Penna Dexter
New data from the Gallup organization finds just under half of U.S. adults describing themselves as religious. In the same survey, 33% say they are spiritual, but not religious, and 18% are neither.
It’s increasingly apparent that we live in a post-Christian society.
Evangelist Sam Chan explains: “This is why evangelism is so scary and awkward….What worked in the age of Christendom seems ineffective in our post-Christian age.”
In his book, How to Talk About Jesus (without being THAT guy), Dr. Chan suggests listening closely to people to “hear where they’re coming from — culturally, emotionally, and existentially” and then appropriating their language to “show them that Jesus is the one they’re looking for.”
The apostle Paul did that. Acts 17:22-31 recounts his speech to the Areopagus. These were Athenian philosophers, who would gather at a hilltop called the Areopagus, or Mars Hill. This place for discussion was the marketplace of society where men traded in ideas. Like Paul, we should think about evangelism as beginning where people are, physically, and also intellectually and spiritually.
Our guide through Greece, David Sparks, emphasized that our message should be captivating, relevant to the times and to each person’s needs and mindset. Paul told the Areopagus he could see that they were “very religious.” He mentioned their altar bearing the inscription: “To the unknown god.” He proceeded to explain who this god is, that he is our creator and that “he is actually not far from each one of us.”
Pastor Sparks said Paul “used an old and frequent pattern in the Greek language”, when he proclaimed: ”In him we live and move and have our being.”
Paul’s love for people fueled his concern that they were trapped in the idolatries of the day. Today, our idols are different. We must be sensitive as we point them out.
We can follow Paul’s pattern for evangelism in a pagan society. 

Kerby Anderson
One book that documents the Judeo-Christian foundations of America is the book, On Two Wings, written by Michael Novak. He the author of more than thirty books and was awarded the $1 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
In his preface, he says, “Although I have wanted to write this book for some forty years, my own ignorance stood in the way. It took me a long time, time spent searching up many byways and neglected paths, and fighting through a great deal of conventional (but mistaken) wisdom, to learn how many erroneous perceptions I had unconsciously drunk in from public discussion.” He concludes that “most of us grow up these days remarkably ignorant of the hundred men most responsible for leading this country into a War for Independence and writing our nation’s Constitution.”
The way American history has been told for the last century is incomplete. Secular historians have “cut off one of the two wings by which the American eagle flies.” The founding generation established a compact with the God of Israel “and relied upon this belief. Their faith is an indispensable part of their story.”
One example can be found in yesterday’s discussion of the Declaration of Independence. While secular historians point to John Locke as the source of the ideas embodied in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, they usually fail to note the older influence of other authors and the Bible.
“Before Locke was even born, the Pilgrims believed in the consent of the governed, social compacts, the dignity of every child of God, and political equality.” By forcing a secular interpretation onto America’s founding history, these secular historians ignore the second wing by which the American eagle took flight.
It’s time to look at the two wings of our history.

Kerby Anderson
Today is the 4th of July, and I thought I would take a moment to talk about the origin of the ideas in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson said that many of the ideas in the Declaration came from John Locke. Jefferson also gave credit to the writer Algernon Sidney, who in turn cites most prominently Aristotle, Plato, Roman republican writers, and the Old Testament.
Legal scholar Gary Amos argues that Locke’s Two Treatises on Government is simply Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex in a popularized form. Amos says in his book Defending the Declaration “that the ‘law of nature’ is God’s general revelation of law in creation, which God also supernaturally writes on the hearts of men.”
This foundation helps explain the tempered nature of the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence was a bold document, but not a radical one. The colonists did not break with England for “light and transient causes.” They were mindful that Romans 13 says they should be “in subjection to the governing authorities” which “are established by God.” Yet when they suffered from a “long train of abuses and usurpations,” they argued that “it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government.”
Jefferson also drew from George Mason’s Declaration of Rights (published on June 6, 1776). The first paragraph states that “all men are born equally free and independent and have certain inherent natural Rights; among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of Acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining Happiness and Safety.”
The Declaration of Independence is more than 200 years old. It was a monumental document at the time. Even today its words ring with truth and inspire new generations.