Americans live in a strange moment. For all our talk about “free speech,” “pluralism,” and “diversity,” there is one voice that many in our cultural elite insist should remain silent: the Christian voice. You hear it in classrooms, corporations, and newsrooms—often delivered with the smirk of enlightened certainty—that “religion has no place in public policy,” or that “personal beliefs should stay personal,” or that “you can believe whatever you want, but you can’t impose it on society.”
Yet these same voices have no trouble urging society to adopt their moral framework—Progressive, therapeutic, Neo-Marxist, sexual-revolutionary—and they insist we adopt it not only legally, but emotionally, spiritually, and linguistically. They command the new orthodoxy, and they wield its catechism with missionary zeal.
The irony is thick enough to spread on toast.
The claim that Christianity “should not” or “cannot” be expressed in the public square is not merely inconsistent—it is historically naïve, philosophically incoherent, and politically self-serving. It assumes that secular Progressivism is neutral (it isn’t), that Christianity is uniquely disqualified from shaping culture (it isn’t), and that America’s founders somehow intended a naked public square (they didn’t).
To work through these issues honestly, we must first trace how this argument formed, how it functions, and why Christians should reject it unapologetically—and then act.
THE FALSE NEUTRALITY OF PROGRESSIVISM
The modern Progressive insists that he is merely “objective,” “rational,” or “science-based,” while Christianity is merely “private,” “subjective,” or “sectarian.” But the Progressive framework—especially in its Neo-Marxist expression—is a faith-based worldview with its own dogmas, heroes, heretics, and eschatology. It has a conception of human nature, a narrative of oppression and liberation, a doctrine of sin (bigotry, whiteness, heteronormativity), a doctrine of salvation (state redistribution, cultural deconstruction), and even its own saints and martyrs.
One does not need a divinity degree to see that this is not “secular neutrality.” It is secular religion.
The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre once remarked that modern moral disputes appear intractable because they are actually clashes between rival traditions. Thomas Sowell sharpened the point: societies are always governed by visions—“constrained” or “unconstrained”—and these visions determine how we interpret human nature, justice, progress, responsibility, and authority.
The Progressive vision, particularly in its Neo-Marxist form, is the unconstrained vision on steroids. Its adherents do not merely believe that human nature is malleable—they believe it is infinitely malleable. Give them enough political power, enough legislation, enough reeducation, and enough cultural pressure, and they can manufacture a new humanity.
That’s a bold belief. It’s also a faith statement.
The Core Presuppositions of Neo-Marxist Progressivism
The Progressive worldview rests on several fundamental assumptions that function as philosophical articles of faith:
- Human nature is basically good and only corrupted by unjust structures.
This is the foundational myth of the unconstrained vision. Evil is external, not internal. The solution is not repentance (Romans 3:23), but restructuring society. - Inequality is always a sign of injustice.
Marx argued that the world can be divided into oppressors and oppressed. Modern Progressives simply expanded the categories—race, gender, sexuality—then built policy around this moral binary. - The state is the primary instrument of salvation.
In the Progressive imagination, the federal government is something like a secular priesthood, consecrated to redeem society from structural sin. - Traditional moral norms are oppressive remnants of older power structures.
Marriage, family, biblical sexuality, male/female distinctions—these are reinterpreted as tools of domination rather than creational goods (Genesis 1:27; 2:24). - History is a linear march toward liberation.
This is a secularized eschatology. The kingdom of man replaces the kingdom of God. - Speech is violence, truth is constructed, and dissent is dangerous.
Once truth is no longer objective, disagreement becomes an act of moral aggression. Thus the modern appetite for censorship.
None of these are morally neutral. None are empirically inevitable. All of them require a deeply ideological lens through which to interpret the world. And all of them clash with the biblical vision of reality.
Christianity’s Response
Christianity rests on a very different set of convictions—convictions that have shaped the best of Western civilization and provided the philosophical soil from which our institutions grew:
• Human beings possess a fallen nature (Romans 5:12), which is why individual virtue—not structural engineering—is essential.
• Justice must be impartial (Exodus 23:2–3), not a matter of group identity.
• The state is limited by divine authority (Romans 13:1–4), not an ultimate moral force.
