From  the Family Research Council Prayer Team, 6 December 2017

The Judeo-Christian worldview (is) the foundation for American law and culture...

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1

    Christian historian Rod Gragg, a former journalist, is director of the Center for Military and Veterans Studies and adjunct professor at Coastal Carolina University. An award-winning author, he has written over 20 books highlighting Christianity's role in American history. These excerpts are from his By the Hand of Providence: How Faith Shaped the American Revolution:

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In 1517... Martin Luther... sparked the Protestant Reformation by calling for the Church to return to key biblical doctrines... salvation by faith in Jesus Christ alone rather than by faith and works... the authority of Scripture over church tradition and church leadership... [T]he Reformation flooded Western Europe with a Bible-centered revival -- and a political transformation. With emphasis on the authority of Scripture as the Higher Law, the Reformation persuaded countless commoners that every person, prince or pauper, was of equal value to God. It spread the belief that God's law, as revealed by Scripture, superseded man's law -- including the authority of princes, queens, and kings.

In England... the Reformation and its biblical doctrines took root and flourished. The first published English translation of the Bible gave the common people personal access to the Scriptures -- and the country was transformed. "The whole moral effect ... was simply amazing," English historian John Richard Green would later conclude. "The whole nation became a church."

By the early 1600s, many people in England weighed everything according to a biblical worldview -- including government. They cherished individual rights and a representative form of government -- the legacy of the canon law of Christianity and the English Constitution it had inspired. The English Reformation inspired even greater commitment to Higher Law and God-given rights of the individual. Most committed of all were the Puritans..., [who] desire[d] to "purify" the Church of England -- the official government denomination -- were not popular with English monarchs. Neither was the Puritan belief that all people were equal before God. King James I vowed to "harry them out of the land, or else do worse." His son and successor, King Charles I, permitted Anglican officials to persecute them. Puritan preaching was restricted, their books and tracts banned, and many Puritans were whipped, tortured, branded, or imprisoned. [Some] Puritans prayerfully chose to follow the Pilgrims to America. Between 1630 and 1640 -- in the "Great Migration" -- more than twenty thousand Puritans immigrated to Massachusetts Bay Colony, bringing with them the seeds of Bible-based liberty.

     Although far from perfect, the Puritans' Massachusetts Bay Colony was based on biblical principles and became an influential model for other colonies. Many of the fundamental rights championed by America's founding fathers, such as representative self-government, regular elections, and respect for private property, were inspired by the Puritans. The Judeo-Christian worldview became the foundation for American law and culture, as expressed, for example, in the 1643 Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England: "Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel in purity with peace. ..."At times, some Colonial Americans appeared to forget the persecution they and their ancestors had suffered in the Old World and repeated the same sins in the New World. But the New was not the Old, and religious intolerance would not last in the Bible-based culture of Colonial America -- too many colonists were unwilling to stand for it. Instead, gradually there arose an American tradition of religious tolerance, based on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was advanced by such people of faith as Roger Williams in Rhode Island [Baptist], William Penn in Pennsylvania [Quaker], Cecilius Calvert [Catholic]in Maryland, and countless American colonists who rejected religious persecution. Colonial Americans eventually established laws that reflected biblical values and principles while allowing full freedom of faith and conscience for all. The foundation of American liberty was the Judeo-Christian worldview, and a keystone in that foundation was religious freedom. (Excerpted from By the Hand of Providence: How Faith Shaped the American Revolution by Rod Gragg.)

Psalm 11:3 asks: "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

Today, people, bound and blinded by sin, labor to destroy these foundations.

Our job is to defend, protect, and repair these foundations, and preserve them for future generations.