Ignore the Battleground Polls As Well

It seems that President Trump is trailing in the polls again. In other “shocking” news, it seems that only women menstruate; “green energy” is a massive scam; Trump-Russia collusion was a massive hoax; media leftists hate America; and on everything from masks, to guns, to lives that matter, liberals are hypocrites. As I noted back in January of this year, Americans—especially Trump supporters—should pay little to no attention to the national polls on the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.

Again, such polls are usually not designed to inform us—as they should—but rather to form public opinion. This is true of the polls in the so-called “battleground” states as well. Again, 2016 provides the valuable lesson here.

People define battleground states differently. For purposes of this piece, I’ll define a “battleground state” as a state that was won—by either Trump or Hillary—in 2016 by less than 5 percentage points. There were eleven such states in 2016. Six were won by President Trump (margin of victory in the parentheses): North Carolina (3.66%), Arizona (3.55%), Florida (1.20%), Wisconsin (0.77%), Pennsylvania (0.72%), and Michigan (.23%). Five were won by Hillary: Colorado (4.91%), Maine (2.96%), Nevada (2.42%), Minnesota (1.52 %), and New Hampshire (0.37%).

Going into the 2016 election, according to the Real Clear Politics (RCP) polling average, Hillary Clinton led Donald Trump in seven out of 11 battleground states (Hillary’s RCP polling average lead in parentheses): WI (6.5%), PA (2.1%), MI (3.6%), CO (3.0%), ME (5.5%), MN (6.3%), and NH (0.3%). In other words, Donald Trump won three of the battleground states—WI, PA, and MI—where he (supposedly) trailed significantly in polls done just days prior to the election. Additionally, whether he won the state or not, Trump outperformed the RCP polling average in seven out of 11 battleground states. He did so by an average margin of 3.5 %.

However, since the RCP average is typically only the handful of polls just prior to the election—which are often, and “amazingly!” (hear my sarcasm) more accurate—it is more informative to examine the polls months prior to the election. After all, these are the ones that are used in the nefarious attempts to shape public opinion. Let’s look at the battleground polls that were done almost exactly four years ago, in July and August of 2016.

In the July-August polls reported by RCP, Hillary had a polling average lead in all but one (AZ) of the 11 battleground states. The numbers in parentheses are her average lead at the time: NC (2.2%), FL (1.9%), WI (6.8%), PA (6.1%), MI (6.9 %), CO (8.6%), ME (only a single poll: 10%), NV (0.8%), MN (RCP reports only seven polls in 2016. The average Hillary lead: 7.0%.), and NH (9.3%). In the final 2016 election result, Trump outperformed every one of these polling averages except one (NV). He did so by an average of 6.2%.

According to the RCP polling, currently, Joe Biden leads President Trump in every battleground state poll average (Biden’s lead in parentheses): NC (2.0%), AZ (2.8%), FL (7.0%), WI (6.0%), PA (7.3%), MI (8.0%), CO (only a single poll: 10.0%), ME (10.3%), NV (4.0%), MN (11.4%), and NH (4.3%). Note how similar these results are to the 2016 numbers.

It is also worth noting that today’s media is much more afraid of a second term for President Trump than they were of a potential first term for then candidate Donald Trump. This is why, along with their polling games, we had to endure years of a Trump-Russia-collusion hoax, are bombarded daily with Wuhan virus case counts—which are about as meaningless as the presidential polls—told that we must remain in some form of shutdown mode, and are nightly exposed to scenes of riots and destruction.

Democrats in 2016 thought Donald Trump was a joke and Hillary was a shoo-in. Having seen what he’s capable of accomplishing, even in the face of unprecedented opposition, democrats in 2020 are terrified of giving Donald Trump four more years. Thus, the portrayal of near-constant chaos across America.

In other words, all in the name of getting rid of President Trump, Democrats and their like-minded allies in the media are invested in the continued suffering of Americans. As Tucker Carlson recently put it,

Democrats understand that the unhappier Americans become, the more likely they are to win. Unhappy people want change. It is not complicated. So, every ominous headline about the state of the country makes it more likely that Donald Trump will lose his job. The more that people suffer, the greater Joe Biden’s advantage. Democrats have a strong incentive, therefore, to inflict as much pain as they can, and that’s what they are doing.