• Morality is rooted in God’s character and word, not cultural preference (Leviticus 19:2, John 17:17, I Peter 1:15-16).
• The family is foundational to human flourishing (Genesis 1–2).
• Truth is objective (John 14:6), and speech is a gift, not a threat.
These convictions built the American understanding of law, liberty, dignity, and rights.
When Progressives say Christians “should not” or “cannot” bring religion into public life, what they really mean is this:
Only Progressive dogma should shape the culture. Christianity must go.
That’s not neutrality. It’s power-seeking.
THE HYPOCRISY OF A “RELIGION-FREE PUBLIC SQUARE”
Watch carefully how the slogan “no religion in politics” works in practice.
The very people who claim that Christian convictions “don’t belong in public policy” have no trouble insisting that:
• society must embrace gender ideology,
• public schools must teach secular sacraments of sexual identity,
• corporations must enforce DEI catechisms,
• churches must redefine marriage,
• pronouns must be revised,
• abortion must be sanctified as a moral good,
• biological reality must be suppressed,
• historical narratives must be rewritten.
These demands are not “neutral.” They are metaphysical claims about reality, human nature, morality, destiny, and the purpose of life.
They are religious claims—simply without the word “religion.”
The Progressive says, “Don’t impose your beliefs on others,” while imposing his beliefs on everyone through legislation, education, media pressure, and corporate coercion.
He says, “Keep theology out of law,” while insisting that civil rights law must reflect his theology of gender, self-creation, and therapeutic identity.
He says, “Don’t dictate morality,” while dictating morality through environmental mandates, speech codes, hate-crime laws, antidiscrimination policies, and public-school curricula.
He says, “Don’t force your views on children,” while lobbying to place drag queens in libraries and graphic sexual content in classrooms.
This is not neutrality. It is a hostile takeover.
The modern Left does not want a secular public square. It wants a Progressive public square, scrubbed clean of competing claims—including Christianity.
This is why the Christian cannot shrink back. The demand for Christian silence is nothing more than ideological gatekeeping cloaked in the language of tolerance.
AMERICA’S FOUNDING AND THE ROLE OF CHRISTIANITY
Contrary to fashionable myths, the United States was not founded as a secularist experiment. It was not birthed from atheism, Deism alone, or anything resembling modern Progressivism.
The intellectual, cultural, and social soil of the founding was overwhelmingly Christian—particularly Protestant, shaped by Reformation principles of law, liberty, and conscience.
The Framers Were Not Building a Secular Utopia
Most of the Founders were not evangelical Christians in the modern sense, but they operated within a moral universe defined by Scripture. Their assumptions about human dignity, moral order, natural law, rights, and justice were rooted in a Christian worldview, even when imperfectly expressed and practiced.
Consider several realities often ignored:
• The overwhelming majority of colonists were practicing Christians.
• The laws of the colonies explicitly referenced God, Scripture, and Christian morality.
• The Declaration of Independence assumes a biblical moral order (“endowed by their Creator,” “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”).
• The Founders distrusted human nature—a profoundly Christian view—and therefore built a government of separated powers.
• Religious liberty was not designed to exile religion but to protect it from government intrusion.
Thomas Jefferson, hardly a churchman, once said that “the liberties of a nation” are secure only so long as the people acknowledge that these liberties are the gift of God. John Adams famously warned that the Constitution was built for a “moral and religious people” and would fail without them.
These are not the words of men envisioning a spiritual vacuum.
What About the First Amendment?
The First Amendment forbids Congress from establishing a national church or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. It did not forbid states, communities, schools, or public institutions from reflecting Christian moral convictions.
In fact, several states retained officially supported churches or explicitly Christian laws well into the 19th century.
The modern reading of “separation of church and state” is a 20th-century invention, born not of the Founders’ writings but of Progressive jurisprudence that sought to secularize public life.
The Founders feared a state hostile to religion, not religious influence on public life.
They recognized the obvious truth:
All societies legislate morality. The only question is whose morality.
And they preferred a morality anchored in biblical principles rather than in the whims of bureaucrats, judges, or ideological revolutionaries.
MODERN RESTRICTIONS ON RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION: CONSTITUTIONAL OR NOT?
Throughout the 20th century, especially beginning in the 1940s, the Supreme Court increasingly adopted a rigid, secular interpretation of the Establishment Clause—one that would have baffled the Founding generation.
