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Fearful Churches Are Failing to Teach Americans Moral Character, Says Pastor
epoch times ^ | 1 April A.D. 2023 | Beth Brelje

Posted on 04/01/2023 7:53:37 PM PDT by lightman

A recent poll showing a decline in traditional American values confirms what conservatives have been saying: the character of America is changing.

The percentage of those polled who said patriotism is important dropped from 70 percent 25 years ago, to 38 percent today. While 59 percent said having children was important 25 years ago, now just 30 percent do. And the importance of religion dropped from 62 percent to 39 percent now calling it important.

The poll, released in March 2023, was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and funded by the Wall Street Journal.

Those who are older understand what this country was, and how we are devolving, said Rev. C.L. Bryant, a senior fellow at Freedom Works, a group that advocates for freedom and small government.

Churches are failing this country, Bryant said in a speech this week at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, an annual gathering of conservatives. He said Americans are slowly being enslaved and he aimed to encourage people to build a fire in their hearts and restore the light of patriotism to the nation.

“Americans, whether you know it or not, there are countries around this world who’ve always looked to us for leadership. For strength. For encouragement. But even now, on the faces of Americans, the light of this world, they are beginning to see fear. They are beginning to see us in a state where, they understand, that we are being hoodwinked. We are being bamboozled. And our children are being swindled out of their American heritage,” Bryant said. “In too many cases it is because the churches in this country are failing the congregants. This faith-based nation, like we have been even in our founding, is failing in what our founders saw it could be, for people of moral character.”

For the first time in our nation’s history, he said, over 65 percent of children from the ages of 7 to 17 have never been to a church, synagogue, or mosque.

Political Correctness

He chastised pastors for not preaching truth to their churches.

“Pastors … because of political correctness, there are certain things that you are beginning to leave out of your sermons on Sundays. And you’re leaving your congregants unclothed, and certainly exposed to the attack of political wolves in this country,” Bryant, a Christian, said.

He spoke of Jesus being crucified over the politics of his day.

“[Jesus] took them head-on. He came and overturned tables. He came with a righteous anger over how they were manipulated, and how they were duping God’s people. He came to set them free,” Bryant said. “It cost Him His life. It cost Him a crucifixion. And the American pastor today understands the story of Christ, but they don’t understand the mission of setting the captives free.”

Many pastors and congregants are afraid of a sort of crucifixion today, he said.

Our nation is dying, he said, and it can die if we don’t understand the nature of what the mission is.

“With Easter Sunday coming, the day that we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, it is time for us to understand, pastors and congregants … that without the crucifixion, without them coming after you with sharp objects, without them trying to tear you down, and the struggle—without the crucifixion, there is no resurrection. And my friends, the resurrection of America is certainly necessary now. Because there has been a purposeful destruction of our moral character.”

Slaves Seek Comfort

Bryant spoke of the trap of accepting handouts from the government. The slave does not necessarily seek freedom, he said, but rather, comfort.

“The slave will trade his freedom for more food in his bowl and for a roof that doesn’t leak over his head. The slave will trade his freedom for a paycheck that comes without work,” Bryant said.

“Americans, you are slowly being enslaved. It is time now for you to wake up and understand that the tools of our destruction are truly working on our young people, because they love free stuff, and they love your stuff. They want your stuff, because they may never accumulate things, in the way it is going, on their own. So that presents a certain peril for all of us who have worked hard and experienced the American way of prosperity and success. There is a generation coming behind us and slowly being suffocated by the principles of big government.”

“My friends, it is time for you to stand up and push back,” Bryant said, encouraging the crowd to not let anyone take from them what they fought wars for. “I want you to take account of what our fathers have bought and paid for with blood. Take account of that. If we let anyone—Democrat, Republican, whoever they are—take from us what our fathers bought and paid for. Not without a fight.”

And with that, the crowd stood in applause.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy; US: Pennsylvania
KEYWORDS: character; churches; moral; moralabsolutes
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I believe that we must raise the cross
at the center of the marketplace
as well as on the steeple of the church.

I do not believe that Jesus was crucified in a church between two candles,
but on a cross between two thieves,
at a crossroads of politics so cosmopolitan
they had to write His title
in Hebrew
in Latin,
and in Greek.

At the kind of place
where cynics talk smut,
and thieves curse,
and soldiers gamble.

Because that is where He died.
and that is what He died about.

And that is where the church ought to be.
and that is what church people ought to be about.

1 posted on 04/01/2023 7:53:37 PM PDT by lightman
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To: lightman

Rev. C.L. Bryant, a senior fellow at Freedom Works, speaks at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference on March 31, 2023.

2 posted on 04/01/2023 7:54:46 PM PDT by lightman (I am a binary Trinitarian. Deal with it!)
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To: fatima; Fresh Wind; st.eqed; xsmommy; House Atreides; Nowhere Man; PaulZe; brityank; Physicist; ...

Pennsylvania Ping!

Please ping me with articles of interest.

FReepmail me to be added to the list.

3 posted on 04/01/2023 7:56:08 PM PDT by lightman (I am a binary Trinitarian. Deal with it!)
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To: lightman

If I were Pastor, I’d be preaching the 10 Commandments, the 7 deadly sins, and for June I’d preach Genesis chapter 19, and Romans chapter 1 verses 24-27.


