The American Family Association’s Don Wildmon, well-known architect of product boycotts, and Jonathan Falwell, son of Jerry Falwell of Thomas Road Baptist Church, head up two prominent ministries. These men are fully aware of the U.S. spiritual and moral decline, a condition which recently prompted each of them to ask national-level Christian leaders to convene to help find solutions in the battle for restoration and renewal. Let’s look at the potential that lies within their separate but related proposals.

Last May, Wildmon asked 61 denominational heads about possible interest in a meeting, (July AFA). The purpose would have been to brainstorm how The Church might “halt declining moral values lest 2,000 years of Christ’s influence grind to a halt and Western Civilization be destroyed. And, before unborn grand-children are spiritually betrayed.” A month later, whether out of lack of gumption; fear of controversy; apathy; disapproval by spouses or elder boards, or conviction that “the battle” is already lost – take your pick – only four wrote back in favor. Two said “no,” and 55 didn’t bother to respond at all!

However, had the 61 met, it’s certain some very edgy debates would have erupted, likely centering on the “hot button” topics of member loss; public schools; abortion; divorce; the militancy of the sex-perversion lobby; drugs, dress, pornography, adultery, pop-music in the churches; how to deal with a substandard 21st century Christianity that has become a “people-pleasing” mile wide and an inch deep, etc. “Better to let sleeping dogs lie,” might explain their near-unanimous refusal to convene and Wildmon has since dropped the idea. But even though rejected, his proposal helped reveal a dirty little secret of our day; namely the unsubmissive-to-Scripture mindset by Church leaders too petrified of losing members (i.e., money) to take strong leadership stands on behalf of confused, divided and overly-secularized pew occupiers in a crumbling culture.

Falwell’s meeting in Lynchburg this August will be less controversial than Wildmon’s even though it was apparently motivated by a Barna poll stating that 16 to 29 year-old non-believers are turned off by Christians of that same age bracket. This, due to their “Christian” pride, judgmentalism and lack of humility. Falwell therefore has invited Rick Warren and a host of Big Church pastors, church planters and music ministers to tell the hundreds of attendees how to “effectively preach Christ in modern culture” in a world that, he says, “necessitates ever-changing methods.” It’s also thought that this spiritual jump-start gathering will be enhanced by the presence of some 125 “church products” vendors. At meeting’s end it’s likely there’ll be glowing forecasts as the pastors begin wending their way back to their (often dwindling) congregations. But, based on the rarely productive outcomes of dozens of similar such conventions held regularly around the country, the most likely result will be that the cultural break-up will continue unabated in communities represented by the attendees. Churches will remain in suicide mode in spite of the conference’s “relevance-based” growth ideas, much-improved “small group” ideas, ever-higher-tech, “contemporary” entertainment novelties, etc.

However, given the quality and quantity of the U.S. cultural meltdown, neither meeting could have provided or will provide Bible-based answers for a waning Christianity. Falwell’s gathering with its overworked focus on “church growth,” pursues an idea that is a mere physical and spiritual daydream. It’s necessarily aimed at young American adults encumbered by “instant gratification” type mindsets. Some, especially those in their 20s and 30s, single, young-married category, will consider joining those churches which offer lots of coffee, pop music, short sermon “fixes” addressing personal difficulties, and the “you’ll go to heaven when you die” assurances. But don’t ask for serious commitments or expect traditional Christianity to be re-considered. As for tithing, given the economy, it doesn’t compute. “Seeker-sensitivity” is all but dead as a motivating tool. Something deeper is needed. Deeper than Christ? No, but it gets complex and here’s why:

The desperate emphasis on growth by a “graying,” no longer “salty” Church has been sorely hindered by an “excellent” program of secular, relativistic propaganda pressed upon modern American souls almost from birth. (Thus Falwell’s misperceived, flawed “need” for “ever-changing” methods of persuasion.) To live in the U.S. and Canada today is to have been told repeatedly by Christ-hating and family-hating public schools, media, and entertainment that Christianity is bad news. It’s a religion of “phobias, hypocrisy, hate, small-mindedness, bigotry, anti-science” and many more powerful pejoratives. Perhaps at no time in history has the Gospel message been so high-tech and effectively pre-sabotaged than today. In fact, it would be easier to present the Gospel to an island of man-eating savages than to the average mega-programmed high school graduate.

What most Christian leaders don’t understand, however, nor does Barna, is how badly they’ve been blindsided by Antonio Gramsci, a man unknown to all but a few. A brilliant Marxist, Gramsci (1891–1937) saw that if his cause was to prevail globally it would be vital that young, pliable minds be molded with anti-Christian, Bible-defaming and pro-special interest worldviews. His insightful plot has slowly but steadily percolated up into the activist agendas of those on the God-hating left; those who, themselves, couldn’t even tell you who he is. But they have learned this: If they’re “given the child” during the formative years that child will be theirs forever. Which is exactly what they’re achieving. That’s what Falwell and Wildmon and the rest are up against today, and if fighting fire with fire on our part doesn’t immediately come to mind as a counter tactic, it should.

The “deeper thing” needed that I referred to is this, and it relates to the near-automatic love of parents for children: The only realistic way to restore and re-implant Christian thought and action in a dying culture is for pulpits (and through them, the parents) to zero in on the minds of those not yet “Gramsci programmed.” That’s why youth, from 5 years up, with minds still possessed of innocence, must be the main target. Blindsided Christians can eat, meet and retreat all they want, but until they nail the next generation via biblical worldview training through full-time homeschooling, their sincere slogans and programs will be but a waste of time and resources. Yes; by all means, let’s meet—at kitchen tables all over America. Homeschooling is the “real thing” and must, at all costs, not be boycotted by pulpit or anyone else. They’re God’s children, not Gramsci’s. Unless the evangelistic “step one” of John 3:16 is supplemented by daily, lifelong doses of 2 Timothy 3:16–17, we’re going to lose. Not Christendom at large, but us, here, in the U.S.