An Appeal to the American Conscience
There is a word Americans need to hear again, but I’ll save that word til the end. I do not want to spout a religious cliché, nor a threat shouted as if from a pulpit, nor an invitation to join a denomination. I simply want to express that our country needs to turn around. Recognize that we are going in the wrong direction and choose instead to walk in the Way of God. America needs to hear God again, and His wooing us to turn around.
We Have Forgotten Where We Came From
America was not founded by a uniformly religious people, nor were all its founders Christians. But Christianity and its forebear, Judaism, profoundly shaped the civilization from which this nation emerged. William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony, understood the Pilgrims’ journey through the lens of ancient Israel, seeing in their wilderness experience a parallel to Israel’s dependence upon God. Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, drew upon the Hebrew Scriptures in his understanding of civil government, justice, and liberty of conscience, while rejecting the notion that any earthly nation could simply claim Israel’s covenantal status. Rhode Island also became an early haven for Jewish settlers, particularly the Sephardic Jews who established a community in Newport in the seventeenth century. We have visited their synagogue, and it is a testament to their very early influence over American life.
William Bradford actually studied Hebrew, leaving handwritten Hebrew vocabulary and passages in his manuscript of “Of Plymouth Plantation”. His tombstone had God’s Sacred Name, יהוה , carved into it. Roger Williams also studied Hebrew and advocated Jewish religious liberty. From the earliest colonial settlements, then, the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish thought were not foreign to American thought. They helped shape its understanding of law, morality, liberty, and accountability before the Creator. In fact Harvard was founded exclusively to train ministers in God’s Word. Yale the same, to restore the legacy of Harvard, which they felt had gotten off track. Hebrew was even considered as the prospective official language, because of the deep influence of the Bible on the public mind.
Further, significant evidence of common Biblical faith in America is written into our founding documents.
Delaware’s Constitution of 1776 required public officials to profess faith in God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son. Pennsylvania required acknowledgment of God as Creator and Governor of the universe and of the divine inspiration of Scripture. Maryland required a declaration of belief in Christianity. North Carolina required public officials to affirm belief in God and the authority of Scripture. Massachusetts, New Jersey, Georgia, and other states likewise incorporated Christian religious qualifications into their early governments.
Not all thirteen states adopted identical provisions. Some defended broader religious liberty, and the federal Constitution ultimately prohibited religious tests for federal office. But the Constitution did not write religious expression out of public or political life. Quite the contrary. The nation’s earliest leaders frequently acknowledged God as Creator, the source of human rights, and the ultimate authority to whom mankind is accountable.
In his first inaugural address in 1789, George Washington invoked the Almighty Being who governs the universe and warned that a nation could not expect Heaven’s favor while disregarding the eternal principles of righteousness. John Adams, principal author of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, helped establish a government whose Declaration of Rights explicitly connected public happiness and good government with piety, religion, and morality. Even Thomas Jefferson, whose personal religious beliefs differed from traditional Christianity, grounded the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in the conviction that Almighty God created the human mind free. His Declaration of Independence had already affirmed that human beings are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights. Nor was this religious heritage exclusively Christian. Haym Salomon, a Jewish immigrant who helped finance the American Revolution, exemplified the contribution of Jewish Americans to the nation’s founding and its struggle for liberty.
These men did not share identical doctrines. But their differences did not prevent them from recognizing the importance of faith, conscience, virtue, and moral accountability in the life of a free people. Religious liberty was never intended to require religious silence. Freedom of conscience and public acknowledgment of God were not regarded as mutually exclusive.
The historical record is unmistakable: Biblical faith and biblical morality were deeply woven into America’s founding culture.
The prevailing understanding was that God was the Creator, that human beings were accountable to Him, and that righteousness, honesty, fidelity, self-restraint, and reverence were virtues worthy of cultivation.
America did not always live up to those ideals. Slavery, injustice, and religious intolerance were shameful contradictions of them. But the existence of hypocrisy does not invalidate righteousness. It demonstrates our need for it, and our history is an example of a pursuit of religious virtue and correction of self.
Have We Really Progressed?
We congratulate ourselves on becoming enlightened. We have extraordinary technology, medical advances, and material comforts that earlier generations could scarcely imagine. But have we become better people?
