American Crisis

I spoke with William D Howard about his book "American Crisis: The Collapse of Christian Culture".

When Christian Culture collapses, so does Western Civilization.

Despite what you've heard, that would be a bad thing.

There is hope.

You can listen here:  Your American Heritage 5 10 2025 with William Howard

or here:

Ed Bonderenka (04:00):

So joining us this hour is William D. Howard, who is the author of American Crisis, the Collapse of Christian Culture. William D. Howard began his journey as a world traveler in 1970, has since visited over 40 countries studying their history and culture along the way here in degrees in philosophy, history served as a social worker and teacher at the high school and college level. And the reason I emphasize William D. Howard is because he wants to be called Dave. So hi Dave.

William D. Howard (04:28):

How are you doing, ed?

Ed Bonderenka (04:30):

So why don't you tell us about yourself?

William D. Howard (04:33):

Well, I have of course a long and various history or background. My father was a Texan. My mother was from Florida. They met, they were part of the greatest generation. They met in World War ii, got married. I lived my early years in Texas, born in Florida. And then we moved back to Florida. I did my high school and junior high high school, young adulthood, went off, traveled a little bit around Europe, backpack, slept in a cave on the island of Crete, was part of that hippie generation. I grew up as a Christian and I always loved the Lord and believed what he taught. But when you're young, you're rebellious. You seek adventure and pleasure. And I did all that. I committed all my sins, or at least enough of them that I repented and I got home. I got serious about my education. I went to the University of South Florida, took a degree in philosophy there where you study a lot of different views that are not consistent with Christian but are very interesting and very important to know.

(05:35):

And then I later got a master's to teach history and I taught over 30 years advanced courses in history, American history, European history, world history, philosophy and world religions. Then I retired at 65 and I wanted to put all that information, all that knowledge to use, and I wanted to serve the Lord and I wanted to respect the wonderful parents I had that raised me in the beginning of my book. I've given an acknowledgement of my parents as the two finest people I've ever known. And that's true. And everybody that knew 'em said the same thing. I know everybody says that about their good parents. But anyway,

Ed Bonderenka (06:11):

Honor your mother and your father. So it goes well with you..,

William D. Howard (06:13):

I want to honor them and most of all honor Christ by dealing with all these lies that come from the liberal left and secular humanism. The new rise of neo paganism, which is taken over Europe, is taking over America. And my book, I start with the current kind of what's happening. The first four chapters are called the Fall of Christian Culture. It's kind of an overview setting the stage for how there's a strange alliance between atheism or secular humanism and the new paganism, I don't know if you know this, that there's been articles on it, publications on it, liberal Left, have agreed to it that there's an alliance between what's called the Progressives today and the secular, the occult. And there was one essay that was written that was published at this online site and they were pagans themselves brought up and it was called The Occult is So Hot Now, and it was talking about AOC and how she had a, some astrologer did her star chart and what it showed about her as a person.

(07:26):

So what we're seeing is the confluence, the coming together of neo paganism and atheistic secular humans. So it's a really strange fusion because those ideas really are at odds. Secular humanism is atheism, the belief that human beings can decide everything themselves, that they don't need any higher power, any higher truth, any higher intellect in the universe. That man is the highest intellect in the universe, which is obviously stupid. Even Einstein didn't believe that he believed in God, right? He was a pantheist, but he did believe in God followed the teachings of Spinoza, the Jewish philosopher in 16 hundreds from Holland. But anyway,

Ed Bonderenka (08:13):

I would like to correct you. The first chapter of your book is titled Part one, the Fall of Judeo-Christian Culture. And you said Christian culture. I think that's a very important distinction there because Christian culture is based on Judeo culture. I mean, the New Testament is based on the Old Testament. And as so many people have taught me particularly on this show, is that our founding fathers had a huge respect for the Judean Christian, a Judeo culture, the book of Judges, the forms of government, the not having the king, and that formed that worldview that led to the founding of this country.

