Is there hope for spiritual renewal in America? A few days ago we looked back to a time when the economic situation was worse than it is today and learned that America successfully weathered that storm. Is there a time in American history that we can look back to where there was a serious moral decline? The answer is yes.
In the time period following the American revolution up to about 1800 America experienced a significant moral and spiritual decline. Most of the concepts that we would include under the heading of secular humanism arose in France about the time of the American revolution. When France came to our aid in the Revolutionary War it created a great deal of goodwill toward France and made people very open to French ideas. The country was soon flooded with atheistic literature and in a very short time a school of American writers rose up and began to support these new ideas. The most prominent was Thomas Paine, who wrote brilliantly in support of the American revolution before he turned his talents to an anti-Christian crusade. His book, "Age of Reason" probably sold over a million and a half copies, a simply amazing print run for that day and age.
The "Bible" of secular humanism, the French Encyclopedia, was widely read in America during this period. Apparently they even had shadowy George Soros type figures financing the decline. Many of Paine's books and the most damaging French books were either given away or sold at below cost.
While things didn't get as bad as they are now, the decline was serious and it seemed to be gaining momentum. An observer in Connecticut noted that, "Infidel opinions came in like a flood." From Kentucky: "Youth became blasphemers against God. If a young man of real ability had decided to enter the ministry it would have excited astonishment." Another observer from Virginia stated that he expected every educated young man he met to either be an agnostic or an atheist. In about 1795 a student a Yale estimated that there was one believing Christian in each of the freshman and junior classes, about ten in the senior class, and not one believer in the sophomore class.
More and more people decided to live together without getting married. The occupant of the White House, Thomas Jefferson, did not believe in the inspiration of the Bible. He was a big fan of the French revolution and French ideas. Jefferson's secretary of war, Henry Dearborn, had this to say about Christian churches. "So long as these temples stand we cannot hope for good government."
The forces of darkness were very confident. Paine said, "I have gone through the Bible as a man would go through a wood with and ax and felled trees. Here they lie and the priests may replant them, but they will never grow." The French philosopher Voltaire claimed that by the early 1800's the bible would have passed "into the limbo of forgotten literature."
So what happened? There were still a lot of people alive who remembered the great outpouring of the Spirit of God that took place in the 1740's. They began to pray. And starting in 1799, God began to answer. For the next 35+ years, there was always at least one community somewhere in the United States that was experiencing a revival; an unusual outpouring of the Spirit of God. Hundreds of thousands of people became converted. The entire moral landscape of America was transformed.
Pray for revival. The situation is NOT hopeless. Pray for revival until revival comes or until the day you die. And when you get to heaven, if revival hasn't come yet, keep praying. There is still hope for America, just as there is hope for all the other nations of this world. Prayer is the key.
"Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up." (Luke 18:1 NIV)
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