Is It Anti-American to Criticize the Moral Conduct of the United States?
Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York state, recently wrote in USA Today: "The brilliance of the Founding Fathers has been confirmed by the astonishing success of their experiment in republican democracy" (Dec. 7, 2004). Yet the United States owes far more to God than those founding fathers, who played a pivotal pioneering role in shaping the nation's destiny, could imagine.
Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York state, recently wrote in USA Today: "The brilliance of the Founding Fathers has been confirmed by the astonishing success of their experiment in republican democracy" (Dec. 7, 2004). Yet the United States owes far more to God than those founding fathers, who played a pivotal pioneering role in shaping the nation's destiny, could imagine.
Strange as it may sound, many Americans are the descendants of the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (later renamed Israel). The nation has been a major recipient of the great national blessings that God repeatedly promised would come to Abraham's descendants (Genesis 13:16; 15:5; 17:5-7; 18:17-18; 22:16-18).
These astounding blessings were never completely fulfilled in ancient Israel and Judah. But these and other promised blessings have been fulfilled primarily in the United States, Britain and other major English-speaking nations. (For the biblical and historical evidence of America's true national and prophetic identity, please request or download our free booklet The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy).
With incredible national blessings comes heavy national responsibility! Like our forefathers in ancient Israel, we have an obligation to live up to our heritage and godly calling as a nation.
The United States, along with Britain, has spread more Bibles around the world than any other countries by far. This fact deepens America's responsibility to live by the laws given in the Word of God, setting a right example for other nations.
Today the United States is seriously neglecting obedience to God's Ten Commandments. Many, in fact, don't even know what they are! It is the duty of God's Church to call these moral failures to the attention of our peoples. It is not anti-American to see a nation traveling in a wrong direction and to urge a national course correction.
Midge Decter, American author, social critic and recipient of the National Humanities Medal, delivered a thought-provoking lecture during a conference on marriage and the family. Her concluding words bear heavily on this theme: "Let's take back our country. Let us be decent, civil and even loving to our homosexual fellow citizens, but draw the line on what they stand for and everything else that makes light of our existence.
"For the privilege of living in the most nobly founded, the freest and the richest country in the world we owe nothing less, not only to ourselves but also to the oncoming tide of generations. We are given the choice of leaving them with a blessing or a curse. Not so many people in the world have that choice. I hope we can go down in history as having deserved it" (Imprimis, November 2004). GN
An Article from:
Good News Magazine: January - February 2005
Course Content
John Ross Schroeder
John died on March 8, 2014, in Oxford, England, four days after suffering cardiac arrest while returning home from a press event in London. John was 77 and still going strong.
Some of John's work for The Good News appeared under his byline, but much didn't. He wrote more than a thousand articles over the years, but also wrote the Questions and Answers section of the magazine, compiled our Letters From Our Readers, and wrote many of the items in the Current Events and Trends section. He also contributed greatly to a number of our study guides and Bible Study Course lessons. His writing has touched the lives of literally millions of people over the years.
John traveled widely over the years as an accredited journalist, especially in Europe. His knowledge of European and Middle East history added a great deal to his articles on history and Bible prophecy.
In his later years he also pastored congregations in Northern Ireland and East Sussex, and that experience added another dimension to his writing. He and his wife Jan were an effective team in our British Isles office near their home.
John was a humble servant who dedicated his life to sharing the gospel—the good news—of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God to all the world, and his work was known to readers in nearly every country of the world.