William D. Howard (08:54):

Well, the first chapter in third part of my book, which is called The Creative Part of Christ, I make that plain, and I did call it throughout my book, I called it Judeo-Christian Culture. The only difference is I just wanted to shorten the title when it came out to Christian Judeo Christian. But I understand very well, and my book is very respectful to Judaism. I go into Judaism about as much as I go into Christianity. If you read the whole book,

Ed Bonderenka (09:20):

I got that. I love the book. I think it's a great book. It's so readable, it's so enjoyable. I'm so glad you're here to talk about it. But what surprised me was I read something early on in the book and I read a name that I recognized because back in I think the late eighties, maybe mid eighties, I was at Barnes and Noble and I saw this book called Modern History by Paul Johnson. And I had not heard anything about Paul Johnson didn't know what a great historian the guy, how many people revered him as a great historian, I just wanted to read this book about modern history. I was sold on it. And you quote Paul Johnson writes, quote, America had been founded primarily for religious purposes. There is no question that the Declaration of Independence was to those who signed it, a religious as well as secular act. All of the following American historical documents declared faith in God, and many specifically included a faith in Jesus Christ, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Mecklenburg Declaration, Washington's first inaugural Washington's Farewell address, United States Constitution. And you go on and name these documents. There's some history there.

William D. Howard (10:30):

Every one of those documents, if you know and I'm sure you do, they're all documented at the end with the designation of AD and Odom and I, which means in the year of our Lord. So even if you just go by the date alone, it shows you where their mindset was that they were part of a Christian culture, Judeo-Christian culture that came from Europe for religious freedom. Yes, they did believe in separation of church and state in the terms of not having an established church, putting one church above another because that caused all the terrible religious wars that came out of the Reformation where people, Catholics were killing Protestants, and Protestants were killing Protestants and Protestants were killing Catholic. It was just a real mess during the 16th century.

Ed Bonderenka (11:15):

Yeah, my favorite quote is from those wars is You're going to hell and I'm going to send you there. That's not exactly a Christian attribute.

William D. Howard (11:24):

No, I love Paul Johnson too, and I read a lot of his, he was a wonderful Oxford historian. He was a Catholic, but he was a conservative Christian Catholic. And he died not long ago. I just looked it up the other day and he's not been out of the scene very long, but he was wonderful. He has many great books and they're all very fair. They're very honest. One of his that I used in my book that I really liked was one called Intellectuals, which he goes in and talks about all these people that are the famous writers of like Shelly and Byron and the Nietzche and all these people of the world, the Marx. He mentions many Hemingway, the more modern ones, how those people were really messed up people and that they were great writers. He doesn't deny their talent, but he says they're really not really nice people and they had a lot of destructive ideas and beliefs.

Ed Bonderenka (12:21):

Yeah, exactly. So we can agree. And it's pretty well proven that America was founded as a oh on Christian Judeo-Christian principles as a Christian, a nation of Christians, let's put it that way. Not a Christian nation, but a nation of Christians. And as such, oh, who was it? Now? I can't remember. Was it Adams who said, this form of government isn't fit for anybody, but a moral and religious people

William D. Howard (12:49):

Sound like him. Yeah,

Ed Bonderenka (12:51):

I kind of butchered that, but it's close enough for radio purposes. And so as we leave our Christian heritage and our Christian culture as a nation, we find that this form of government is less and less suitable for us. That's becoming kind of obvious recently.

William D. Howard (13:11):

Right, right. But even though Plato and Socrates, if you want to go back several thousand years before that, they were saying the same thing. They were talking about the devolution of society, the young people and the overthrow of culture and the whole problem of people not practicing a basic morality that respects other people. So yeah, and of course Confucius and Buddha himself, they both were very moralistic thinkers and promoted a lot of the same exact values that Christians promote. Of course, they weren't religions, they were turned into religions. They were basically philosophies and they were great men. I don't deny that.

Ed Bonderenka (13:55):

But that doesn't mean they had the overarching truth either. No,

William D. Howard (13:59):

No, not at all.

Ed Bonderenka (14:01):

So your book, of course, is titled The American Crisis, the Collapse of Christian Culture. And some people would say, what do I care if Christian culture collapses or not? But actually Western civilization is based on Christian culture. There's just no two ways about it. It wasn't until Christian culture was established that you started seeing the concepts of Western civilization, the equality of man, not the equality of some men and everybody else is a slave, but the equality of all men because the imago de the image of God and each man, and I think you mentioned it at one part in your book about most cultures that are not influenced by Western civilization or let's just say Christian values, it's this dog eat dog. It's everybody for themselves. Why should I do anything for you unless there's something in it for me?