Instead of laying the blame where it belongs—the Chinese own the Wuhan virus; democrats own the violent, crime-ridden, riotous cities; the media and the democrats own the Trump-Russia-collusion hoax—the media continuously points their crooked finger at President Trump and constantly attempts to blame him and his administration for virtually all that they perceive is wrong in America. Whether true or not, the polls—whether national or state—are meant to sell the notion that most of the voting public is buying what the leftist media is selling.

And so what if the polls are wrong now? What have the drive-by media to lose? If Biden wins, they will have succeeded. If Trump wins, they can tell themselves, “At least we tried.” Their polls months out from the election in 2020 look no worse than they did in 2016, and however the election turns out, the drive-bys—seemingly never undeterred by failed wrong-doings—will move on to their next evil assignment.

Last, if, like me, you’re a Trump supporter, let none of this discourage you. In fact, let it motivate you, as it does me. I’ve never been more enthusiastic about voting for Trump as President of the United States. In 2016, my vote for Trump was more of a vote against Hillary. That’s not the case this year. And every bogus poll, every media lie, every ignorant mask mandate (take note, corporate America), every business closed, every park closed, every school shut down, every statue torn down, every conservative cancelled, every knee bowed at our National Anthem, every hateful, violent act toward our police, and all other such garbage, only further motivates me to cast my ballot for Donald J. Trump!

(See this piece at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Cancel New York (UPDATED)

UPDATE: According to Michael Goodwin at The New York Post, “The family that owns The New York Times were slaveholders.” Mr. Goodwin writes,

It’s far worse than I thought. In addition to the many links between the family that owns The New York Times and the Civil War Confederacy, new evidence shows that members of the extended family were slaveholders.

Last Sunday, I recounted that Bertha Levy Ochs, the mother of Times patriarch Adolph S. Ochs, supported the South and slavery. She was caught smuggling medicine to Confederates in a baby carriage and her brother Oscar joined the rebel army.

I have since learned that, according to a family history, Oscar Levy fought alongside two Mississippi cousins, meaning at least three members of Bertha’s family fought for secession.

Adolph Ochs’ own “Southern sympathies” were reflected in the content of the Chattanooga Times, the first newspaper he owned, and then The New York Times. The latter published an editorial in 1900 saying the Democratic Party, which Ochs supported, “may justly insist that the evils of negro suffrage were wantonly inflicted on them.”

Six years later, the Times published a glowing profile of Confederate President Jefferson Davis on the 100th anniversary of his birth, calling him “the great Southern leader.”

Ochs reportedly made contributions to rebel memorials, including $1,000 to the enormous Stone Mountain Memorial in Georgia that celebrates Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. He made the donation in 1924 so his mother, who died 16 years earlier, could be on the founders’ roll, adding in a letter that “Robert E. Lee was her idol.”

In the years before his death in 1931, Ochs’ brother George was simultaneously an officer of The New York Times Company and a leader of the New York Chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The rest of Goodwin’s piece is a worthy read. And thus, it seems that my call to “cancel New York,” is even more valid than I first thought. Again, at least according to the “standards” the modern left has established. 

ORIGINAL COLUMN: 

When I say “cancel New York,” I mean every bit of it, including the state of New York, New York City, the New York Yankees, the New York Mets, the New York Giants, the New York Jets, and, of course, The New York Times. This is the only way to satisfy the standards already clearly established by the foolish cancel culture that currently plagues the U.S.

In fact, according to cancel culture standards, New York should have been cancelled years ago. As a Thomas Phippen—associate editor at the Daily Caller—piece put it in 2017, “New York Is Named After A Horrendous Slave Trader.” Mr. Phippen wrote,

New York, both the city and the state, is named after the house of York and particularly for James Stuart, then Duke of York, one of the most successful slavers in colonial American history…

James Stuart conquered the settlements between the Delaware and the Connecticut rivers from the Dutch in 1664, and the name of the principal port, New Amsterdam, was promptly changed to honor the new master. James’ brother, King Charles II of England, gave the territory to the duke in exchange for four beaver pelts annually.

The Duke of York, who later became King James II of England (and James VII of Scotland), created Britain’s greatest slave empire known as the Royal African Company, which transported between 90,000 and 100,000 African slaves to the Caribbean and American colonies between 1672 and 1689.

As Phippen also noted, according to Sir Hilary Beckles, the current vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies, after establishing ports along Africa’s Gold Coast, the Royal African Company “soon became the largest single company involved in the slave trade. Between 1680 and 1700 it supplied some 30,000 Africans to the Caribbean.” Beckles adds that, “Slaves purchased for the Royal African Company of England were branded ‘DY,’ Duke of York, after the president of the company.”

