It is the first decade of the 1800s, and for Christians in America, it is a desperate moment. The promise has not been fulfilled. The nation has not risen to the dream.
Though the country was created through a righteous revolution fueled by faith in a sovereign God, the holy fire of those days seems now to be lost. When Christian leaders survey their land, they are grieved—and sound the alarm. In sermons and newspaper articles, they decry the contempt for religion, contempt for the law and “an abounding infidelity which in many instances tends to Atheism” filling the land. The result is a thorough corruption of public morals, revealed in the “profaneness, pride, luxury, injustice, intemperance, lewdness, and every species of debauchery” that echoes throughout the nation. Selfishness reigns. Calloused hearts abound.
The religious leaders who might make a difference are in no better shape. These, too, are in “a very wintry season.” Some “fell, others stumbled, and many slumbered at their posts,” Most churches, one preacher reports, are “too far gone ever to be revived.”
The schools are much the same. They are, declares a grieving pastor, “in a most ungodly state.” Skepticism reigns. Profanity shouts its bile. Perversion ensnares young lives. Even at schools designed to advance the gospel of Christ, students sit calmly in classrooms debating “whether Christianity had been beneficial or injurious to mankind.”
So it is, mired in grief and fading hope, that the Christian leaders in early America proclaimed their heartbreaking conclusion: “The eternal God has a controversy with this nation.”
As a nation, we seem embarrassed by our Christian moorings, devoted to perversions of every kind, and determined to live as if there is no God...
The same might be said of America today. Christians now might well conclude that God has a controversy with the United States in our time. As a nation, we seem embarrassed by our Christian moorings, devoted to perversions of every kind, and determined to live as if there is no God to whom we must give account and who rules in the affairs of men. It is easy for modern Christians to despair and lose hope that the gospel of Jesus Christ can bring meaningful change.
Yet we should know the rest of the story from that first decade in our nation’s history. It is true that it was a dark and disturbing time, but this was not the final verdict on that age. Having surveyed their times and found a people far from God, the Christian believers of that era did not merely wallow in self-pity. Instead, they got busy. They prayed. They preached. They repented. They refocused their churches and realigned their lives, remembering covenants and hopes from generations gone by, remembering God and the promises of scripture.
God heard and answered. What followed was one of the most transforming revival movements in Christian history. It has come to be known as the Second Great Awakening. In it, the American frontier was set aflame. Millions of “awakened souls” flooded into churches. There were 100,000 converts in one year alone, and this in a nation a fraction of its current size. The American Bible Society and the American Tract Society were both launched, and ministries to slaves and Native Americans brought historic changes. So powerful was this renewal movement that entire towns changed their names once revival swept their streets. Smithville became Bethlehem. Simon’s Forge became New Jerusalem. Social movements of every type arose, since the converted were taught that they confirmed their conversion by doing good in the world. The United States was never the same.
It all came about because a generation of Christian believers took honest stock of the spiritual ills of their time and trusted God to move in power. Are we, in our time, equally brave? Are we willing to explore God’s controversy with America today?
Let us test our mettle against our times. And a test it will be. The statistics reveal our tragic state.
We are clearly a nation wrestling with God. The Pew Research Center’s latest Religious Landscape Study shows only 54% of Americans are “absolutely certain” that God even exists. Among Americans under 30, 57% do not believe in the “biblical God” at all. More than half of all Americans do not believe that the Bible is inspired by God, and only 20% of Americans believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. It should come as no surprise, then, that only 30% of U.S. adults attend church regularly.
No wonder God has a controversy with our land. We clearly have a controversy with him!
Our morals reflect our uncertainty and even rejection of the author of life. Despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Guttmacher Institute data suggests there are still nearly 3,000 abortions a day in the United States. Some 63% of Americans are pro-abortion. Similarly, 64% of Americans believe that gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable. A solid 70% of Americans support same sex marriage.
The resulting devastation to the traditional, biblical family is one of the great catastrophes of our age. Nearly 40% of children in the United States are born to unmarried mothers. Currently, one in four children grow up without a biological or adoptive father in the home. This is in part because sex is no longer seen as a sacred act to be enjoyed within the sacred bonds of marriage. Instead, 77% of Americans view premarital sex as morally acceptable, 70% live together before marriage, and 90% of Americans have sex before they marry.
Deepening the damage is that each day Americans awaken to agonizing news of the devastations of our time. Though the murder rate in the U.S. is slowly declining, more than 20,000 people were murdered in America in 2025. This is approximately 55 a day. Our entertainments are riddled with violence, pornographic treatments of sex, and a scoffing disregard for God and religion. Our national leaders are distrusted and dismissed as having any answers for the nation. Little surprise, then, that over 250 self-proclaimed socialists hold public office in the United States. Also, little surprise that just under 40% of Americans believe that the United States will cease to exist in a matter of years.
Let us test our mettle against our times. And a test it will be. The statistics reveal our tragic state.
These are troubling statistics to digest. They speak of a nation warring with God, warring with itself, and warring with the vision of its lofty founding.
And yet there is hope. Though we must conclude that God has a controversy with modern America just as he did the America of the early 1800s, we must also conclude that God is as willing to move in power and pour out his Spirit today as he was in those early years. What he requires of our age is what he required of that generation. Remember? They prayed. They preached. They repented. They refocused their churches and realigned their lives, remembering covenants and hopes from generations gone by, remembering God and the promises of scripture.
Renewal is possible. Reform is possible. Realigning our national purpose is possible. We must remember now that history is not ruled by the majority. It is ruled by the dedicated minority, particularly if that minority has its vision set on the living God. Let us be that people now.
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