The American Spirit vs. The Great Awokening: How Did We Get Here?

How did such a great nation fall so far? How have we become so disconnected from the spirit of America's founding? How have we become such easy prey for charlatans and false gods?

The American Spirit Essays #2

Prior: A Spiritual Crisis Needs Spiritual Solutions

A House Divided

America is a house divided against itself.  Our debates have transcended public policy and moved into the realms of meaning and value.  We no longer agree about basic terms of discourse:  Man, woman, sex, racism, supremacism, antisemitism, peaceful, freedom, secure, misinformation, authoritarian, recession, insurrection, fascist, and so many other words long considered self-explanatory have been deconstructed to the point of meaninglessness.  Today’s America lacks a consensus about even such basic notions as good and bad.

A healthy nation must have a unified vision, mission, and purpose.  The American nation was founded with history’s finest mission statement: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  For more than two centuries, people of the world have looked to America as the beacon of liberty.

We’ve lost that unifying vision.  The political shift from Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden has whipsawed American law and policy.  We’ve gone from a country in which we feared that our political opponents would enact expensive, ineffectual plans to one in which we fear that our political opponents will transform America into a country in which we would not want to live. 

How did our political struggles become existential?  How can those of us who still embrace America as the greatest nation made by man prevail?  How can we restore the values that made America exceptional and great?  How can we revive the full glory of the American spirit?

This essay series grows from a simple answer:  America is mired in a deep spiritual crisis.  Our relegation of spirituality to the outermost periphery of national consciousness has given rise to nearly every prominent element of modern American life—positive or negative, cultural, social, or political.  A new Woke religion grounded in the utopian tradition—rather than in the biblical tradition—has arisen to fill the vacuum. 

Wokeism has quickly become the dominant faith of our elite—the urban, affluent, credentialed, professional classes who control our most important institutions.  Left unchecked, Wokeism will undermine both the American nation and the American republic.  Only a reconnection to the spirit of America’s founding—and a reintegration of our traditional faiths into the national fabric—can save us.

What does that mean in practice?