Anyone who yet doubts the reality of sin need only spend an afternoon along the Shenandoah River at Harpers Ferry.

Donald Wildmon is outraged. But is it for the right reason?

To listen to some Christians today you'd think the West had arrived at the final state of spiritual and moral development.

President Obama was pilloried by the conservative press over the weekend for two remarks he made concerning the proposed "mosque at ground zero."

Just about the time everyone in the West gets used to the idea that we are the products of mere evolution,

Readers will know that, since the beginning of his presidency

A report in the August 7th issue of The Economist offers what could well be a glimpse into the future of the American Church.

"The void within" chronicles the sad state of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. In desperate decline and plagued by sex scandals, the Church is losing ground faster than ever throughout all of Europe, including Poland.

Governments have become impatient with what they regard as Rome's stonewalling investigations into parishioner abuse by Catholic priests. Some have already taken over investigations and others are threatening to, thus eliminating Rome's centuries-old tradition of managing its own affairs, thank you very much.

Public confidence in the Church has plummeted, as have attendance numbers and vocations. The Church is drying up even as the rapid pace of secularization proceeds unchecked all over the continent. While there will always be a handful of faithful, the Church, The Economist opines, "is not so much shrinking as dying."

Scandals among leaders, moral compromise among members, wide tolerance of doctrinal differences, and a tone of arrogance with respect to the rest of the population are all making the Catholic Church an institution to be avoided. Could the same happen to the evangelical Church in America?

After all, many evangelical leaders have yielded to the temptations of the flesh. The morality of Church members doesn't much rise above that of the unchurched - if at all. And a "holier-than-thou" attitude surfaces in the face of social and moral issues which just about everyone finds offensive if not disgusting. What can keep the American Church from shrinking or dying as well?

Revival. Only revival - a work of God's Spirit which He brings in response to tears of repentance and much pleading for His help on the part of God's people. Only revival can keep the Church in America from going the way of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe.

And revival, if it is to begin, must begin with each one of us.

T. M. Moore

You gotta admire NY Congressman Charlie Rangel.

In one of his movies Steve Martin plays an LA weatherman whose life is boring and pointless because the weather is always the same, the forecast is always the same, and he is thus in a huge emotional and professional rut. He even takes to taping the weekend weather forecasts on Friday and playing them as though they're live on Saturday so that he doesn't have to come in to the office. I have the same feeling about the news. Have you noticed that everything that's treated seriously on the news relates either to the economy, politics, or some form of human tragedy (plane crash, mass murder, celebrity death). If we ever needed proof that we are a secular society, a people content to live only "under the sun," this surely is it. News, of course, like all TV, is ratings-driven, so news producers put on the air what they believe people want to see. And what do we want to see? Whatever relates to our money, our government, or the tragedies and hardships of others (at least it's not us, you see). Is there nothing else in this country or in the world worthy of serious consideration in prime time? Granted, we hear about an occasional scientific breakthrough - some new drug or procedure - but that just comes back to the human factor and my health and wellbeing. As far as most Americans know there isn't a first-rate thinker, artist, composer, educator, or inventor in the whole of the country - or, if there is, it's not the sort of thing that interests us, at any rate. The Christian cannot allow the evening news to shape and define his worldview. There is more to life, and there are more ways to enjoy and glorify God, than what the prime time news will ever put forward for our consideration. "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it" (Ps. 24.1). Fight the tendency to think that the only important issues are political, economic, or health and happiness oriented. The glory of God is in all He has made, and, if we can discipline ourselves to slow down, pay attention, and study the works of God, we may find that the world is a much more interesting and wonderful place than the evening news leads us to believe.

T. M. Moore

The present Administration is making a concerted effort to change the face of governance in this era of image and information. These past few weeks of trying to push through a health-care reform package offer a study in the new approach to governing President Obama and his cohort have determined to pursue.

Essentially, we might call this government by campaign. The President pursues his agenda of policies and programs as if each one were an item to be elected by the people. He trots around the country speaking at town hall meetings, rallies, and invitation-only events, holds more press conferences than any president in history, and makes deals with every hesitating lawmaker in order to ensure that the votes he needs will be there when he wants them. This looks more like the run-up to a party convention than the serious business of managing the public weal.