According to a 2005 article in The Nation, in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries, slavery was so profitable in the New York area that by 1703, 42 percent of New York households had slaves. Among early colonial American cities, this rate of slave ownership was second only to Charleston, South Carolina. In 2012, writing in the Huffington Post, Alan Singer noted that “Slavery was such a big part of early New York that during the colonial era one in five people living in New York was an enslaved African.”

Mr. Singer also revealed that,

The fact is that New York’s first City Hall was built with slave labor. The first Congress passed the Bill of Rights there and George Washington gave his inaugural speech there. Slaves helped build the wall that Wall Street is named for.

Business Insider notes that—along with Harvard Law School and Georgetown University, which, of course, are not in New York, but, based on current “standards,” also well deserve cancellation—multiple New York landmarks were built by slaves. What’s more, dozens of New York City streets are named for citizens who were prominent slaveholders or slave traders.

The New York Yankees—according to Forbes, the second most valuable sports franchise in the world—has a long history of engaging in real “systemic racism.” As David Marcus of The Federalist noted last year, “The Yankees systematically denied qualified black baseball players the right to make a good living for more than half a century.”

While pointing out the absurdity and the hypocrisy of cancelling Kate Smith and her seminal “God Bless America,” Marcus mockingly adds,

I am deeply offended by the fact that the New York Yankees refused to field a black player for the first half of the 20th century. Don’t tell me that’s just how it was. Don’t tell me it was the rule. Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers had the courage to break that rule in the 1940s, well before the beloved Yankees did. How can this be forgiven?

Of course liberals are quick to forgive—or at least forget—when the cancel culture might actually cost them something that they care about. This is why the Yankees remain—well, I guess they’re still out there somewhere, while the leftists running their league still pretend the Wuhan virus is a real danger—and Kate Smith had to go. As Marcus points out, this is just another example of the “empty virtue signaling” that American leftists are all too comfortable with.

Such “empty virtue signaling,” or cancel culture hypocrisy, is currently on full display all across the U.S., with liberals like those who dominate the media, politics, and culture of New York City leading the way. Their venom has fueled an ignorant rage that, not only has cost people their jobs, but has resulted in widespread death and destruction across the U.S.

As resigning New York Times opinion columnist and editor Bari Weiss put it, this “venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.” For example, when it comes to black lives, the “proper targets” are white cops. Never mind that the vast majority of black Americans who are violently killed are murdered by those who share their skin color, and that this almost always happens in U.S. cities where liberal (democrat) politics and worldview have dominated for decades.

Of course, democrats have long dominated New York politics, which is another reason for cancelling New York. Nothing in the history of the United States has a more racist past than the Democrat Party. As I note in The Miracle and Magnificence of America,

The Confederate States of America was formed at the Montgomery Convention in February of 1861. For the southern states—and anyone else in the world paying attention—the agenda of the newly formed (and electorally victorious) Republican Party agenda was clear. Every party platform since the creation of the Republican Party had forcefully denounced slavery. After the infamous Dred Scott ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857, the subsequent Republican platform strongly condemned the ruling and reaffirmed the right of Congress to ban slavery in the territories. Tellingly, the corresponding Democrat platform praised the Dred Scott ruling and condemned all efforts to end slavery in the U.S.

For six consecutive party platforms—from 1840 through 1860—the Democrat Party defended and promoted the evil institution of slavery in the United States.

Clearly, if one looks hard and far enough, the history of New York is as racist as any other part of America that one might want to cancel. Thus, according to the "standards" of today's left, it is time for New York—and all institutions that share that name—to go the way of all those Confederate statues. Now, if you are part of this cancel culture that is currently sweeping the U.S. but you are not for cancelling New York, you are clearly a hypocrite. If New York, in spite of its history and the history of its namesake, is allowed to stay, then virtually everything else in America targeted by the cancel culture should be left alone as well.

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

What “Systemic Liberalism” Has Wrought

After another weekend of violence in Atlanta—where nearly three dozen were shot and five were killed, including an eight-year-old girl—Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said “enough is enough.” However, because her worldview is corrupted by modern liberalism—which is the case with the leadership in virtually every major U.S. city—she offered no real solutions for the recent epidemic of violence that plagues Atlanta.

