timeless book is, "Rediscovering America." Reach him at scottp@discovery.org. Read Scott Powell's Reports — More Here.
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