10/30/2011 - by Chuck Monan, Preaching Minister

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.  Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

~ President John Adams, Address to

the U.S. Military, October 11, 1798

England was once one of the most Christianized nations on Earth.  In the latter part of the 19th century, three-quarters of English schoolchildren attended Sunday School.  Great expositors of God’s Word like Charles Spurgeon filled the nation’s pulpits.

But times have changed.

Today England is one of the least-religious nations on Earth.  And as fewer of its citizens attend church, more take to the streets to riot, loot and pillage.  If you doubt the connection between the two, consider the opinion of Ninie O’Hara.  O’Hara and her husband left their home congregation at the Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, to, move to England to do mission work. They have lived there for years. When asked what she believed was behind the recent explosions of rebellion and lawlessness, she gave this reply:

Two words: godlessness and socialism.  British society has been influenced by historical Christian thinking – Charles Spurgeon, John Wesley, C.S. Lewis, John Knox – and had Christian values, but given the statistics, it’s likely that the overwhelming majority of the population today has never even met a Christian.  Only 2 percent of the population of the United Kingdom attends church.  The figure is 1 percent in Scandinavia.  Like the rest of Western Europe, England has been thoroughly     evangelized, thoroughly churched and has thoroughly rejected Christianity.  The Brits have filled the void of godlessness in their lives with a nanny government and rules, rules, rules.  England is the most highly regulated society on the planet; regulations govern every facet of human existence.  The Brits seem to believe that if they just pass enough laws, they can control the evil around them.  The riots are evidence that it hasn’t worked.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.  That has finally happened in England.  One-fifth of all British children are raised in homes in which no adult has a job – where they’ve never seen anybody get up, dress and go to work.  One-tenth of the adult population has not done a day’s work since Tony Blair took office in 1997.

We feel all around us a seething anger just under the surface of the “entitled” portion of society.  Government was supposed to fill the God-shaped hole in their lives, but it didn’t.  Government was supposed to solve all their problems, but it hasn’t.  Far from it.  Columnist Mark Steyn pointed out recently that the United Kingdom has the highest drug use in Europe, the highest incidence of sexually transmitted disease, the highest number of single mothers and the highest abortion rate.  Marriage is all but defunct, except for William and Kate, gays, and Muslims.  In that kind of spiritual drought, it doesn’t take much of a spark to set off a fire.

This is what can happen when a once godly nation turns its back on its Christian heritage and embraces a nanny government.  Hello?  Is anyone listening in America?

A good question.