As has been widely reported, Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp stepped in and ordered the activation of 1,000 National Guard troops in order to “protect state property and patrol” the streets of Atlanta. In his statement, Kemp declared,

Peaceful protests were hijacked by criminals with a dangerous, destructive agenda. Now, innocent Georgians are being targeted, shot, and left for dead. This lawlessness must be stopped and order restored in our capital city. I have declared a State of Emergency and called up the Georgia Guard because the safety of our citizens comes first. This measure will allow troops to protect state property and dispatch state law enforcement officers to patrol our streets. Enough with the tough talk. We must protect the lives and livelihoods of all Georgians.

Part of the problem in Atlanta—again, like we now see in so many large, Democrat-led U.S. cities—is plummeting police morale. After the death of George Floyd, and the unjust and incorrect accusations of “systemic racism” throughout America, police all over the U.S. were made into scapegoats for what really plagues the urban areas of America. As a result, police officers have been targeted for violence and mayhem simply for wearing their uniforms and doing their jobs.

In addition, police officers have been targeted—and unjustly fired—by their superiors. This has been the case in Atlanta. As a result, a recent wave of “blue flu” has swept through the Atlanta Police Department. Almost certainly, this means dangerous areas of Atlanta are not seeing the usual police presence. Thus the need for the Georgia National Guard.

And thus we see again the sad, sorry results of the “Ferguson Effect.” The “Ferguson Effect,” a phrase coined by Heather MacDonald, says that, when police stop, or reduce, policing—because of political pressure, community pressure, department policies, and the like—criminals are emboldened and crime increases.

Because of democrats’ relentless and dishonest campaign against law enforcement, the Ferguson Effect has led to numerous U.S. cities becoming significantly more dangerous. As John Nolte put it several years ago, “The obvious and predictable result is a rise in violent crime that only hurts predominantly poor, black, inner-city neighborhoods.” Of course, the magnificently foolish calls to “defund the police” or “abolish the police” (as some school districts are now doing) will only ensure that the Ferguson Effect will continue and will result in even more death and destruction in America’s urban areas.

Whatever one’s politics on these matters, one question that often is ignored when it comes to policing and America’s cities is, why do the urban areas of America require more policing in the first place? Why is it that certain parts of America—whether cities, towns, or schools—require very little policing and see almost no crime (certainly little to no violent crime)? I believe the answer is quite simple: Wherever one sees intact, God-fearing families—families with a married mother and father who regularly attend religious services—crime is virtually non-existent.

Of course, sound morality has long revealed this to be the case, but, if you require it, multiple studies have also shown that children raised by a married mother and father are better citizens; e.g., less likely to commit crimes, more likely to perform well in school, and so on. Additionally, multiple studies have shown that religious Americans are more involved with their families, less likely to divorce, do better financially, are more likely to donate their time and other resources to their communities, and are happier and healthier than their non-religious counterparts.

Modern liberalism’s war on the family and faith has been particularly devastating to fathers, and this has been particularly devastating to America’s youth and the communities that must deal with the consequences of fatherless children. Among many other sad outcomes, fatherlessness is one of the leading predictors of future criminal activity. Children from single-parent homes (almost always without a father) are

more likely to…engage in questionable behavior, struggle academically, and become delinquent.  Problems with children from fatherless families can continue into adulthood. These children are three times more likely to end up in jail by the time they reach age 30 than are children raised in intact families, and have the highest rates of incarceration in the United States.

Additionally, fatherlessness is the single greatest cause of poverty in the U.S. As Robert Rector pointed out years ago, “Being raised in a married family reduced a child’s probability of living in poverty by about 80 percent.” In order to further their big government agenda, modern liberals often point to education as the answer to poverty in America. However, marriage is a far better weapon against poverty than is education. Again, as Rector points out, “being married has the same effect in reducing poverty that adding five to six years to a parent’s level of education has.” In addition, a child living in a single-parent home in which the parent is a college graduate is nearly twice as likely to live in poverty as a child living with their married parents whose highest level of education is completing high school.

Marriage provides the safest environment for children. In addition to being much more likely to live in crime-ridden communities, children born to single moms face much more danger inside the home than do children living with their married parents. As marripedia points out:

• The rate of physical abuse is 3 times higher in the single parent family.
• The rate of physical abuse is 4 times higher if the mother is cohabiting with the child’s biological father (unmarried).
• The rate of physical abuse is 5 times higher if the child is living in a married step family.
• The rate of physical abuse is 10 times higher if the mother is cohabiting with a boyfriend.