School prayer decisions, restrictions on Ten Commandments displays, and hostility toward religious expression in public institutions were all justified by this newly invented doctrine of “strict separation.” But this doctrine has no firm grounding in the text, history, or logic of the Constitution.
Christian thinkers such as R. C. Sproul, Francis Schaeffer, and Albert Mohler have pointed out that these rulings effectively established a secular orthodoxy in place of a Christian moral consensus. The state did not become neutral; it simply switched religions.
And once the state adopted secular Progressivism as its functional creed, it began inevitably to restrict dissent—particularly Christian dissent.
The Christian citizen today must ask himself: Is the First Amendment being used to protect liberty or suppress it?
Increasingly, the evidence points to the latter.
But the tide is not irreversible. Recent cases (e.g., Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 2022) show a judicial shift back toward protecting religious expression rather than punishing it.
Still, the larger cultural fight remains—and Christians must not retreat.
The Christian Mandate for Public Witness
One of the clever tactics used by secular progressives is the suggestion that Christians should remain “private” in their faith, as if Christ calls His people to some kind of cloistered internal spirituality divorced from public engagement. This is historically false, biblically false, and strategically designed to demoralize Christian influence.
Author Nancy Pearcey has discussed this concept as the sacred-secular divide in several books including Total Truth, Finding Truth And Saving Leonardo.
Modern American culture operates with a split view of reality—what Nancy Pearcey calls the sacred–secular divide. In this model, faith and morality are shoved into the “private” realm of subjective feelings, while the “public” realm is reserved for supposedly neutral facts, technocratic expertise, and secular reasoning. This two-story divide treats religion as a hobby rather than a source of public truth. Pearcey argues that this fragmentation is foreign to Scripture, because biblical truth speaks to all of life. God’s authority is not limited to the inner life or church gatherings; it extends to politics, education, law, and cultural institutions.
This divide has become the perfect tool for Progressives who claim that religion should stay out of public life. Under the banner of neutrality, they elevate their own secular moral vision while demanding that Christianity retreat to the private sphere. The result is not a neutral public square but a secular one in which Christian conviction is dismissed as mere preference, while secular ideology is treated as objective truth. Recognizing and rejecting this divide is essential for Christians who want to understand why public discourse has become so lopsided and why moral clarity has faded from national life.
A Christian who keeps his convictions out of public life is not a neutral Christian. He is an ineffective Christian. Christians should not be deceived into the feigned neutrality deception of the left (Matthew 12:30).
The biblical faith has always had a public dimension. The prophets confronted kings. The apostles confronted empires. The early church confronted pagan moral structures with a deeper ethic, not a quieter one. The Reformers confronted corruption and tyranny. The abolitionists confronted slavery with Scripture in hand. The civil rights leaders appealed to biblical anthropology when making claims about human dignity.
In Scripture, the public witness of God’s people is not optional; it is assumed. Jesus told His disciples that a city set on a hill cannot be hidden (Matthew 5:14). The metaphor itself forbids the idea of hiding Christian conviction under the bushel basket of secular etiquette.
Paul reasoned in synagogues and marketplaces (Acts 17:17), refusing to divide truth into sacred and secular compartments. He understood what many modern Christians forget: the gospel has implications for public life. It shapes one’s view of the family, justice, human rights, authority, the dignity of work, the nature of law, and what it means for society to pursue what is good and restrain what is evil.
A worldview cannot be quarantined.
Christianity defines the nature of reality, the purpose of creation, the meaning of human existence, the structure of morality, and the destiny of the world. To ask a Christian to behave publicly as if these truths are irrelevant is to ask him to lie about reality.
Leftist critics frequently accuse Christians of trying to “impose a theocracy,” yet they remain comfortable imposing their own secular theology—complete with doctrines, taboos, liturgies, and heresy trials—on society. They will not admit that what they preach is a worldview. They call their ideology “neutral” so that it can receive all the privileges of religion without any of the accountability.
But Christians do not operate in a vacuum. Every society—every single one—operates within a moral and metaphysical framework. Politics is simply morality with the power to enforce itself. Laws reflect someone’s worldview. They always have. They always will.
This means Christians face a choice: either speak truth into public life, or allow falsehood to reign with no resistance.
