The American experiment in democracy is wrapped around precious terms such as rights and liberties: The freedom of expression; the free exercise of religion; due process rights such as legal representation; and, because of the diversity of America, principled pluralism. It is my argument that all of these freedoms are under siege. Each is being challenged by a Postmodern culture that values attaining individual autonomy through outright coercion and enforcing ideological intolerance in the name of selective exclusivity. Such developments are altering the American experiment—for the worse.

God’s Word identifies a false kingdom, the kingdom of darkness, ruled over by Satan (meaning “adversary”), which parallels and challenges God’s kingdom. It is a kingdom with false philosophies (Colossians 2:8), false religions (1 Corinthians 10:19-20), false ministers (2 Corinthians 11:14-15), false doctrine (1 Timothy 4:1; 2 Peter 2:10) and false Christs (1 John 2:18, 4:3). Satan is therefore leading a rebellion against God. The salient issue in this rebellion is who has the right to rule the universe—God or him? Apparently, one-third of the angelic host joined Satan is his rebellion. Humanity has also joined this rebellion (see Genesis 3) and, before we trust Christ, we are citizens of Satan’s kingdom.

The American higher education system has become totally dependent on its students amassing huge debt to finance a college degree. It is now a system in crisis. The basic statistics explain the nature of the crisis. Josh Mitchell of the Wall Street Journal explains that borrowers owe more than $1.5 trillion in student loans, an average of $34,000 per person. Over two million of them have defaulted on their loans in the past six years, and that number grows by 1,400 each day.

In late May 2019, the Supreme Court declined to review Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky. That case was about an Indiana law that included a provision that would make it illegal for an abortion provider to perform an abortion in the state when the provider knows that the mother is seeking the abortion solely because of the child’s race, sex, diagnosis of Down syndrome, disability, or related characteristics.

In 2019, America finds itself once again in the midst of an intense national debate about abortion. It centers on law, the Supreme Court and rights—the rights of the mother and those of the fetus. I have been reading extensively on various aspects of this emotionally wrenching ethical issue and believe, that as Christians, there are other considerations that should be factored into our thinking.

Several state legislatures continue to debate or consider laws that would grant fetal personhood, meaning that a baby growing in the womb would have the same constitutional protection as the mother carrying the child. As a dimension of this discussion, several states are considering “fetal heartbeat” bills that would ban abortion after detection of a heartbeat, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Alabama and Missouri, for example, recently enacted laws prohibiting in effect all abortions except for circumstances where the health of the mother is in jeopardy.

In late April 2019, before he walked into a synagogue in Poway, California, and opened fire, John Earnest wrote a seven-page manifesto spelling out his core beliefs: That Jewish people, guilty in his view of faults ranging from killing Jesus to controlling the media, deserved to die; that his intention to kill Jews would glorify God.

Chuck Colson regularly stated that “what was once unthinkable, becomes debatable and gradually becomes acceptable.” Independent journalist, Jeremiah Keenan, recently reported in The Federalist magazine a rather astonishing legal development concerning a 14 year old child, the child’s parents and the judicial system of British Columbia, Canada. It magnifies the bizarre and almost unthinkable developments in the next frontier of the human sexuality within Western Civilization. It also raises the troubling question of when do the rights of a child undermine parental rights? In this developing new normal, parents have limited rights, while the state sanctions sexual experimentation and novelty in the name of human rights.

In the 1960s 1 in 6 Americans belonged to a mainline Protestant church. Today it is 1 in 20, and falling. More broadly, the number of self-described Christians in the US has continued to drop and is now below 70%. The United Methodist Church (UMC) offers a rather poignant example of the confusion and tension when a Protestant church abandons its theological and doctrinal roots.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a macroeconomic theory that has won recent converts, especially presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who argues that this is how she would finance her radical Green New Deal.