Subject: American Culture and the Obama Years: The Rise in Disbelief

Jeremiah 2:31 “Why do My people say, ‘We have dominion; we will come no more to You’?”

“When it comes to the nation’s religious identity, the biggest trend during Obama’s presidency is the rise of those who claim no religion at all. Those who self-identify as atheists or agnostics, as well as those who say their religion is ‘nothing in particular,’ make up nearly 25% of the U.S. adult population, up from 16% in 2007.” This is the Pew Research Center’s January 2017 report by Michael Dimock, PRC’s president.

In the eight years of Obama’s presidency there has been a 56% rise in the number of American adults who claim they don’t believe, or don’t even care if, God exists. There are several cultural phenomena driving this national lack of interest in the God of the Bible, but two are worthy of more investigation.

#1. The Dominance of Secular Education: The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is a non-profit organization of academics whose mission is to “sustain the tradition of reasoned scholarship and civil debate in America’s colleges and universities.” In a recent article in ‘The Federalist’, entitled ‘Schools are teaching kids to hate America under the guise of Civics’, the NAS reports that “U.S. higher education spends at least $40 billion per year on ‘New Civics’, which replaces traditional education in American civic government (i.e., American self-government under God as articulated in the Declaration of Independence) with community organizing. That means giving students college credit for “service learning”—which means paying tuition to perform unpaid work for leftist organizations such as Planned Parenthood. As of 2010, half of all college students reported they’d participated in ‘service learning’ to earn credits.”

The movement sweeping our universities aims to replace an historical Judeo-Christian education with this ‘New Civics’ emphasis on secular humanism that eliminates any notion of accountability to a Creator. As the Federalist article explained, this ‘New Civics’ education “teaches students how to dismantle rather than preserve and improve their country… how to revolt against the country that, among other things, educated them, provided for their security against foreign aggressors, and secured liberties most people in the world never had and still don’t have: freedom of speech, freedom of association… Since they’re utterly ignorant of these basic historical truths, the young people hearing this propaganda have few defenses.”

#2. Obama’s Anti-Christianity: In a December 2016 article ‘America’s Most Biblically-Hostile US President’, Wallbuilders founder David Barton lists 102 cases, in four categories, to back up that claim. Category 1 contains 22 cases of ‘Hostility toward people of biblical faith’. Category 2 has 45 cases of ‘Hostility from an Obama-led military toward people of biblical faith’. Category 3 has 26 cases of ‘Hostility toward biblical values’. Category 4 has 9 cases of ‘Preferentialism for Islam over Christianity’. Here are four examples.

In an October 2010 article by The Blaze entitled “Obama continues to omit ‘Creator’ from the Declaration of Independence”, the author reports that Obama omitted ‘Creator’ when he quoted the Declaration of Independence. This has been repeated the seven times since he has quoted our Declaration.

In a February 2012 article entitled “Obama administration deletes religious service for student loan forgiveness”, Human Events reported that although the Obama administration forgives student loans in exchange for public service, it will no longer forgive student loans if the public service is related to religion.

In a June 2013 article by Townhall, entitled “DOJ Defunds At-Risk Youth Programs over ‘God’ Reference”, the author reported that the Obama Department of Justice defunded a Louisiana Young Marines chapter because their oath mentioned God, and a youth program because it permits voluntary student-led prayer.

Finally, in November 2015, the Obama Administration decided to go after ‘The Little Sisters of the Poor’ for their stance against Obamacare’s mandate to provide insurance coverage for employees using contraception devices made. This case has now made it on the docket to be heard by the Supreme Court.

In our verse for this week, the teenage prophet Jeremiah (19-20 years old) was called by God to warn the southern nation of Judah of their increased rejection of Him, replacing Him with their own humanistic thinking: “They have rejected the word of the Lord, so what wisdom do they have? Everyone is dull-hearted, without knowledge. The whole land is made desolate, because no one takes it to heart.” (Jeremiah 8:9, 10:14, 12:11). The Book of Jeremiah has many parallels with America today. We need more Jeremiahs to rise up and confront our culture with their need to return to God and His Son, Jesus Christ.