4 posted on 04/01/2023 7:58:05 PM PDT by EvilCapitalist (81 million votes my ass.)
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To: lightman

Churches need to teach the character of God, then they need to preach tue gospel. People are evil and inclined to evil and then thanks be to God for Jesus sacrifice we are blessed to spend eternity with Him.
Churches preach “Love love love” these days. And not much beyond that.


5 posted on 04/01/2023 8:09:50 PM PDT by vpintheak (Live free, or die!)
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To: EvilCapitalist

“and for June I’d preach Genesis chapter 19,”

Not Lots best side.


6 posted on 04/01/2023 8:27:14 PM PDT by TexasGator
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To: lightman

Our pastor is on the cutting edge!!
Jack Hibbs, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills.
https://calvarycch.org/


7 posted on 04/01/2023 8:33:39 PM PDT by pollywog (" O thou who changest not....ABIDE with me")
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To: lightman

Too many churches are preaching anything and everything except for Biblical teachings. The “pastors’ have discarded the Bible and instead teach from governmental handbooks instructing them to embrace the leftist’s doctrine. If your church is doing such, you should leave and find a Bible believing church that does not promote the narrative that we should endorse the sinners actions in order to not offend them.

Pastors repeat the incorrect phrase that “we should embrace the sinner”. No, we should not! We should instruct them as to why they are wrong and send them out of the Church until they have recognized their sinful ways and acknowledged the truth. For once you let one demon in the door, they will bring others, and soon your church will be filled with nothing but demons.


8 posted on 04/01/2023 8:36:29 PM PDT by CFW (old and retired)
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To: CFW
Pastors repeat the incorrect phrase that “we should embrace the sinner”. No, we should not! We should instruct them as to why they are wrong and send them out of the Church until they have recognized their sinful ways and acknowledged the truth. For once you let one demon in the door, they will bring others, and soon your church will be filled with nothing but demons.

The medieval penitential manuals served a very godly purpose...and then came the utterly misnamed "Enlightenment".

9 posted on 04/01/2023 8:40:19 PM PDT by lightman (I am a binary Trinitarian. Deal with it!)
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To: lightman
The percentage of those polled who said patriotism is important dropped from 70 percent 25 years ago, to 38 percent today.

I look at Joe Sniffer Biden, Harris round heels, a corrupt FBI and DOJ and a WOKE military and I'm NOT proud of my country either.

Our press has sympathy for the killer of 9 year old children ,,, the FBI won't release the manifesto because the corrupt agents are pushing the lie that conservative are 'dangerous'...Yeah, "dangerous" when the last hundred mass murderers have all been democrats, of color or sexual weirdos...

10 posted on 04/01/2023 9:20:24 PM PDT by GOPJ (“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” Beria -(Beria was executed for treason in 1953))
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To: lightman

“The medieval penitential manuals served a very godly purpose...and then came the utterly misnamed ‘Enlightenment’”

___

“Enlightenment” has destroyed more than one American institution. The Church of believers in Jesus Christ is the final one to fall before all is lost.


11 posted on 04/01/2023 9:36:48 PM PDT by CFW (old and retired)
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To: pollywog

He is the pastor that the Gettys call theirs.


12 posted on 04/01/2023 9:53:43 PM PDT by madison10
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To: lightman; CFW
"The medieval penitential manuals served a very godly purpose...and then came the utterly misnamed "Enlightenment"."

The Enlightenment was good and Holy until (primarily) the French Revolution.

The Reasonableness of Christianity, as delivered in the Scriptures. Some people forget this is an Enlightment-era work. Some people don't forget.


13 posted on 04/01/2023 10:21:02 PM PDT by ProgressingAmerica (The historians must be stopped. They're destroying everything.)
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To: GOPJ
I look at Joe Sniffer Biden, Harris round heels, a corrupt FBI and DOJ and a WOKE military and I'm NOT proud of my country either.

BUMP

14 posted on 04/01/2023 10:38:35 PM PDT by Doofer
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To: TexasGator

True, but people need to hear the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and the real reason God destroyed the city. And it has nothing to do with a lack of hospitality, which is what my previous pastor said.


15 posted on 04/02/2023 3:41:39 AM PDT by EvilCapitalist (81 million votes my ass.)
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To: lightman

A few churches in my area fly or post the rainbow flag.


16 posted on 04/02/2023 3:45:45 AM PDT by Vision (Woke is communism and it has no place in America. Election Reform Now! Obama is an evildoer.)
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To: Vision

One church that had proudly posted the rainbow flag and had “Happy Ramadan” on its moveable sign board has gone so broke that their building has been sold.

https://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/news/local/2023/03/31/not-an-easy-thing-st-pauls-united-church-of-christ-in-dallastown-is-being-sold/70060470007/


17 posted on 04/02/2023 4:25:20 AM PDT by lightman (I am a binary Trinitarian. Deal with it!)
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To: lightman

indeed
the church is not called to compromise with the culture


18 posted on 04/02/2023 5:07:19 AM PDT by SisterK (the final variant is communism)
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To: Doofer
I look at Joe Sniffer Biden, Harris round heels, a corrupt FBI and DOJ and a WOKE military and I'm NOT proud of my country either.

BUMP

How do you feel Doofer?

19 posted on 04/02/2023 5:10:52 AM PDT by GOPJ (“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” Beria -(Beria was executed for treason in 1953))
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To: lightman

BkMk


20 posted on 04/02/2023 6:48:27 AM PDT by AlligatorEyes (Iactura paucourm serva multos)
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