Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) declared during a lecture at Boyce College of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, that the United States was “founded on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
“It’s not just churches that rise or fall with a good ministry, with a trained ministry, with a zealous ministry. It is the nation that rises or falls with the ministry,” Hawley explained. “This country was founded on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This country was founded on the truth of the Bible. This country was not founded on some Enlightenment secularism. It was not founded on a series of neutral principles, whatever those would be. This country was founded on the truth of Scripture.”
“When the world says to the Church ‘stay put,’ the world is asking us to abandon not just our mission as Christians, which is the most central thing, it’s asking us to forget who we are as Americans,” he said.
Imploring students to stand for their faith, he said churches are to reject any call to “stay put.”
“We must not stay safe. We must not stay comfortable,” Hawley urged. “Is the Lord Jesus Lord over all of life or Lord only of the four walls of the church?”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio similarly drew attention to the nation’s Christian heritage, highlighting the role Christianity played in the development of the Western world during his speech at the Munich Security Conference.
“America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. The man who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new,” he explained, noting that the U.S. and Europe are “part of one civilization – Western civilization.”
