Our society is the direct result of several generations of American families underestimating the importance fathers play in the spiritual and physical safety of the home. When honorable men guard families, our neighborhoods are safe and peaceful. The chaos we live in now is because we stripped men of their purpose and turned our back on the Christian faith upon which our nation was founded.
You don’t have to be a Christian to see that the principles used to build America into a world power are no longer valued. Men are demonized. Major cities are dystopian nightmares. The public school system is pushing porn and other social ills. Our churches are being attacked with no consequences. Almost all of our current issues can be traced back to decisions men made in the Free Love era of the 60s and 70s. They were tasked, as all generations of men are, with protecting our morality and failed.
In short succession, several of our national institutions served to switch our nation’s focus from God and family to narcissism and fleeting pleasure. When God was stripped from our public school system by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1962, Engel v. Vitale, only one justice wrote a dissenting opinion denouncing the banning of prayer in our children’s classrooms. “On the contrary,” Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said. “I think that to deny the wish of these school children to join in reciting this prayer is to deny them the opportunity of sharing the spiritual heritage of our Nation.”
Rejecting our faith made our society defenseless against the seductive way evil appeals to our selfish nature.
In 1969, while Governor of California, former President Ronald Reagan solidified the decline, signing the first no-fault divorce bill in the nation into California law. Reagan later called the move one of his biggest political mistakes, but it was much more than that. No-fault divorce destroyed the American family. Our country has over 19 million children living in single-parent households, according to the latest census. This number has more than doubled in the 54 years since no-fault divorce swept the nation. Most of these children are not growing up under the spiritual guidance of their fathers, with over 80% of single-parent households having a mother acting as the head of the family.
One of the largest studies on faith and family ever conducted found that fathers play the most significant role in passing down their religion to their children. It’s not just that fathers need to be religious for their children to want to emulate their lives, but they must also be present. (RELATED: ROOKE: Blaming Feminism Is A Cope For Men Who Traded Masculinity For The Mirage Of Free Love)
“Despite enormous changes in American society, a child is actually more likely to remain within the fold than leave it, and even the nonreligious are more likely to follow their parents’ example than to rebel. And while outside forces do play a role, the crucial factor in whether a child keeps the faith is the presence of a strong fatherly bond,” the study found. “A crucial factor in whether a child keeps the faith is the father’s warmth; parental piety cannot make up for a devout but distant dad.”
The U.S. religious landscape has changed drastically over the last 50 years and is continuing to trend down, according to Pew Research. A study found that 90% of Americans identified as Christian in 1970. Today, that number rests at 64%, but without any preventative measure, the percentage of Christians in America could drop below 50% in the next 30 years.
Our modern society rejects the reality that fathers are the natural head of the household. After decades of telling men their strong moral compass was toxic and needed to be destroyed, we created a nation of absentee dads. As we continue to demonize virtuous masculinity, each generation of American children becomes less connected with ideals that inspired our Founding Fathers to fight for a just country.
We are losing our national Christian heritage. Fathers are responsible for teaching their children how to pray, hold themselves with honor, and love their families. While millions of men take this role seriously, too many ignore it altogether because there is no societal incentive to be good fathers and raise Christian children. Our task for future generations is to teach men how to take on this responsibility again.
Mary Rooke is a reporter at the Daily Caller
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.