Notice how Scripture describes the relationship between Christian truth and public order. Governors are “God’s servants” who must uphold good and restrain evil (Romans 13:1–4). But how can they know what is good or evil if the moral vocabulary that defines those categories is banished?
The Founders understood this perfectly well. They did not believe that virtue could be privatized. They believed it must be cultivated, taught, and publicly supported. John Adams went so far as to warn that our Constitution presupposes a virtuous citizenry—and will collapse without one.
Today, many Christians feel intimidated by the cultural hostility directed toward public expressions of Christian morality. But intimidation is not the same as wisdom. Courage is not the same as chaos. And silence is not the same as peace.
Christians do not speak in the public square because they seek power. They speak because truth matters, human dignity matters, children matter, moral order matters, and the destinies of nations are shaped by the ideas they accept or reject.
Progressives sense this intuitively. That is why they work so hard to shame Christians into silence.
The Danger of Privatizing the Faith
The call to privatize Christianity is not intellectually serious. It is a political move designed to reshape the moral foundations of society. It serves one purpose only: to push Christianity out of the cultural imagination so that a competing worldview—Progressivism—can take its place.
Once Christianity is silenced, there is no longer any transcendent moral standard by which to judge political ideologies. The only remaining standard becomes the ideology itself.
But Christianity is not simply an opinion, a preference, or an aesthetic. It is a claim about the nature of the real world. The moral law is not a hobby. It is an extension of God’s character. When Christians speak publicly, they are not offering parochial preferences; they are articulating truths about human beings as image-bearers (Genesis 1:27) and about what leads to human flourishing.
Because of this, Christian silence is not humility. It is abdication.
To retreat into a privatized faith is to concede the moral formation of society to people who deny objective morality altogether. It is to allow the most radical anthropologies to become normal, the most destructive policies to become routine, and the most anti-human ideas to become uncontested.
Progressives understand that anthropology drives policy. Christians must recover the same understanding.
Christianity Provides What Secularism Lacks
Public life requires certain fundamental ideas: an understanding of the human person, a basis for moral judgment, a standard of justice, and a concept of the common good. Secular Progressivism simply cannot provide these coherently.
Consider the left’s anthropology. Progressivism defines humanity as a self-creating, self-interpreting being whose identity is entirely psychological. Biological realities, moral realities, and even social realities can be ignored if they do not conform to the individual’s internal narrative.
This view cannot sustain stable families, and without stable families, societies collapse.
Christianity, on the other hand, explains human dignity, human limits, moral reality, responsibility, and accountability. It provides a grounding for rights, justice, law, and liberty. It understands that human beings flourish within certain creational patterns—male and female, marriage, family, work, responsibility, worship, and community.
To remove these creational goods from public life is to remove the scaffolding that supports civilization.
When Christians speak in the marketplace of ideas, they are not imposing sectarian dogmas. They are bearing witness to realities that govern every human being, whether that person acknowledges them or not.
A Direct Rebuke to the Left’s Attempt to Silence Christian Witness
It is time to say plainly what many Christians have tiptoed around for years:
The modern Left’s demand that Christians be silent is oppressive, hypocritical, and philosophically indefensible.
Their rhetoric about “keeping religion out of politics” is not principled. It is strategic. They are not enforcing neutrality; they are enforcing dominance. And they do so through ridicule, legal pressure, cultural intimidation, and the manipulation of language.
Christians must stop apologizing for existing.
The Progressive project depends on silencing dissent. A worldview that redefines human nature so drastically—and so unrealistically—cannot withstand open scrutiny. It must bully opponents into silence because it cannot win a fair debate. It must shame, mock, censor, and threaten because the moment Christian anthropology is allowed back into the conversation, the entire ideological edifice trembles.
Progressives know that the biblical worldview explains reality far better than their own system of self-made identities, invented rights, and therapeutic moral reasoning.
So they resort to labeling Christian conviction as “hate,” “bigotry,” “dangerous,” or “anti-democratic” simply to disqualify Christian claims from public consideration before those claims can be weighed.
This is intellectual cowardice masquerading as moral superiority.
The Left’s Moralism Without Morality
A few decades ago, the Left framed itself as the champion of “freedom of expression” and “moral nonjudgmentalism.”