William D. Howard (15:01):

Well, human rights have developed slowly outside of what we call the West, where in western civilization, like you say, we're not a Christian nation or Christian civilization really, but they were the dominant values and spiritual beliefs that were, and they were accepted by more people and implemented by more people Only all one has to do is go to Europe and see all the gothic cathedrals all over the place, those incredible acts of architecture or listen to the music that came from the influence of Christianity or the drama or the philosophy or the science. And it's actually a fusion culture. It's Greco-Roman rationalism and science and Judeo-Christian values and spiritual beliefs. It's a fusion culture, and that's why it's such a great culture in all those parts of the world where Christianity has had the least influence. Judeo Christianity has had the least influence. Those countries have the most wars, the most refugees, the least number of rights that are respected as human rights.

(16:10):

They're the poorest. They have the most genocide out of the 10 genocides in modern time. All of them are outside Western civilization except for two, Hitlers against the Jews and Stalins against the Ukrainians. We talk about Ukraine today. Stalin killed more Ukrainians than anybody. Putin's killing today. And of course he's very evil too. No question about it. So yes, it's those values and those are a large part of the book. About seven chapters of my book is the Judeo-Christian part where I talk about the principles that change the world and human rights, freedom of the individual free will, belief in progress, social historical project. A lot of those pagan cultures, and I give the detail on it, did not promote those kind of rights. In fact, they were an enemy to it. Anyway, my book has a lot of religion in it, a lot of philosophy in it and a lot to talk about. So anyway, something I should filibuster you though. I'm just excited on the topic.

Ed Bonderenka (17:20):

No, that's fine. And understandably, and I'm glad you are. I'll be disastrous if you just didn't care.

William D. Howard (17:28):

I care. That's for one thing. It's for sure.

Ed Bonderenka (17:31):

There's a quote I read in here that sums up something I just only realized in the last few years, and you say the ancient Roman poet philosopher Lucretius summed up the issue when he wrote Fear was the mother of the gods to so many evils, religion has persuaded of men. The Greek word for superstition literally means fear of the gods. I didn't know that before this.

Ed Bonderenka (17:55):

It was possible for people's relationship with nature to be harmonious because the nature they knew through mythology was thought to be teaming. Well, let's say trying to kill them. I'd say teaming with a multitude of unpredictable, capricious, malicious gods, goddesses, demons or lesser spirits that cared little or nothing about their welfare. And it only, I was sitting in church recently, and I think it might've been, we were in Ephesians, and it occurred to me what was the big selling point of the gospel when it was first introduced. And we have to think in terms of the culture that the apostles walked in and the disciples walked in, and it was this pagan culture where you had no promise of where you're going to go in the afterlife. In fact, if you had any idea of where you were going to go, you were going to go to some version of hell. You were going to cross a dark river if you had the money for the boat man. And then when you got there, you might end up pushing a rock up a hill every day until at night it rolled down. You had to do it the next day. Sometimes we feel like that'll work, but you had no hope for the future. And then along comes Jesus and says, and his apostles disciples, and they have this message that says, God's willing to forgive you. All is forgiven. All you need to do is come back

(19:15):

And join swear allegiance to this kingdom, the kingdom of God. And you have this promise as Marks like depicted as pie in the sky, but I'll take pie in the sky if life's hard here, I will take pie in the sky because the sky is infinite. I'll take infinite pie in infinite sky over short term hardship or communist dictatorship, right?

William D. Howard (19:43):

Yes. Yeah, you're right. That's part how my book is divided into those four parts. And part two are those essays I wrote on the very topic is called The destructive power. Myth is that part, and one I call fear exalted is how in all those pagan religions, they had thousands of taboos. So it wasn't about they loved nature, it was that they were afraid of it and anything that happened, they saw it as a kind of a spirit directed terrorist attack. And it really promoted, my book goes into the psychological detail of it. Other chapters in that book are religion as madness, vices, virtue, the cheapness of life. It cheapened human life. Women and children suffered more than anybody during that period of history. They were just treated like dogs. So Christianity, that's why it spread so fast among women because it promoted monogamy, which basically raised the level of women, treatment of women set as soulless sexual slaves. It made them persons, gave them personhood. And so to women, it appealed to the outcast, it appealed to the disadvantaged and poor. Of course, most of the people back then were disadvantaged and poor. Those put on by the greater powers. So it spread like wildfire throughout the first and second ad

(21:06):

