Is America Having a Conservative Awakening?

After half a century of leftwing victories in the culture wars, many conservatives believe America is on the cusp of a Third Great Awakening. Christians across the United States are ecstatic about the June 24 Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. Those who believe in the sanctity of human life won what seemed like an impossible battle against the Goliath of the abortion industry, so now they are inspired to fight harder.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization returned the issue of abortion to state jurisdiction, and at least nine states have already banned it. Meanwhile, 26 states have introduced bills to expand parental rights in public schools and limit the sexual indoctrination of children. And 42 states have introduced bills to restrict the teaching of neo-Marxist critical race theory in public schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court also recently struck down unconstitutional gun restrictions, allowed public school employees to pray on the job, made it harder for states to exclude religious schools from public funding programs, and limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate carbon emissions. And Justice Clarence Thomas feels like the court may just be getting started. He recently wrote that he expects the Supreme Court to overturn faux-constitutional rights to sodomy, same-sex “marriage,” and contraception (not that all forms of contraception are wrong, but your employer is not constitutionally obligated to pay for it).

Conservative justices are finally pushing back against the radical left’s cultural, political and legal tsunami, and everyday conservatives are taking heart. Many still do not accept that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and demand a reckoning. The documentary 2000 Mules, one of the clearest exposés of the election coup, drew millions of viewers. Biden’s economic decisions have resulted in some of the worst economic news in decades, so analysts are predicting huge losses for the radical Democrats in this autumn’s midterm elections.

“For Democrats this year, the only real question is whether the elections will be only moderately bad or completely terrible,” senior staff writer Alan Greenblatt wrote for Governing: The Future of States and Localities. “If you think like a weather forecaster, all kinds of data point to a major storm. By basically every metric you can think of—fundraising, candidate recruitment, voter enthusiasm, demographic shifts—a big wave is forming that will sweep hundreds of Democrats out of office, up and down the ticket” (May 27).

With all this good news, is America really on the cusp of a Third Great Awakening, where the Christian right makes a comeback, turns back radical secularism, and restores constitutional government and the spirit of America’s founders? Will the Make America Great Again movement make America great again?

A New Generation

It is undeniable that the U.S. is currently in the midst of intergenerational warfare. The most biblically hostile president in American history was elected by youth. Exit polls showed that 66 percent of voters under age 30 voted for Barack Obama in 2008, a man who writes in one of his several autobiographies that there is “no such thing” as “absolute truth.” This was the largest-ever showing for a presidential candidate in this age range and a key indicator that the millennial and zoomer generations are more liberal than any previous generations.

Obama’s rebellion against absolute truth transformed American politics, governance, diplomacy, policing, morality, race, sex, tradition and culture in such a way that shocked complacent voters into action. In the 2016 presidential election, roughly 70 million Americans over the age of 50 voted, and most of them voted for Donald Trump. These statistics aren’t necessarily a shocking departure from normal voting trends, but many political analysts have still referred to President Trump’s victory as the baby boomers’ last hurrah.

Those old enough to remember America before the radical cultural insurrection of the 1960s mourned the loss of their country and wanted a conservative Republican who acknowledged that America had been great, was great no longer, and needed saving, and who promised to appoint constitutional originalist justices.

President Trump kept his promise and appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, despite violent opposition from the radical left. These justices joined Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito to overturn several important unconstitutional laws and court precedents. These developments are undeniably positive—but are they really strong enough to begin turning the tide?

Sadly, the answer to this pressing question is that even a great surge in constitutional Supreme Court rulings, congressional laws and new elections can’t turn things around. Virtuous laws are a great blessing to a nation, but they actually do little to make a nation great unless they are obeyed by virtuous people. That is why saving America from radical liberalism and outright physical destruction requires a spiritual resurgence. And the fact that elderly people elected a president who appointed some conservative justices does not mean that the American people as a whole are repenting of their sins and becoming more virtuous. In fact, the statistics indicate just the opposite. Despite the court rulings, Americans are more lascivious than ever.

A May 2022 Gallup poll shows that 76 percent of Americans think fornication is morally acceptable, 71 percent believe homosexual relations are proper, and 52 percent think abortion is permissible. That is the first time in Gallup’s 22-year trendline that more than half the country view abortion as a positive good. The overturn of Roe v. Wade determined that abortion is a states’ rights issue, like most other laws. But as a whole, voters in the U.S. view abortion more positively than they have at any time in American history.

Baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1965) are much more likely to understand abortion as destroying a human life. Yet they have failed to instill conservative principles in their now-grown children. Historically, American parents guided their children more directly. But after World War i, many parents began delegating teaching responsibilities to public school teachers, who became more and more steeped in Darwinian science, Marxist economics and Freudian morality. The American mind began to change.

“The ‘New Morality’ world was spawned after the turn of the century,” the late Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in his book The Missing Dimension in Sex, published over 40 years before America’s current moral condition. “It developed from the embryo stage during World War i. It surged, mostly among teens unnoticed by their parents, on past World War ii. The emergence of television after that war gave the trend great impetus.”

God told America’s Israelite ancestors to teach His laws to their children (Deuteronomy 4:1-10). Yet this all-important command has not been kept. Today’s condition, as Mr. Armstrong wrote, “ought to shock every individual out of complacency into desperate action to reverse the ominous tide!” Unless Americans repent of breaking God’s laws and tearing apart their families, no court, president or other leader can make America great again.