But that era is long gone. Today’s Left is aggressively moralistic—but with no coherent foundation.
They condemn.
They preach.
They excommunicate.
They enforce rituals.
They administer public penance.
They threaten cultural damnation for dissenters.
In other words, they behave religiously.
Yet they insist that Christianity alone must remain silent because it is “too religious.”
This is the height of hypocrisy. It’s like a man standing knee-deep in gasoline while accusing everyone else of being flammable.
Progressivism has its own doctrines:
• The doctrine of identity
• The doctrine of liberation
• The doctrine of structural sin
• The doctrine of perpetual revolution
• The doctrine of therapeutic self-creation
• The doctrine of history as moral ascent
• The doctrine of the state as redeemer
• The doctrine of speech as violence
None of these doctrines are neutral. None are scientific. All require philosophical and moral commitments that can only be described as faith-based.
If Christianity must remain silent because it is “faith-based,” then Progressivism must also be expelled from public discourse. But the Left will never accept that conclusion, because the demand for Christian silence is not about principle; it is about power.
The Internal Contradictions of Progressive Anthropology
The Progressive worldview collapses under its own claims:
- It asserts human goodness while describing society as irredeemably oppressive.
You cannot simultaneously claim that human nature is good and that humans have built a monstrous system of injustice. This is moral incoherence. - It demands absolute affirmation while denying absolute truth.
If truth is subjective, why must everyone affirm someone’s subjective “identity”? Subjective claims cannot impose objective obligations. - It insists that speech is violence while engaging in the most vicious rhetoric.
Christian speech is labeled harmful, yet Progressive speech is treated as therapeutic—even when it encourages mutilation, encourages the breakdown of the family, or paints half the country as moral reprobates. - It preaches liberation while strengthening state coercion.
Every Progressive policy—from DEI mandates to compelled pronouns—requires government or institutional enforcement. This is not liberation; it is soft totalitarianism. - It claims to champion the marginalized while erasing the most vulnerable.
The unborn child, the confused teenager, the family without a father—Progressivism has no place for them because its anthropology has no categories for sacrifice, responsibility, or objective moral duty.
The Christian worldview, by contrast, is consistent. Human beings are fallen but bear God’s image. We are capable of evil but designed for good. We require redemption, transformation, and moral formation—not ideological engineering or state coercion.
Progressivism begins with false premises about human nature, and once the premises are false, everything downstream becomes destructive.
Questions That Unravel the Progressive Framework
Sometimes the best way to expose the instability of Progressive claims is not through grand speeches, but through simple, piercing questions.
Here are questions that leave the Progressive project intellectually naked:
1. If morality is culturally constructed, why is your morality binding on everyone else?
2. If gender is fluid, why is sexual orientation considered fixed?
3. If humans are blank slates, why are so many behaviors consistent across cultures and history?
4. If the state is the solution, who will restrain the state from becoming the greatest oppressor?
5. If identity is self-created, why must everyone else validate it?
6. If Christianity must be silent because it is a worldview, why should your worldview govern the laws and institutions of society?
7. If children can choose their gender, why can’t they sign contracts, vote, or drive?
8. If truth is subjective, why is disagreement treated as immoral?
These questions do not attack people—they attack ideas. They rip the mask off ideological pretension and reveal the contradictions that lie beneath. Christians do not need to shout. They only need to ask the right questions with calm confidence.
Why Progressive Ideology Cannot Sustain a Civilization
A civilization cannot function on contradictory assumptions about human nature. Progressivism offers no stable anthropology, no coherent moral code, no consistent understanding of authority, no workable model for the family, no definition of the good life, and no vision of the common good.
Its policies consistently:
• Destroy the family
• Undermine personal responsibility
• Reward vice and punish virtue
• Confuse children
• Demonize dissent
• Expand bureaucratic control
• Devalue objective truth
• Reduce freedom
• Encourage instability
• Disrupt social order
This is why Progressive ideology leads to crime waves, collapsing birth rates, chaotic schools, cultural fragmentation, and rising authoritarianism. It cuts humanity off from its creational design and then acts surprised when everything falls apart.
Christianity, on the other hand, sees human beings as divine image-bearers with inherent dignity, moral limits, created meaning, and a defined telos: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. A society can build on this. A society cannot build on self-invention and perpetual revolution.