Those centuries. And right now, people like to think of it as dying out, but it's actually shifting in Africa. In 2051 third of the Christians in the world will be living in Africa. It's all spreading fast, very fast in Latin America, spreading very fast in Asia. And actually China has the fastest rate of growth among Christians in the world, 7%. So what's happened is Christianity is dying out, has died out in America except for a potent minority like us. And I've got the percents and all that, but I know we're not going to go deeper into it. And it's shifting to Asia, Africa, Latin America. So even in 2050, it'll be the dominant religion on five continents. I know the atheists don't like to hear that because they like, and it's in the conservative churches that are in America and elsewhere, churches that evangelical, charismatic, conservative Catholic, those churches where it's growing the fastest. And in those liberal churches that practice only a social gospel, give out more welfare, give out more food stamps, and that'll solve everything, give out reparations, that'll solve everything, which never does. Those churches are dying out. The Episcopal Church. The Presbyterian church, I mean, I know they have good people in those churches, but I'm just saying the numbers show that my book is full of all the statistics showing what churches are growing and declining.

Ed Bonderenka (22:41):

Yeah. Barna, we've referred to some of the Barna surveys on that, and I know a number of pastors of an Anglican church because they split from the Episcopalians. So they wanted to distinguish themselves, and they're considering themselves Anglicans, even though Episcopalians in this country stopped calling themselves Anglican because they didn't want to be associated with the Church of England because of the revolution. My how times changed.

William D. Howard (23:05):

Right, right, right, right. Yeah. A lot of the loyalists were, yeah, Anglican, you're right. Or Church of England. Yeah.

Ed Bonderenka (23:10):

Yeah. And I've had a number of people remark on, were following or heard a number, also, we're following the path of the Roman Empire that, oh, this is the time we fall out just like Rome did. There's no recourse. And I heard somebody else say something on a podcast. It might've been a Tucker Carlson podcast. I says, well, that's not true, because they had certain things going on in their government that are different than ours. But I'm thinking in terms of we have Christianity, we have a chance for spiritual renewal. So even if the Christian influence has been waning in this culture in America right now, when it comes back in a reactionary force, just like Trump is a reactionary force to the left and DEI and what's going on as another potent force, Christianity can come back and can rein vigor our culture. Oh, sure. You're telling me we have 45 seconds left, so I'll give you about 15 seconds of those that say something.

William D. Howard (24:13):

Okay. American crisis, the collapse of Christian culture by William D. Howard is on Amazon. I have all five star reviews, people credited for the research. It is a book that goes all the way from primitive society all the way up through modern history. It covers all the major periods of history, a lot of the great, what I call rehearsals for the fall of Christian culture, which are,

Ed Bonderenka (24:36):

And we're going to talk about it some more and we're going to talk about it some more when we come back from the break. Derek says, we have five seconds.

William D. Howard (24:41):

Thanks.

Bumper Music Casting Crowns (24:41):

We were made to be courageous. We were made to lead the way, we could be the generation, that finally breaks the chains. We were made it be Courageous…

Ed Bonderenka (25:23):

Well, welcome back to your American heritage and I'll let you in on a little inside baseball here. We've switched from Skype to Zoom and I'm really enjoying it except I don't hear the bumper music. And maybe I might hear bits of it creeping through the audio and I kind of miss it. I really miss hearing, We must be courageous. I know it's back there somewhere.

So we're joined by William D. Howard, the author of American Crisis, and we're discussing his book and where America is right now and how can we reclaim America? Is there hope of reclaiming America? But how do we get there? What's the fight? We were talking to a CIA analyst in the last show, and sometimes you have to analyze the enemy. You have to look at the strategy. You have to look at their attacks. How did you get to this position?

(26:18):

If you're going to go into battle, you got to know what the forces are arrayed against you, and then decide whether you're going to enter that battle and how you're going to do it. And the easiest way is prayer, but then there's things that you have to do that you have to stand up and you have to be courageous, and you have to stand up for biblical principles, moral values, and stand up for them at school board meetings. You have to stand up for them in Congress, in public, amongst your coworkers. Even sometimes the discussion will go somewhere. You can either stand there and nod or just be quiet, which is saying something. Not saying something is saying something. Or you can challenge it, but be informed when you challenge it. I was talking about standing up in front of court, rather school boards. I want to play this for you. It's a woman named Kaylee. She's a mother in Fairfax, Virginia. It's brief, but

Kaylee (27:16):

