Charlie Cook writes: “Don’t be surprised if the barometric pressure in Washington’s atmosphere and the blood pressures of many Beltway denizens shoot up this week. As emotional, important, and timely as the debates over immigration and gun control are, the increasing likelihood that budget sequestration will, in fact, kick in March 1 is just now starting to sink in.”

“Meanwhile, corporate CEOs are flying to Washington to hector Congress to deal with the budget problem. Some old-time Hill experts suggest that these captains of industry would accomplish more if they fanned out across the country in an attempt to build public support for compromise, because grassroots pressure would enable more members to go along with a deal. Members need air cover back home—support that business leaders could provide, rather than tiresome lectures in Washington press conferences and at photo ops.”

I agree; we should immediately begin the mobilization of pastors and pews to contact — read tongue-lash and rail against — local Congressman and U.S. Senators to decry the immoral debt being piled on our kids and grandkids because Congress lacks the guts to make hard, painful decisions and cut spending.

Os Guinness’ A Free People’s Suicide, page 24-26:

ALL ISSUES POINT TO FREEDOM Third, sustainable freedom is urgent for America because many of the crises facing the United States have a direct bearing on freedom. The debt crisis is the most obvious. The question “What kind of a people do you think you are?” has been raised savagely by the grand financial crisis of 2008 and the recession that followed it. These two events were of world significance because they created the first global crisis history that was caused principally by the United States, and they raise major questions for the republic.The first concerns the link between debt and freedom; the second concerns the mounting inequities between America’s super-rich and everyone else; and the third concerns the place of money in national life when more and more of politics is “up for sale” and the United States resembles a plutocracy as much as a democracy.

The blunt fact is that America’s grand promotion of debt-leveraged consumerism has stood Max Weber’s famous thesis about the rise of capitalism on its head. It has scorned the early-American stress of hard work, savings, and delayed gratification, and turned Americans into a nation of perpetual debtors who are now chided even by the Chinese and the Indians for their irresponsibility and “addiction to debt”. The chickens are now coming home to roost, though so far most warnings have been dismissed as Chicken Little alarmism and the spending goes on. The George W. Bush administration, for example, financed the Iraq War through loans held by the Chinese rather than through taxes shouldered by the generation that declared the war. And the Obama administration has plunged the country even deeper still. Indeed, as observed in light of the Iraq and Afghan wars, the tax cuts, the Wall Street bailouts, the stimulus packages and the new health care provisions, never has one generation spent so much of its children’s wealth in such a short period and with so little to show for it.

The Supreme Court removed the Bible from public schools in 1963 — by an 8-1 majority vote. Lone dissenting Justice Potter Stewart blasted: “It led not to true neutrality with respect to religion, but to the establishment of a religion of secularism.”

This “religion of secularism” has produced red ink as far as the eye can see, homosexuals praying at the Inauguration, tax-funded abortion, homosexual marriage in several States, Evangelicals held in contempt, and God expelled from the classrooms of America — and the public square.

Propagandists erasing Him from our nation’s history books are not our biggest problem. America’s public school children — babies — live in a war zone, the by-product of godless paganism and “an agnostic West.” Proselytized and tutored by these false gods, the arch-enemy of Biblical morality is A Free People’s Suicide: false gods that demand the whole man.

Where are the Men of Issachar? “From the tribe of Issachar, there were 200 leaders of the tribe with their relatives. All these men understood the signs of the times and knew the best course for Israel to take.” The biblical context speaks to politics.

There is good news, I suppose; at least we’ve removed the Ten Commandments (you might eyeball number 7) from our public schools — now being removed from our public buildings — as we worship the golden calves and false gods of “godless humanism”, “multiculturalism” and “political correctness”.

A note to the pulpits of America: this is “inexcusable, open, blatant, united idolatry”; sleep on.

“Righteousness exalts a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.”

If the glory of a nation lies in it’s righteousness — and not in its wealth or military might — Americans have boarded the wrong train.

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.” Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Pastor Bonhoeffer — hung naked by a piano wire at one of the last commands of Adolf Hitler — knew a little bit about boarding the wrong train.

If the key to maintaining sustainable freedom is righteousness — the virtue that produced freedom — what is the greatest threat to freedom? Unrighteousness. America has left God. Christians, get on your knees.

The estimated 65-80 million Evangelical Christians in America must engage the culture through voter registration and get-out-the-vote.

WHAT PASTORS MUST DO

Bible-believing Christian pastors must prod their parishioners to engage the culture through being registered to vote and voting — 100% of each congregation is the objective. There is no such thing as a non-religious education — or a non-religious society — as someone’s values are going to reign supreme.

Christians must be salt and light in a decaying culture. The people doing this to our country must be removed from elected office and places of leadership. The Church of the Living God must be registered and vote — in every election — as sons and daughters of Jesus Christ.

“Politicians are actors performing a script that is written by the audience.” Russell Kirk

Former U.S. Congressman Bob McEwen adds: “The audience controls the stage.” Evangelicals don’t get it.

Will a Gideon or Rahab the Harlot please stand?

Photo Credit: John H. Wright (Creative Commons)