The Telos of Mankind and the Collapse of Progressive Anthropology
One of the deepest mistakes of modern Progressivism is its belief that human beings have no fixed nature and therefore no fixed purpose. If human beings can be endlessly reinvented, then no inherited wisdom matters, no tradition matters, no moral boundaries matter, and no institutions rooted in reality matter. Everything becomes plastic, fluid, “to be determined,” and perpetually up for renegotiation.
This might sound liberating in theory. In practice, it is disastrous.
Human beings cannot function—psychologically, morally, or socially—without a stable understanding of who they are. We were not designed to live without boundaries, categories, or purpose. A world without a given human nature is a world without meaning. And a world without meaning is a world filled with despair, conflict, confusion, and manipulation.
Christianity begins with the opposite conviction: human nature is given, not invented. It is rooted in the imago Dei (Genesis 1:27). Men and women are distinct yet complementary. The family is the basic institution of civilization. Children require stable mothers and fathers. Work is a calling. Moral law is real. Life has purpose. Our identity is grounded in God, not the self.
To reject these truths is not merely to reject religion—it is to reject reality.
Humanity Needs a Telos
Every serious philosophical tradition recognizes that humanity has a telos—a purpose toward which it is ordered. Plants have purposes. Animals have purposes. Instruments have purposes. Why would human beings be the only creature without one?
The Progressive claim that humans have no fixed ends and must invent their own meaning is essentially the claim that human beings are cosmic accidents.
But people cannot live as accidents. They require significance. They require belonging. They require direction.
This is why Progressive societies, despite all their claims to liberation, are filled with anxiety, loneliness, addiction, moral instability, and psychological distress. If you tell people they are self-created creatures in a meaningless universe, they will eventually believe you—and that belief will destroy them.
Christianity answers the human need for meaning by rooting human nature in divine purpose. Humanity exists for communion with God, obedience to His commands, stewardship of creation, love of neighbor, and the pursuit of righteousness. These are not arbitrary demands; they are the blueprint for human flourishing.
When public life reflects these truths, societies flourish. When public life rejects them, societies falter.
The Family as the Center of Human Flourishing
One of the clearest demonstrations of Progressive anthropology’s failure is its destruction of the family. A worldview that denies created order cannot preserve created institutions.
Progressivism undermines the family by:
• Diminishing marriage
• Denying the male/female distinction
• Encouraging fatherlessness
• Treating children as lifestyle accessories
• Promoting sexual ideology disconnected from biological reality
• Treating motherhood as oppression
• Substituting the state for parental authority
Yet decades of social science—not to mention thousands of years of civilizational wisdom—demonstrate that the two-parent heterosexual family is the most stable and beneficial environment for children. Economist Thomas Sowell often comments that the greatest casualties of modern leftist policies are the very children Progressives claim to champion.
Father absence predicts nearly every social pathology: crime, depression, educational failure, poverty, incarceration, substance abuse, and broken relationships. Progressive ideology refuses to confront this because acknowledging it would require acknowledging the realities of human nature.
The Christian understanding, grounded in Scripture and affirmed by natural law, sees the family as a sacred institution—not a human invention. Man and woman form a complementary unity that provides a stable environment for children, models sacrificial love, and forms the foundation of social order. No government program can replace the family. No ideology can redesign it without catastrophe.
The Body Cannot Be Separated From the Self
Nothing illustrates the bankruptcy of Progressive anthropology more clearly than the modern attempt to separate identity from the body. According to gender ideology, the physical structure of one’s body—chromosomes, reproductive organs, biological markers—is irrelevant. What matters is internal self-perception.
But this is a metaphysical claim, not a scientific one. It is a doctrine of the self that resembles ancient Gnosticism, not empirical reality.
Christianity affirms that God created humans as embodied souls. The body is not an accident of biology; it is a meaningful part of our identity. Male and female are not costumes. They are creational realities that shape how we relate to the world and to one another.
When people are encouraged to reject the body’s reality, they descend into alienation—from themselves, from their families, and from the world. This is why gender ideology correlates with deep psychological distress. It promises freedom but produces confusion. It promises meaning but produces pain.