We increasingly celebrate what Scripture calls sin and ridicule what Scripture calls righteousness. Today, the very mention of righteousness or moral standards is to many offensive. Abortion is defended as a ‘moral good’ rather than recognized as murder, or at the least a profound question about the value of human life. [Abortion is simply murder]. Sexual relationships outside marriage are normalized. Pornography has become an enormous industry. Adultery is trivialized. Biblical teachings about marriage, sexual conduct, and the distinction between male and female are increasingly dismissed as antiquated or offensive. Worse, people today are completely redefining ‘gender’, and ignoring the science of male and female, while claiming to be educated and enlightened.
Even the nature of God is sometimes redefined to conform to contemporary ideas about human identity. To declare that God is “non-binary” is to impose very late modern categories of human sexual identity upon the Creator Himself. Scripture does not present God as a reflection of humanity’s changing understanding of itself. Rather, humanity was created in His image. God does not change. He said so. And He is a “He,” plain and simple. We do not have the authority to redefine God according to ourselves; we are called to conform ourselves to Him.
And while people who disagree with biblical morality must still be treated with dignity, compassion, and fairness, loving people does not require declaring every human choice righteous. The Puritans and Pilgrims were themselves imperfect people, but many sought to establish communities ordered by Scripture rather than by the moral standards they believed had corrupted the societies they left behind. They saw in Great Britain a debauched society led by hypocritical religious leaders who would stamp out anyone that disagreed with them. They left there to leave behind the debauchery and the persecution they endured for trying to encourage Great Britain to turn to God.
Today, in important respects, America is embracing the very kinds of conduct they sought to leave behind. That is not progress. A society can advance technologically while deteriorating morally.
America Has Turned Around Before
Our history contains repeated seasons when Americans recognized their spiritual condition and sought a different direction. The Treaty of Paris that officially declared us a nation begins with the words, “In the Name of the most Holy & undivided Trinity. It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the Hearts of the most Serene and most Potent Prince George the Third, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Duke of Brunswick and Lunebourg, Arch- Treasurer and Prince Elector of the Holy Roman Empire etc.. and of the United States of America, to forget all past Misunderstandings and Differences…”. So, the United States and all of Europe acknowledged our country under the auspices of God, the God of the Bible.
The First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s called colonial Americans toward personal faith, spiritual renewal, and transformed lives. The Second Great Awakening, beginning around 1800, inspired renewed religious devotion, missionary work, educational efforts, and movements for social reform, including abolitionism. The revivals of the nineteenth century, the great evangelistic campaigns of the twentieth, and the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 1970s all reflected a recurring hunger for something greater than material prosperity and personal gratification. Even the renewed public emphasis on faith, family, and traditional morality during the Reagan era demonstrated that many Americans remained concerned about the nation’s spiritual and moral direction. Political conservatism was not itself a religious revival, but it reflected some of the same concerns.
These movements differed in theology, methods, and lasting results. Yet a common message repeatedly emerged: Return to God. Believe His Word. Recognize His Son. Live differently.
America has never been a sinless nation. But generations of Americans have understood that a people must sometimes examine themselves, acknowledge their failures, and change direction. Why should ours be any different? It is time for America to turn around. And this time, fully. The Ten commandments make it plain what God’s heart is, and how we, as a nation, can please Him.
The Ten Commandments Are Not Our Enemy
Consider the Ten Commandments. What kind of society would we have if people genuinely honored God, respected their parents, protected human life, remained faithful to their spouses, refused to steal, spoke truthfully, and rejected destructive covetousness? Would our marriages be stronger? Would our children be more secure? Would our neighborhoods be safer? Would our government be more trustworthy? Of course they would.
Yet the commandments are increasingly treated as embarrassing relics of an unenlightened past. They are not relics. They are enduring expressions of the character and righteousness of יהוה. They deserve to be remembered, discussed, taught, and respected—not because displaying them can make anyone righteous, but because a society that forgets the difference between right and wrong cannot expect righteousness to flourish.
The Commandment We Were Told to Remember
There is one commandment in particular that America, including much of Christianity, has forgotten: the Sabbath.
יהוה did not merely command us to rest one day in seven. He specifically blessed and sanctified the seventh day, establishing it at Creation, long before Israel existed as a nation (Genesis 2:1–3). When He gave the Ten Commandments, He said, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” explicitly grounding that commandment in His creation of heaven and earth (Exodus 20:8–11).