The rates for sexual abuse are even worse than physical abuse:

• The rate of sexual abuse is 5 times higher in the single parent family and when both biological parents are cohabiting (i.e., unmarried).
• The rate of sexual abuse is 8.6 times higher if the child is living in a married step family.
• The rate of sexual abuse is 20 times higher if the mother is cohabiting with a boyfriend.

As tragic as the outcomes of the Ferguson Effect are, the “Fatherless Effect” is much more wide-ranging, common, and deadly in American society. Of course, systemic liberalism is responsible for both. If today’s liberals have “accomplished” anything, they have given us the destruction of the biblical family model and the removal of God from virtually every public institution in America. No amount of policing, no number of soldiers can make up for either. And neither can the racist, Marxist Black Lives Matter organization—or any of their like-minded ilk.

If America wants our city streets to be safe, if we want our communities and schools to function properly, we must abandon the “principles” of modern liberalism and fix our homes and our hearts. To do that, we must look to the One who made us and what His Word says in all of these matters.

(See this column at American Thinker.) 

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Revival Lit the Fire for the American Revolution (Taken from The Miracle and Magnificence of America.)

Between the colonial and Revolutionary periods of American history came what historians have dubbed the (first) “Great Awakening.” Near the beginning of the eighteenth century, many churches under Puritan influence were beginning to be riddled with “comfortable pews.” This does not mean that such churches were filled with comfortably padded pews that lulled congregants into a comfortable sleep, but rather these churches were, as we see in much of today’s America, lacking in passionate Christianity.

Thus began a growing concern about the secularization of New England. The lack of passionate Christianity, along with the coinciding adoption of certain liberal interpretations of Scripture and a turn toward the secular, greatly concerned ministers such as Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Prince, and William Cooper. By the 1730s, passionate and animated pleas for the souls of the lost became widespread. A common refrain was soon heard throughout the colonies: “God was an angry judge, and humans were sinners!”

The earliest principle figure of this period of spiritual revival was the brilliant and pious Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was literally born into Christian ministry. His father was a Congregationalist minister, and his mother, Esther Stoddard Edwards, was the daughter of renowned Massachusetts minister Solomon Stoddard.

Jonathan Edwards succeeded his grandfather as pastor of the church at Northampton. Later, Edwards accepted a role as pastor of a church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Jonathan Edwards loved the pulpit, and according to BJU Press, he was more teacher and preacher than pastor. In late 1734 and early 1735, revival broke out in Northampton. By the summer of 1735, it ended, but the seeds for something more lasting were planted. Enter the mighty George Whitefield.

Whitefield is generally considered “The Father of the Great Awakening.” Born in England in 1714, Whitefield entered Pembroke College at Oxford at age 17. There he joined a group called the “Holy Club,” where he befriended John and Charles Wesley. John Wesley led the group, and as a result of their “methodical” ways, critics took to calling them “Methodists.” Of course, the name stuck.

Upon graduating and receiving his BA, Whitefield was ordained at 22. He began his preaching in the British towns of Bath, Bristol, and Gloucester. However, he felt the call to join General Oglethorpe’s colony in Georgia. In 1738 Whitefield left for North America. It was not long before most of Georgia had heard of this young preacher with the booming voice and wild pulpit antics. News of Whitefield and his preaching soon spread throughout the colonies.

In 1739, after a brief return to England in hopes of securing land and funding for an orphanage in Georgia, Whitefield came back to America and would preach throughout the colonies. Jonathan Edwards invited Whitefield to preach in Northampton, Massachusetts. Whitefield’s message resonated with rich and poor, farmers and tradesmen, church-goers and sinners—virtually everyone within earshot of Whitefield, which, according to Ben Franklin, in open space, was 30,000 people!

Whitefield was not alone. Along with Edwards, men like Isaac Backus, David Brainerd, James Davenport, Samuel Davies, Theodore Frelinghuysen, Jonathan Mayhew, Shubal Stearns, the Tennent brothers (Gilbert, John, William), and others implored settlers and Natives alike to trust in Christ and Christ alone for salvation. Their message of repentance caught fire up and down the American East Coast. In the words of Brainerd, the ongoing revival was like an “irresistible force of a mighty torrent or swelling deluge.”