The Progressive worldview insists that identity is purely psychological and endlessly malleable. Christianity insists that identity is rooted in God’s creational design. Only one of these can sustain a sane society.
Why Progressive Policies Produce Harm, Not Liberation
Progressive ideology always claims the mantle of compassion, but its results are anything but compassionate:
1. Crime Surges:
Policies that deny moral accountability lead to lawlessness. If criminal behavior is always the fault of “systems” rather than individuals, then criminals are victims and victims are collateral damage. Society becomes unsafe because moral agency is denied.
2. Educational Collapse:
Schools focused on ideology over literacy, discipline, and truth produce generations incapable of self-governance. This is not compassion. It is sabotage.
3. Economic Instability:
If work is devalued, responsibility dismissed, and entitlement encouraged, economic collapse is inevitable. Progressivism refuses to acknowledge the moral foundations of prosperity.
4. Cultural Fragmentation:
A society built on subjective identities rather than shared truths dissolves into tribes. Truth becomes relative. Dialogue becomes impossible. Civility collapses.
5. Authoritarian Enforcement:
A worldview that denies objective truth inevitably resorts to coercion. If truth is merely a social construct, then powerful institutions must enforce the “correct” construct. Censorship becomes necessary. Surveillance becomes rational. Punishment becomes moral.
Christianity stands against all of this by affirming objective truth, human dignity, personal responsibility, moral order, and the value of the family. The biblical worldview is not merely true—it is humane.
The Civilizational Stakes
This debate is not a matter of personal preference. It is a matter of civilizational direction.
A society that denies human nature cannot survive. It loses the ability to define justice, uphold virtue, restrain evil, or cultivate the next generation. It becomes vulnerable to manipulation, demagoguery, and authoritarian control.
By contrast, a society grounded in Christian anthropology can flourish. It can produce stable families, moral citizens, strong institutions, responsible governance, and a coherent moral vocabulary.
The Progressive denial of human nature is not just wrong; it is unsustainable.
Christianity’s understanding of human nature is not only true; it is indispensable.
This is why the Christian voice must remain in the public square—not for the sake of political victory, but for the sake of human flourishing, the well-being of future generations, and the glory of God.
The Christian’s Call to Speak Boldly in the Public Square
When all the arguments have been examined and the dust settles, one truth remains: Christians have both the right and the responsibility to speak publicly from their worldview. This is not merely a civic right embedded in the First Amendment. It is a spiritual duty grounded in Scripture and rooted in love for truth, neighbor, and God.
The cultural pressures to remain silent are real. Christians today face mockery, professional retaliation, social media hostility, and institutional gatekeeping. But silence has never been the Christian posture in times of cultural confusion. The prophets spoke in the presence of kings. The apostles declared the gospel before Caesar’s governors. Reformers challenged armies and emperors. Revivalists confronted cultural decay. Abolitionists confronted injustice. Pastors throughout history shepherded their flocks through times of upheaval, persecution, and moral collapse.
Silence has never preserved the faith. Boldness has.
The Christian Obligation to Proclaim Truth
The Great Commission does not permit Christians to compartmentalize truth. Discipling the nations involves teaching everything Christ commanded (Matthew 28:19–20). This includes truths about human dignity, the family, justice, morality, and authority. Christian truth is not merely about the inner soul. It concerns all of life.
Jesus is not Lord of the private heart only. He is Lord of heaven and earth.
The apostolic command to “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5) applies to public reasoning and cultural engagement. Christians must confront false ideas wherever they appear—schools, legislatures, newsrooms, corporations—not with rage or intimidation, but with calm, confident articulation of truth.
When Progressives say Christians must remain silent because their worldview is “religious,” Christians must firmly answer: every worldview is religious. Every worldview has presuppositions. And every worldview seeks expression in society.
The only question is whether the Christian worldview, which promotes order, dignity, stability, and human flourishing, will be permitted to shape public debate—or whether the destructive, incoherent worldview of the new secular priesthood will dominate unchallenged.
Practical Ways Christians Can Engage the Marketplace of Ideas
Christians often ask how they can contribute meaningfully without falling into unproductive conflict. The answer is not complicated, though it requires courage and perseverance.