Yeshua honored the seventh-day Sabbath. His apostles continued observing it. Yet much of Christianity eventually adopted Sunday as its principal day of worship, without any recorded command from יהוה or His Son transferring the sanctity of the seventh day to the first.
Think about that. We speak of returning to God while overlooking the very day He set apart for us to remember Him! And this commandment is inseparable from our understanding of Creation. The Sabbath declares that the heavens, the earth, and life itself are the work of a purposeful Creator. Modern evolutionary explanations of life’s diversity, particularly when presented as proof that no Creator is necessary, challenge that understanding. But scientific explanations of biological development and the theological claim that creation has no divine Author are not the same thing. The Sabbath calls us to acknowledge the Creator regardless of the prevailing philosophies of our age.
Imagine what might happen if American families simply began setting aside the seventh day as יהוה commanded. A day without ordinary labor, commerce, and endless distractions. A day devoted to the Creator, Scripture, assembly, prayer, family, fellowship, and rest.
What would that do for our marriages? Our children? Our communities? Our understanding of what truly matters?
Churches could return their principal weekly gatherings to the seventh day. Families could recover the rhythm יהוה established at Creation. It would require no political revolution, only a willingness to obey what God plainly said.
And Scripture attaches a remarkable promise to honoring His Sabbath:
“If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day … then you shall delight yourself in יהוה.” — Isaiah 58:13–14
Perhaps one of the greatest blessings America is seeking has been waiting in a commandment we were told never to forget. We cannot sincerely call a nation back to the commandments of God while refusing to reconsider the one He specifically commanded us to remember. Especially if we want to call America a Christian nation.
In 1892, the United States Supreme Court, in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, described America as a “Christian nation,” acknowledging the profound influence of Christianity upon its history, institutions, and public life. This was a recognition of the nation’s religious heritage, not the establishment of Christianity as its official religion.
America’s constitutional commitment to religious liberty protects Christians, Jews, Muslims, and people of every other faith—or none at all. But religious freedom does not grant any religious authority the power to supersede the Constitution. This includes Islamic Sharia Law, Jewish Halakhah, and Christian ecclesiastical law. Where religious practices conflict with constitutionally valid civil law, religious conviction does not automatically exempt anyone from legal obligations.
Religious liberty protects the right to believe; it does not confer the right to impose religious government upon others.
None of the three Abrahamic faiths object to the Ten Commandments. Judaism and Christianity, in fact, share them as is, though somewhat rearranged in translations. Islam does not list them, but many of the 10 are similarly expressed in parts of the Quran. But, the American public has waned in its observance of them. So, each individual must begin by examining themselves. There is little value in demanding honesty from politicians while tolerating dishonesty in our businesses, condemning sexual immorality while abundantly consuming pornography, or preaching love while practicing cruelty. The change in America begins with the person in the mirror.
The Way Back
The answer is not simply electing different politicians, passing more laws, or restoring religious language to public ceremonies. A nation cannot legislate genuine faith into the human heart. The answer begins when individuals and families recognize that God’s Way is better than our own.
The prophet Jeremiah recorded the invitation of יהוה: “Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, ‘Where is the good way?’, and walk therein, and you shall find rest for your souls.” — Jeremiah 6:16
Notice that we are not merely told to admire the good Way, discuss it, or profess belief in it. We are told to walk therein. That is turning around. The Bible calls ‘turning around’ repentance.
And that brings us to the good news—the Gospel. God has not abandoned humanity to its rebellion. He sent His Son, Yeshua the Messiah, who lived in obedience to His Father, gave His life as an offering for our sins, and was raised from the dead. Through Him, forgiveness, reconciliation with God, and the promise of everlasting life are offered to us.
We cannot earn salvation through our own righteousness. We receive it through faith in the Son whom God sent. But genuine faith does not leave us unchanged. Yeshua did not come to give us permission to continue walking in darkness. He came to lead us into the light.
He declared, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.” — Yokhanan 14:6
So my appeal to America is simple. Turn around. Renew your mind and your soul by looking into His Word. Return to the Creator who gave us life. Believe in His Son, whom He sent to save us. Teach your children what is good. Honor your marriage. Protect life. Speak truth. Practice justice. Show mercy. Love your neighbor. Keep God’s commandments.
Not to purchase salvation, but because faith should produce righteous living. America does not need to return to the eighteenth century. We need to return to the Way of יהוה.
And that Way is still open to us.