And What About America?

And What About America?

By Alfred M. Rehwinkel

(Written in the 1950's)

“Atheism and a purely materialistic view of life are even finding their way into the pagan world. The temples of the heathen are decaying. The gods are crumbling or are being thrown into the rubbish heap. Atheistic communism has overrun all of China and is finding is way into India and Africa. It is no longer a question of what god or gods, but it is no god at all.”

“And what about America? According to the last religious census, less than half of the adult population of the United States is connected with one of the Christian denominations. This means that at least seventy million in our country profess no religion. They are not pagans in the common meaning of that term. They are indifferent to all religions, are unconcerned about God and God’s revelation; in other words, they are godless. This means that seventy million Americans are practical atheists! And that in a country which boasts of the superiority of its religious and moral standards. To millions of our people, the Bill of Rights, guaranteeing freedom of religion, stands for a freedom from all religion.  Democracy has become our fetish, and in the minds of many it supersedes in importance even religion and God. In our seats of higher learning, the colleges and universities of our country, where the leaders of the next generation are being trained, the authority of the Bible has been completely eliminated. The Creation story and the Great Flood are ruled out as impossible. What remains of the Old Testament is relegated to folklore or is placed on the level of mere poetry.  The miraculous elements of the entire Bible, the deity of Christ, the atonement of Christ, the resurrection from the dead, in fact, most of the fundamental articles of our Christian faith, are either questioned or openly denied and even ridiculed. What the Bible calls the Moral Law of God is placed in the categories of taboos and social mores, and sin has been reduced to a mere maladjustment, the result of frustration, or is merely termed a form of anti-social living.” –Written in the 1950’s, this segment taken from the final chapter of “The Flood”, entitled “The Flood, a Prototype of the Final Judgment”