Note: This is a prescient read, especially considering that the book A Time for Anger, from which the following is quoted (Chapter 9 and the conclusion of the book), was written in 1982 - long before the Internet, smart phones, and social media; decades before Obergefell, Covid, and world leaders openly talking about a global Great Reset of the entire world’s social, political, and economic system; and in a time when our churches were still well-attended, when Ronald Reagan was overwhelmingly elected to two terms, and as Soviet Communism and its sway over Eastern Europe were tottering. Unfortunately, the author, Frank Schaeffer, has since renounced his faith and surrendered to the very enemy that he spoke against - which makes his warnings all the more worth reading today. Italics are in the original text.

A Time for Misbehaving

Christians and those of Judeo-Christian principle have been far too well behaved in the recent past.

Every person of true moral principle is on a collision course with the modern, inhuman, technological state and society in which we live. Every person of true moral principle should be prepared to stand and fight against this “brave new world.”

The Jews have endured state and often religious persecution throughout history for not abandoning their principles. The early Christians went to the lions rather than transgress God’s law and bow to a secular power. They were rebels; the Romans saw them as having committed acts of civil disobedience.

Christ himself died rather than compromise. All he had to say to the high priest was that he was not God; or he could have renounced his claim to be a king before the Romans, and he would have gone free.

Atrocities unthinkable a few years ago go on today with the state’s sanction. More are in the offing. Why is there such roaring, massive silence on the part of those who should know better? Abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and a deliberate assault on the family structure are realities. The continued curbing of religious freedom grinds on. They are part of our world no matter how long we pretend otherwise.

Writing in Commentary magazine (April 1982), Norman Ravitch speaks of the Christian involvement in society today in the following terms:

Like the proverbial poor Greeks, who survive by taking in one another’s wash, theologians and scholars in religious studies write primarily for one another; seldom does the import of their labors have any effect on the consciousness of Christian believers or on the wider educated public.

The silence, noninvolvement, studious “scholarship” and other tactics used by Christians to avoid involving themselves in society around them must stop. Evangelists and theologians who hide behind their “evangelical work” or their theology or, as Ravitch says, their tendency to write in a private language merely for one another, must stop.

We must once again commit ourselves to a robust view of truth. Religious people must once again become involved in every area of life: politics, law, medicine, family life, education, science, the media, and the arts. We must provide the example of an alternative way of living by placing our children and their care before our own ambitions and materialism.

Where are our champions?

The ACLU and other elitist “civil libertarian” absolutists never rest. Christian lawyers have too often been more intent on holding theoretical seminars and “fellowshipping together.”

The arrogant attitude of the abortion-rich medical profession grows more and more inhuman day by day. The abortion clinics hack babies apart and burn them with saline solutions. Where are the Christian champions of medicine as a vocation, a healing science, one that fights to save life?

The so-called pluralistic politician and judge more toward greater and greater control of the citizenry. Where are the Christian men and women to stand up and fight in the political arena without compromise?

. . .

The public educational system turns our generation after generation of baffled, rootless, religiously neutered neo-barbarians, who have been taught that there are no moral absolutes; they have been delivered by that system into the hands of such persons as Planned Parenthood’s high priests and instructed in their pitiful religion of “do your own thing.”

Where is the Christian counter-attack on these modern-day death camps? Where have we been and what will we do now to save our country and the rest of western civilization from the future that the bio-engineers and power-hungry ethicists have in store? We must choose between a secular Caesar, the bondage and death of an all-powerful state, with the most powerful techniques of control ever known at its disposal, or the God of the Old and New Testaments.

The alternative to standing up and taking action finds expression in the Book of Isaiah, chapter 7, verse 11: “For how long, O Lord? And He answered, until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitants, until the houses are left deserted and fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken.” A little later, the solution comes: “The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, He is the one you are to fear, He is the one you are to dread, and He will be a sanctuary.”

. . .

The evidence in our own day that “faith without deeds is useless” surrounds us everywhere. Having accepted the myth of neutrality, the opposition’s lie, we have given over the battlefield to the enemy and they have run rampant.

Ours has been a religion of faith without deeds for too long. It is time that mighty deeds be done again. Truth equals confrontation.