The backlash against the progressivist policies of the Obama Administration is now taking a definitive political shape. The primary focus of the Tea Party Movement and aspiring Republican officer-holders is on fiscal conservativism - saving the country from a crisis of debt, inflation, and renewed recession.

Senator-elect Mark Brown has made his fiscal conservatism clear. So also has Rep. Mark Kirk, the frontrunner to capture the Illinois Senate seat vacated by President Obama. Both men have tasted the political wind and seem to understand clearly which way it's blowing. And both men have declared themselves to be pro-choice social moderates.

The Fox News Tuesday panel, including two conservative journalists, have also made their social moderate views known. Both Steve Hayes and Charles Krauthammer went on the record in support of allowing gays to serve openly in the military. Both men acknowledged that social mores have changed in America, and the only reasonable course is to give in to the moral drift of the day and grant homosexuals institutional recognition, beginning with the military.

This signals a clear break with social conservatism. It does not seem possible, in the near term, to expect Congress or the Court to roll back the tide of immorality that has been the popular norm for at least two decades. Over the past generation Christians have placed their hopes for moral reform on conservative lawmakers and judges, only to be continually disappointed. Now it seems that politics will not be a viable means for recovering standards and practices more in line with Biblical morality.

So before Christians make the mistake of throwing more money and energy at the political arena, in hopes of returning the nation to more traditional moral footings, they should observe present trends and realize that this way lies no solution to the nation's moral ills. And this should tell us that the only place to begin a moral reformation is not in Washington, but in the churches of the land. Pastors who have given up preaching the Law of God and practicing meaningful disciple-making and church discipline must admit that their present approach to ministry has failed the Church and the nation.

The only hope for real renewal is in awakening, and awakening will not proceed without revival in the churches and renewal of their historic mandate to evangelize the lost and make disciples of the saved. Let's face it: we're doing neither of these now. Not there isn't a good deal of preaching and lots of Bible studies and discipleship programs. But with nearly half the nation professing to be born-again believers, we have precious little to show for it.

We must review our practices and renew the work of spiritual formation and moral instruction which our forebears practiced. If we do not, given the political focus of our day, we can only expect that the nation this generation leaves to its children and grandchildren will be more morally corrupt and dangerous than it is at present.

T. M. Moore