Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
This op-ed by Star Parker was originally published in April 2023.
It is a unique and special time now because Christians, Jews and Muslims all are engaged in major holidays of religious contemplation and renewal. Christians with Holy Week and Easter, Jews with Passover, and Muslims with Ramadan.
We’re talking billions around the world. So, although in our time there has been a retreat in various circles from religion, it still remains a major force and presence in our world.
In our own USA, as I have touched on in columns past, the number identifying with religion and attending religious services has dropped.
Per Pew Research, now about 40% of Americans monthly attend religious services either in person or viewing online or on TV. If we consider 40% of the U.S. adult population — the number over 18 — we’re talking about over 100 million Americans engaged in an active way with religion.
So, although on a percentage basis, engagement with religion has dropped, it still remains a major factor among the American population.
Why should we care?
Looking at the three major religions — all engaged today in major holidays — we see on the surface different narratives and traditions.
But regarding the rules for living that emerge out of these different traditions, there is remarkable common ground.
They all view as sacrosanct life, family and property. That is, the basic rules conveyed to each individual regarding how to live a meaningful, responsible and successful life, and how to engage and relate to one’s neighbors, are remarkably similar.
Which raises an important point that gets too little attention.
Certainly, in our country and in the Western world, few words get more use than the word “freedom.”
But the freedom we hear so much about is freedom in the political sense. Is this or that country, or society, “free”?
According to the words composed by Thomas Jefferson in our Declaration of Independence, we are all born with rights and “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.”
And, in the stirring conclusion of the Declaration, the signers declared the American colonies, “free and independent states.”
The focus was government and politics. But outside of government protecting freedom, where does each individual find their personal freedom they want protected?
It was George Washington, whom I often quote, that pointed out that no beautifully designed government will work if, at the individual level, we do not have morality and religion. We see every day that beautifully designed political systems and governments fail if, at the individual level, there is wanton and irresponsible behavior.
So the core of a free society is free choice at the individual level, and the core of free choice at the individual level is right and wrong. If there is no right and wrong, what does it matter what individuals choose?
Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has pointed out that “woke” culture is a form of religion. And he is right. Individuals may reject the truths of religion as we know them, but it remains for them to choose what they will accept, on faith, to be true. If they reject religion, so they must invent one.
Once we believe that traditional truths, good and evil passed down through the generations, interfere with our personal freedom rather than enable it, and that we can make everything up, so meaning and personal responsibility are lost. We then see more and more horrible incidents like the most recent murders in a Christian school in Franklin, Tennessee, by a very lost and confused individual.
It’s no accident that socialist societies are godless societies. They think they can make everything up.
During this special season, when so many continue to appreciate that there is meaning and truth in this world, let our prayers be directed that this continues and that more and more will begin to understand that the source of our personal freedom is our Creator and not government.
Photo credit: thisisbossi (Creative Commons) – Some rights reserved
COPYRIGHT 2023 STAR PARKER
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
Star Parker is the founder and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and author of “Necessary Noise: How Donald Trump Inflames the Culture War and Why This is Good News for America.” She hosts a weekly show called “CURE America with Star Parker.”
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Star, me dawlin’ per usual, is SPOT ON! Sadly, just over 60 years ago, America was comprised of a mostly religious society. A society still flawed, but the best in the world! There was no genocidal killing of kids by other kids in the thousands each and every year, as is the reality today. The black communities were more religious than those of other ethnicities, even whites. Black families consisted of TWO parents, in majority numbers. Today, with the advent of LBJ’s ‘Great Society,’ read Government welfare, far too many Americans ran onto the ‘Government Plantation,’ whites and blacks. As Star, herself, has pointed out, had to extricate herself from that plantation! Kudos and accolades to her for what she continues to do to educate and help others!
Critically, the underpinning of our American society, ‘the nuclear family,’ is extinct. Two parent families are all but in the minority today, and America’s crisis of crime, abortions, immorality, are all indicative of that MAJOR problem. I have long pointed out that no society can survive without the underpinning of the ‘TWO parent,’ morality based, successful, families. As Ripley would say, “BELIEVE IT OR NOT.”
Everyone of ‘us’ 100,000,000 believing souls should hit our knees in prayer that America just makes it to that next election before our children and grandchildren are offered up as cannon fodder in what is already WWIII!