Hi, I'm Kaylee Webroot. I'm a mom of two in Fairfax County, and my husband and I have a difficult decision to make this fall. And we are faced with the decision of whether or not we are going to put our child in public school system where Fairfax County has decided to move forward with instituting gender studies in elementary school, despite having done a study group, a focus group in the community to see if parents even wanted this. And when parents said no, the board voted 16 to zero and said, we're moving forward anyways. This shows clearly that they see parents not as partners, but as an obstacle for their agenda. And I have a really hard time looking at him and going here, I'm just going to give you over to people who do not want to partner with me in how you're going to be raised. School. And education is a huge part of a child's life. And early childhood is supposed to be filled with exploration and creativity and fun, not debating issues that are for adults to handle.

Ed Bonderenka (28:35):

Exactly. That's part of the battle that we face. It's for our children and our grandchildren. That's the future of America. And if we don't win this battle, then they're going to be the blue-haired nose ringed monsters we see on campus today. Dave,

William D. Howard (28:52):

Well said, well said. I totally agree. I could really feel the sincerity in her voice and the deep heartfelt feeling that she was anguish she's going through over that decision. It's hard to walk alone. It's hard. And so people, Christians have to network together and they have to support each other, and they can't just cave in and give in to and turn the Christian gospel in just to a social gospel of just charity. It certainly has given out more charity to more people, billions of people throughout history than any organization. My book covers all that. It shows that as states become more secular, more liberal, blue actually blue, it totally matches up. They become less charitable. And the states in America where the most money is given to help other peoples are red states where they have the Bible belt, Western states, states where they have a stronger, more fundamental evangelical or conservative Catholic view of things.

(29:56):

The statistic I give all the statistics in the book, seven 72% of all charity in America is religious charity, 60 some odd percent of that comes from individual people. And the states, it's really interesting. Bernie Sanders, the great socialists, and that state is one of the cheapest states in terms of giving charity because they don't go to church, they don't get the admonitions of charity. All they do is just think about gaining power and forcing people to accept transsexualism. So anyway, I totally agree and I feel her pain in trying to make that decision. It's hard. One,

Ed Bonderenka (30:34):

This transsexual, transsexualism transgenderism, this fluidity, being able to recreate yourself instead of accepting God as you've created, as God's created you, then that actually lends itself to this neo paganism, right? This totally,

William D. Howard (30:53):

Totally big supporters of the neopagan are a very strong correlation between female homosexual lesbians and people that support and practice neo paganism because they like the idea of the goddess, yet they don't look at the real religion in terms of how it treated women in general. They simply have this idea that, oh, it must've been friendlier, more concerned about women's rights when it wasn't at all. This was just like a priestess or a prophetess that was treated well and had the position of authority, but the average woman back then was totally degraded by that religion

Ed Bonderenka (31:30):

Or a temple prostitute.

William D. Howard (31:32):

Oh yeah. That's another example. I got all that in my book too.

Ed Bonderenka (31:35):

Exactly. I mean, that was the big thing for women was to sell themselves in the temple for a price.

William D. Howard (31:40):

Give the money to a priest. Yeah,

Ed Bonderenka (31:42):

Exactly. Just ducky. There's something else you said here.

“And in Paganism, there was no distinction between the objective and subjective world. Interestingly, this distinction is what makes science possible. Rational modern minds fear the destructive power of earthquakes, tornadoes, and forest fires. But we don't hate them as if they're alive and spiritual. We don't believe they're personally out to get us have a malicious intent or act of harm based upon premeditation. In AD 1487, the Aztecs dedicated a new temple in their capital city of Lan, and up to 80,000 people were sacrificed over a four day period. The Aztecs believed their rain. God required the tears of children to make rain based upon this belief. They tortured and sacrificed large numbers of children when they planted their corn fields, they offered infants and sprinkled their blood on the ground. Anthropologists, Michael Harner estimated that during the 15 century 15th. That's ad folks. The Aztecs sacrificed 250,000 people per year”

And this was for their own self-interest, their own economic benefit, so that they can prosper and the gods would not be against them.