After the event at Pentecost as recorded in the Bible in Acts Chapter Two, and after the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, many evangelicals of the eighteenth century considered the revival that was The Great Awakening as the third extraordinary outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Such spiritual power can spawn change that is felt world-wide. This was certainly the case with The First Great Awakening, for it was in the pulpits of American churches that the seeds of Revolution were sown. The British certainly thought so, as they blamed what they derisively described as the “Black Robed Regiment” for the thirst in the Colonies for American Independence. Modern historians have noted, “There is not a right asserted in the Declaration of Independence which had not been discussed by the New England clergy before 1763.” The Great Awakening played no small role in helping to unite the American Colonies against the British.

For example, in 1750 the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, a Harvard graduate, Congregationalist minister, and pastor of West Church in Boston, published A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers. Out of this was born a sermon entitled “The Morning Gun of the American Revolution.” In this, Mayhew uses Romans 13 to justify throwing off the tyrannical yoke of England.

In 1765, Mayhew gave a powerful sermon railing against the evils of King George III’s hated Stamp Act. Mayhew declared,

The king is as much bound by his oath not to infringe on the legal rights of the people, as the people are bound to yield subjection to him. From whence it follows that as soon as the prince sets himself above the law, he loses the king in the tyrant.

According to historian Alice Mary Baldwin, joining Mayhew in leading the opposition to the Stamp Act were the Reverends Andrew Eliot, Charles Chauncey, and Samuel Cooper. George Whitefield accompanied Ben Franklin—whom he had befriended—to Parliament to protest the Act. Franklin revealed to Parliament that Americans would never willingly submit to the Stamp Act. A month later, in March of 1766, celebrating the repeal of the Act, Whitefield recorded in his journal, “Stamp Act repealed, Gloria Deo.”

John Witherspoon, Presbyterian minister, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton)—in 1776, on a national day of prayer and fasting, preached a sermon entitled The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men. The sermon included the following:

There can be no true religion, till there be a discovery of your lost state by nature and practice, and an unfeigned acceptance of Christ Jesus, as he is offered in the gospel. Unhappy are they who either despise his mercy, or are ashamed of his cross. Believe it, ‘There is no salvation in any other.’ ‘There is no other name under heaven given amongst men by which we must be saved.’ Unless you are united to him by a lively faith, not the resentment of a haughty monarch, the sword of divine justice hangs over you, and the fulness of divine vengeance shall speedily overtake you…

If your cause is just, you may look with confidence to the Lord, and intreat him to plead it as his own. You are all my witnesses, that this is the first time of my introducing any political subject into the pulpit. At this season, however, it is not only lawful but necessary, and I willingly embrace the opportunity of declaring my opinion without any hesitation, that the cause in which America is now in arms, is the cause of justice, of liberty, and of human nature.

Preachers and teachers like Witherspoon had a profound impact in forming the United States of America. Among his students included James Madison, future U.S. President and “Father of the Constitution,” Aaron Burr, future U.S. Vice President, twelve future Continental Congress members, forty-nine U.S. representatives, twenty-eight senators, three Supreme Court justices, and a secretary of state. As America’s Schoolmaster, Noah Webster, would later note, “The learned clergy…had great influence in founding the first genuine republican governments ever formed and which, with all the faults and defects of the men and their laws, were the best republican governments on earth.”

According to historian David Barton,

When Paul Revere set off on his famous ride, it was to the home of the Rev. [Jonas] Clark in Lexington that he rode. Patriot leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams were lodging (as they often did) with the Rev. Clark. After learning of the approaching British forces, Hancock and Adams turned to Pastor Clark and inquired of him whether the people were ready to fight. Clark unhesitatingly replied, “I have trained them for this very hour!"

As a result of this First Great Awakening, America was beginning to unite. Americans were beginning to rediscover the Covenant Way. One nation under God became the political as well as the spiritual legacy of The Great Awakening.

Contrast the faith-filled, Spirit-led American Revolution with the godless, lawless, mindless demands for “revolution!” in today’s America. Instead of revival, the mob that’s burning, looting, assaulting, and killing their way through the U.S. are motivated by pure evil. They are more rotten fruit of the liberalism that’s so prevalent in much of America today. Thus, we again see that any “revolution” not born of the Spirit of God is doomed to disaster, destruction, death, and failure. In other words, the only way to real, lasting positive change in any family, community, or nation is the way of the cross.

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com