Here are practical steps:
1. Speak Clearly When the Opportunity Arises
When conversations touch on moral issues—whether in the workplace, among friends, or online—speak truth without hostility. Avoid slogans. Use reason. Point to facts. Ground your perspective in Scripture with humility and confidence.
Progressives win cultural territory mostly because Christians leave it undefended.
2. Refuse to Use False Language
Do not affirm gender ideology through pronoun adoption. Do not repeat slogans you know to be false. Language shapes reality, and Christians cannot participate in linguistic lies.
When pressured, simply say, “I speak truthfully because I believe truth matters.”
3. Support Churches that Equip Believers to Think Clearly
Pastors who preach Scripture faithfully, teach biblical anthropology, and address cultural confusion are indispensable. The church must be a lighthouse, not a fog machine.
4. Get Involved in Local Institutions
School boards, city councils, county offices, parent associations—these are strategic cultural frontlines.
Progressives dominate these institutions not because they are competent, but because Christians often stay home. Even one informed Christian voice can change the dynamic.
5. Use Media Wisely
Write letters to the editor. Start a blog. Record short videos. Participate in online discussions with charity and clarity. Share good sources. Promote Christian thinkers who defend truth winsomely.
6. Teach Your Children a Robust Christian Worldview
The Christian home is the greatest bulwark against cultural confusion. Equip children to understand not only what Christians believe, but why those beliefs are true and how they create human flourishing.
A well-trained teenager can dismantle most Progressive arguments with ease.
7. Live with Integrity
Public witness collapses when the private life contradicts it. Christians must model virtue, love, discipline, and stability. A consistent life has more persuasive power than the most eloquent rhetoric.
8. Stand with Other Believers
Courage is contagious. Isolation breeds fear. Join with other believers publicly. Support one another. When Christians speak together, secular intimidation loses its potency.
A Final Word to the Christian: Speak Without Fear, Without Apology, Without Shame
Christianity is not a hobby. It is not a subculture. It is not a personal therapy project. It is the truth about the world and the truth about humanity. It is the revelation of God’s nature and the roadmap for human flourishing.
The modern Left wants a world in which Christians are permitted to worship quietly in private but forbidden to influence the moral structure of society. They want the aroma of freedom without the substance. They want Christian virtues—dignity, justice, compassion, forgiveness—without the Christian foundations that justify them. They want the fruits without the root.
That will never work.
A society cannot keep the moral capital of Christianity while severing itself from Christianity itself. Once the root dies, the fruit quickly withers.
Christians speak in public not because they seek domination, but because they seek truth. They speak because the love of neighbor demands warning against harmful ideologies. They speak because silence would be unfaithfulness.
They speak because Christ is King.
The Progressive project will not stop trying to silence Christians. It cannot stop, because Christian truth exposes the failures and illusions of Progressive anthropology. Yet the Christian need not fear. Truth is stronger than ideology. Reality is sturdier than fashion. God’s design endures even when mocked by the ruling class.
The Christian calling is simple:
Stand firm. Speak truth. Love your neighbor. Do not yield.
You were not placed in this cultural moment by accident. You were born into this age because God intends you to be faithful in this age. Not a more comfortable one. Not a quieter one. This one.
Lift your voice. Let the light of truth shine. And never, ever apologize for proclaiming what is right, good, beautiful, and true.
S.D.G.,
Robert Sparkman
MMXXV
rob@christiannewsjunkie.com
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Concerning the Related Content section, I encourage everyone to evaluate the content carefully.
If I have listed the content, I think it is worthwhile viewing to educate yourself on the topic, but it may contain coarse language or some opinions I don’t agree with.
I use words that reflect the “woke” culture and their re-definitions sometimes. It is hard to communicate effectively without using their twisted vocabulary. Rest assured that I do not believe gender ideology or “Progressivism”. Words and phrases like “trans man”, “trans women” , “transgender”, “transition” or similar words and phrases are nonsensical and reflect a distorted, imaginary worldview where men can become women and vice-versa. The word “Progressive” itself is a propagandistic word that implies the Progressives are the positive force in society, whereas in reality their cultic belief system is very corrosive to mankind.
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Comments are closed after sixty days due to spamming issues from internet bots. You can always send me an email at rob@christiannewsjunkie.com if you want to comment on something afterwards, though.
I will continue to add videos and other items to the Related Content section as opportunities present themselves.