And we have Neo Pagans today who are aborting their children for purposes of their own gain,

William D. Howard (33:11):

And they see it as virtue. They think it's an act virtue a protest against the old patriarch male. Patriarchal male. You're right,

Ed Bonderenka (33:22):

Yeah. We see these women get up and they're proud of, they're no longer hiding their abortions no longer. “Well, that's okay, now.” They're proud of their abortions and some of them have even encouraged others to go out and get abortions. Make a statement, use murder of the infant in your womb as a statement. And I'm not saying this to rail against abortion at the moment. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the state of our culture that does and what leads to, obviously these are not Christian values to kill your children for your own pleasure and convenience. Convenience, that's the word. Thank you. So what do we do about this? Then

William D. Howard (34:05):

Another, I dunno if you want to take time to mention this one, but if you go back into gender studies, the statistics show today, this generation Z, 18 year olds to 25 year olds, about a third of 'em are saying now that they're not sure of their sexuality, they're not sure that they're heterosexual, they may be homosexual, they're not sure. In other words, we're talking about a very small percentage of people actually that maybe have some kind of genetic gene or something, the gay gene or whatever. They actually haven't found examples of that yet. I haven't found proof of it. I have that in my book too by Scientific America. But here they are. They're experimenting with homosexual acts or bisexual acts simply to be stylish and to be like Madonna, be like the other pop stars. Be like Taylor Swift, a big of one, love the whole idea of one love. They don't really look at the actual lifestyle and what it produces, all the misery and heartache. I have a chapter in my book also called The Gay Crusade, where I go through and deconstruct all the lies about that. And it's not because I hate homosexuals and want to harm 'em or do anything to 'em. I just want to tell the truth and appeal to people that are being confused and being led down a wrong path or think that they're being noble and tolerant, but actually they're just walking the walk of the fool.

Ed Bonderenka (35:35):

Along those lines, I was recently reading a substack by a guy named Dave Bondy and Dave Bondy said,

“I asked chat GPT.” That's the AI that I think it's Microsoft. No, it's, I'm not sure. “I asked chat GPT. If it were Satan, what would it do to destroy young minds and chat? GPT is an AI chat box developed by open AI that uses a powerful language model to understand and generate human-like text.”
I actually interviewed chat GPT about AI last year or the year before. It's kind of funny. And then he says, “I asked chat, GPT, if you were Satan, what would you do to destroy young minds? And what chat GPT said in response to this is that's a heavy and thought provoke.” I should do this in HAL9000 voice, “a heavy and thought provoking question. If you're asking from a societal or cultural commentary angle like how harmful influences shape young minds, here's a thoughtful take.

(36:36):

If evil wanted to destroy young minds, it wouldn't come with horns and fire. It would come subtly disguised ats, convenience, entertainment, or even progress. Here's how. And then at numbers steps, it says, one, confuse their identity. Encourage them to question who they are without giving them truth, guidance or a solid foundation. Oh wow. Two glorify distraction feed. Constant dopamine hits through endless scrolling games and short form content so they never learn to think deeply. Three, this is chat, GPT-3 oh, happy. It's families undermine Families drive wedges between kids and their parents, making authority, discipline and tradition seem outdated or oppressive. Four, rewrite reality. Five, remove purpose six, mock truth seven, silence. Voices of wisdom cancel discredit mentors, teachers and leaders who speak timeless truths.”

I mean, wow, that's ChatGPT. That's so accurate, so accurate, great wisdom from a computer…

William D. Howard (37:38):

Or we can take it from the scripture. We can say in the last days, good will be spoken of as evil and evil will be spoken of is good. So yeah, that's the modern equivalent. Yeah.

Ed Bonderenka (37:51):

Yeah. It reminds me, I think I was mentioning it to you earlier when we were talking off air about Paul Harvey's “If I were the devil”, I won't play that right, but just Google Paul Harvey, if I were the devil, and he did this in the sixties, and it was like the prophet Paul Harvey, if you don't believe in prophetic voices today, listen to Paul Harvey In that

William D. Howard (38:12):

1958 was the high point of families going to church. About half the country were members of a church and took their children to church to learn all these wonderful things like the 10 Commandments, sermon on the Mount, the Good Samaritan, all the constant challenging people to be pure and kind and forgiving and helpful. And then what happens now, the number is down to 25% of active Christians in the country. 46% of people in the country still say they're Christian in terms of their ideological allegiance, but only 25% are actually practicing. So we got a lot of work to do. We need a great awakening. We need what we had in the 17 hundreds and in the 18 hundreds, the two great awakenings, that's where Methodism came from. John Wesley went to America. And on that trip, he changed his style of thought and preaching to a more emotional and loving style of thought and preaching instead of just cold hard rationalism. He had been a dinner member of the Church of England, which was Oh, froze up there boxes just for aristocrats to sit around. So then that started a great movement that raised England's morality also led to the anti-slavery movement of William Wilberforce and all the other Christians. Some of 'em were Unitarian, some of 'em were Quakers. They all had a common cause. Methodist to some of the Baptist to they all supported the end to the slave trade. Didn't live to see it, but it happened shortly after they passed the law and ended it.

