If America is going to repent of its idolatry and disobedience, Christians must engage in a massive evangelical effort, the only way of bringing about what Americans really need: a change of heart. The place to start is in worship, the center of the Christian life. Thus repenting of the disobedience of not teaching the nations must start in the pulpit. Christians must be equipped with the Word of God preached, taught, prayed, and sung if they are to faithfully speak prophetically to the culture.

The modern conservative movement came to life in the 1950s around William F. Buckley, Jr. and National Review. Thirty years later Ronald Reagan and the Heritage Foundation brought it into the mainstream. When Newt Gingrich and congressional Republicans took back Congress in 1994, it looked like that in less than fifty years modern conservatism was well on its way to becoming America’s guiding principle of governance.

Today, it is obvious that was not the case. Not only has it not taken over America, but conservatism is not even the guiding principle within the Republican Party. In fact, conservatism, if we define it as a commitment to free markets and individual liberty, is struggling to stay afloat in the world of intellectual thought and think tanks on the right.

We are not going to examine here all the different politicians and institutions claiming to be conservative that really are not. Besides the amount of time it would take, it would really miss the point. We don’t need to spend time calling Americans back to conservatism; we need to call them to faith in Jesus.

Revival Through the Word of God

Our recent enlightenment-driven practice of not bringing God’s Word to public discourse means that over the last seventy years conservatives have essentially engaged in a massive educational effort. Now don’t get me wrong; there is nothing wrong with educating Americans on conservative principles. In these days of tweets, sound bites, and CNN, Americans need a lot of educating. However, the steady collapse of our country into insanity has given Christians clear direction that we need more than the short-lived conservative revival that started seventy years ago.

Buckley was a Christian and it clearly informed how he approached public policy. But he never really sought to fully bring the Word of God to bear in his fight against liberalism in the culture. Likewise, I have worked in public policy for over thirty years. And for most of that time I have worked closely with other Christians in Texas and across the country. The public policies we proposed and implemented more often than not comported with Scripture. And while that was a good thing, it is not enough today. In fact, it never really was.

What the United States is in desperate need of is revival; a revival lead by Christians who do “not shrink from declaring to [our rebellious culture] the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).

A Culture in Rebellion

Most liberals who believe that abortion is a choice, genders are fluid, and humans–along with the rest of the universe–are the products of random chance have hearts that are in rebellion against God. They are determined to cover up the evidence of His work and to create a suitable object of worship in His place–the state. These rebellious souls don’t know God and are in desperate need of hearing His Word. And while that certainly includes the Gospel, it also includes the whole counsel of God on public policy issues. God works in strange ways. It may be that hearing His Word applied to issues such as homelessness, the poor, and education may be what God uses to give unbelieving liberals (Democrats, Socialists, etc.) new hearts with which they will love and serve Him.

To be sure, rebellion against God is not a partisan issue. There are plenty of people who identify as conservative or libertarian who have hearts that hate God. They too are engaged in the attempted coverup and replacement of God. Unbelieving conservatives/moderates might do so, for instance, by attempting to take economic growth out of the hands of God and turn it over to an amalgam of big government and big business. Unbelieving libertarians might claim that the autonomous self without government (or God) is the solution to our problems. Whether Republicans or Independents, these people also need to hear the heart changing Word of God in the context of the public policy debate. Education alone will not move them to drop their idol-building endeavors.

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