America Swings Hard Left

In 2014, a Pew Research Religious Landscape Survey found that only 51 percent of millennials are sure God exists, compared to about 70 percent of baby boomers who believe there is a Creator. And the statistics are even worse regarding belief in the Bible. Only 20 percent of millennials believe the Bible is the literal Word of God, compared to 35 percent of baby boomers who believe “All scripture is given by inspiration of God.”

If current trends continue, those born after 1997 may become America’s first post-Christian generation. Is it any wonder America is turning toward socialism and even communism? Those who lack faith in God and the Bible are far more likely to put their trust in human governments to solve their problems. This is what we see today. The same generation that says God doesn’t exist and the Bible is not inspired also says that America needs an even more powerful central government to protect, educate and provide for them.

The views of today’s “conservatives” would have been considered radically liberal not long ago. Look at where the Republican Party has finally drawn the line in the sand: You cannot kill your unborn child, you cannot give your 9-year-old puberty-blocking hormones, you cannot groom other people’s children with deviant sexual influences until fourth grade. Meanwhile, most Republicans now support same-sex marriage, and many are warming up to transgenderism. They too are racing into immorality, in blatant violation of the laws in the Bible, just at a slower speed.

“You can’t have conservative government in a liberal culture, and that’s the position the Republican Party is in,” explained Mark Steyn in “Why the Real Battle for America Is Over Culture, not Elections.” “Liberals expend tremendous effort changing the culture. Conservatives expend tremendous effort changing elected officials every other November—and then are surprised that it doesn’t make much difference. Culture trumps politics—which is why, once the question has been settled culturally, conservatives are reduced to playing catch-up, twisting themselves into pretzels to explain why gay marriage is really conservative after all, or why 30 million unskilled immigrants with a majority of births out of wedlock are ‘natural allies’ of the Republican Party” (New York Post, Oct. 19, 2014)

In other words, the schools are liberal, the business elites are liberal, the media moguls are liberal, the Hollywood producers are liberal, the songwriters are liberal, the Republicans are liberal, and even the churches are liberal. So electing a Republican president has made and will make little difference unless America’s culture changes. And America’s culture will not change for the better without the Bible.

America’s founders were raised by a generation that had left behind the decadent societies of Europe and attempted to build a new society based on principles taught in the newly translated King James Bible. They understood that high morals and sincere religion were the fundamental building blocks of a virtuous society. President George Washington said during his famous Farewell Address in 1796: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports” (emphasis added).

A conservative president or a conservative Supreme Court or even a Great Awakening cannot save America unless that awakening takes Americans back not only to the Constitution or the founders or even Protestantism but to the laws of the Bible! Nothing less than nationwide repentance can make a difference.

Only God can save America.

Making America Great

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has explained repeatedly that President Donald Trump is an end-time type of King Jeroboam ii and is prophesied to lead a movement that will cause a temporary resurgence in American strength, might and power (2 Kings 14:26-28). Yet he specifies that this brief resurgence will happen not because the American people have repented of their sins—instead, it will come as a result of God’s mercy. It is one last chance for Americans to repent before they are morally, culturally and literally destroyed.

“The curses on America are plain to see,” Mr. Flurry writes in his booklet Great Again. “Prophecy is being fulfilled in events all over the globe! You would think that as times get worse and worse, people would look to the Bible to see what God has to say. Conditions are intensifying and getting so bad that anybody can recognize something is terribly wrong. But virtually nobody is turning to God. That is to our shame. America’s problems are a direct result of America’s sins. No politician is going to ‘make America great again,’ no matter what people think! I would like to see it happen, but it isn’t going to happen in this age. Everyone will come to recognize that truth before much longer! God will make America great again in the World Tomorrow.”

God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away from those who repent (2 Chronicles 30:9). But the Bible strongly indicates that most Americans will not repent until after they have suffered national collapse, foreign invasion, widespread slaughter, and brutal enslavement (see Jeremiah 30:3; Ezekiel 5:11-12; Amos 9:14). This is the tragic cycle of history. The famous Scottish historian Alexander Tytler wrote more than 200 years ago that spiritual faith inspires courage, courage brings liberty, liberty causes abundance, abundance lulls people into complacency, complacency corrodes character and brings apathy, apathy invites dependency, dependency grows into bondage, and finally, bondage drives people to seek God and obedience to Him.

In the four centuries since the first God-fearing colonist arrived in the New World, America has gone through nearly every step in this cycle and is approaching bondage. This is no time for complacency. We desperately need to turn to God and His Word in the Bible. But even if Americans refuse this last chance at repentance, there is hope. The Prophet Amos wrote that after a brief time of enslavement, God will bring the modern Israelites out of captivity to “build the waste cities, and inhabit them” (Amos 9:14). This salvation of the Americans, British and other modern descendants of ancient Israel will be permanent. This is why God promises He will plant Israel “upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them” (verse 15).

So there will soon be a Third Great Awakening in America, and all other nations, that surpasses all previous religious revivals in human history. But things will get much, much worse before they get better. This is sobering to think about, but you can comfort yourself with the knowledge that this coming religious revival will be permanent. And you can protect yourself and your family if you repent and seek God now.

God promises to shelter those few who are faithful to Him in a special place of protection (Song of Songs 2:14; Ezekiel 5:3; Daniel 11:41; Revelation 12:14). You can read more about this special place of protection in our free booklet Jordan and God’s Church in Prophecy, by Gerald Flurry. Religious revivals require teachers, so God will continue protecting His teachers until the students are ready to listen!