In governing a nation, elected officials are bound by law, precedent, and the processes of legislative creation and review. This in itself can be a rather nasty business, as backroom bargains and sweetheart deals are often added to the task of vote-getting when more noble appeals, such as to the common weal, fail to do the job. Add to this the incessant campaign rhetoric - rife with cliches, anecdotes, hyperbole, and spin - that has become the stock-in-trade of this Administration, and all semblance of good governance becomes swallowed up in the imperative of getting what the President wants. Almost nothing is pressed on the basis of Constitutional necessity, sound reason, or even common sense. What matters most is accomplishing an agenda, striking while the iron is hot, while Democrats still hold a majority, in order to further and fasten the grip of government on the lives of its citizens.

But can this constant cajoling, badgering, and promising everything to the public make us a stronger nation? Or will it only wear us down, until we give away more of our liberties to elite cadres of lawmakers in our nation's capital? Campaign rhetoric is temporal, trivial, and, very often, truthless. Government control over our lives and liberties, by contrast, is difficult to roll back. If we yield to the campaigning approach to governance, we can be sure of this much: more politicians will be fanning out to fan the flames for whatever might be the next big thing, promising us the moon but leaving us only with fewer liberties.

If I thought President Obama spent as much time talking with God about his policies as he does stumping for them around the country, I might be willing to give them a closer look. As it stands, I don't believe the President is interested in governing. What the President wants, it seems to me, is to win, and winning is the work of campaigns. Serving is the work of governance.

T. M. Moore

Unable to convince members of their own party to commit political suicide, Democratic leaders are contemplating the use of a procedure called, "deeming," to bring the health care reform bill to passage. In this procedure House members do not need to actually vote for the Senate bill; they can simply "deem" it to have passed, then amend it as they like before sending it back.

Sounds all very Constitutional, doesn't it? The sort of thing the Founders would have written into the document they hoped would inaugurate a "new order of the ages." Except, of course, they didn't. Turns out our contemporary politicos are turning the novis ordo seclorum into something right out of the pages of the most egregious, self-serving, and corrupt political orders of the past and present. Most astonishing of all, they're counting on us, the electorate, not noticing - or not caring.

The "deeming" procedure also goes by the name "the self-executing" procedure, referring to a bill's ability, magically, to execute itself into law. More likely, if this procedure is used, the "self-executing" will refer to those House members who support it. It's also called the "Slaughter" provision - and that, too, may have a prophetic element to it.

Let's face it: Democrats want this bill because of the control it gives them over the private sector of American life. But they don't want to take responsibility for it. We can almost imagine House members, as the dust settles after using this procedure, Saul-like, before their constituents back home: "I didn't vote for the health care bill; the Senate, they..." And so on.

It is not comforting to know that the affairs of the nation and the common weal are in the hands of spineless, self-serving schemers, or that our self-proclaimed Christian president would allow such a blatantly dishonest and deceitful tactic to be used in the pursuit of his agenda.

T. M. Moore

As of this writing we're still awaiting the final House vote on health care reform, although, with the President's "cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die" executive order promise to Bart Stupak, the outcome seems anticlimactic. It's pretty clear that, by the time you read this, health care reform will be the law of the land.

This past year of the Obama Administration has focused the attention of the American people on the politics of Washington, D. C., like few issues I've ever seen. Politics, it is now plain (if it wasn't before), is the art of getting what you want by whatever means is necessary. Politicians are the players, together with those whom they must either manipulate or own in order to secure their desire ends. At bottom, the goal of all political activity is to secure and retain, if not increase, personal power. Politicians are drunk on power - the sense of importance and the perks and deference that come with power are, for those who have tasted it, too alluring to deny or refuse. Once tasted, power must be acquired by every possible means.

All the deals, compromises, off-line agreements, budget fixes, amendments, and assorted other legislative devices are merely ways of gaining and keeping power. You may say you need that $100 million for a hospital in your state, or that break for the elderly or those affected by natural disaster, but it's really all about you, and what you have to do in order to get the people who ceded their political power to you to allow you to keep it and keep expanding it.

The framework of American politics is just; the practice of it is corrupt, encouraging just about every form of self-serving machination anyone can invent to help make sure that everyone gets what they want by whatever means. The abuses are about equally distributed on both sides of the aisle, because the players on both sides are unable to restrain themselves when power is on the line.

I can't help but feel sad for our country as I watch this dance of drunkards cavorting around the halls of Congress and the White House high-fiving one another for their latest achievement. The process sickens me, yet the only way to change it is to stay in it and try to influence for good at least some of the players, so that matters of truth and goodness will one day, hopefully, supplant matters of mere self-interest.

But don't hold your breath. Politics is not the way to lasting change in this or any nation.

T. M. Moore