Ed Bonderenka (39:55):

You mentioned Methodism, and if you were a Methodist in America, the elites looked down their nose at you. You weren't in the high church. You were a Rube. And that's basically how born again Christians are seen today. You're rube. But I actually, as you were speaking, I got this political analogy, is that we see the elites who are opposed to MAGA and a form of political politic or politics, which is informed by in many cases, Christian culture itself. And I'm not by any means, saying MAGA is a Christian movement. I'm not confusing that. But the fact of the matter is there's this activism that needs to be brought into the church. Again, the church needs to be on fire. The church needs to be make America Christian again. And one way to do that is for, and I've mentioned it before, congregants holding their pastors to account for what they're doing with the church.

Ed Bonderenka (41:07):

If they're not organizing their church to get out in the community and get others into the kingdom instead of just into the church building. Don't put up pop worship bands and smoke machines and light shows to lure people into church. So your attendance goes up, speak the word to lure people into the kingdom, and attendance will go up and it'll be like wildfire again, like it was in the first century where these 12 men transformed the world. That's a fact, Jack. They transformed the world around them that we benefit from today

William D. Howard (41:44):

Overthrew the Roman Empire in terms of its traditional pagan system, overthrew it. Yeah. And then that was the basis of western civilization. The moral spiritual basis of that became the educational center. And of course everything else.

Ed Bonderenka (42:01):

You have a chapter with a conclusion of your book. Is Candles in the Darkness now? Is that what we were just speaking of?

William D. Howard (42:08):

I think so,

Ed Bonderenka (42:10):

Yeah. Go and speak on that.

William D. Howard (42:12):

Well, yeah. What I say there basically, well, I know that America won't be saved by politics alone. I'm not against politics. I vote. I'm active in that way. I'm a citizen. I care about the country and I speak up for what I believe in. But at the same time, and try to do it with a moderate Christian voice, not a belligerent voice, but it's going to take another great crusade, another not great crusade. Another great awakening is what the word I was trying to find, the great awakenings that took place during the time of Ben Franklin during the time of John Wesley, when they came over different ones, it spread like wildfire. They had preachers that roamed the frontier and they had churches, they had colleges called Log colleges where they taught secular subjects like reading and writing and things like that. But they also taught Bible and religion.

(43:09):

The thing about where we're at now is we're so messed up. Our country is pagan now. Europe is pagan now. It really is. I give all the statistics to prove it where they, 60% of Americans support homosexual rights and homosexual marriage highest among young people. They're the most fooled by it. But I say in the book that as sin increases and unbelief and disbelief, Christian unbelief and disbelief increases in our country, pain and suffering also increases. And I give all the statistics on what's happening from the 1965 on. We've had a steady rise as church attendance fell to its lowest point, 25% now from 50%, and membership fell from 85% in 19 92, 40 6%. There has been an increase, a 37% increase in suicide, especially among young people. A large increase suffering of great number of mood disorders. There was a quadruple increase in the murder rate from the seventies to the nineties.

(44:21):

We had the hard anti-crime Clinton legislation that brought it down. So it dips occasionally, but then it goes back up. I look at all the stats and all the graph lines on it, and they're still showing very high murder rates, very high sexual assault rates, very high suicide rate, way beyond anything we had in the fifties and the sixties when most people went to church. If they need more evidence than that, that we're on the wrong road, I don't know where they get it. All they have to do is do the pew research. I did the Gallup research and surveys I did going back to the fifties, all the way up to 2015 when Supreme Court ruled that homosexual marriage was a constitutionally protected, right. We have 61 million abortions since 1973. That's one thing I respect. I'm a Protestant, but one thing I really respect about the Catholic church is their prophetic ministry in terms of standing up against the tide of the time, which says that it doesn't matter. Abortions on demand are fine. So

(45:27):

The only other thing I said in that chapter, I talked about Islam. I said, it can't be the answer because it causes more division and hate. And more Muslims have killed more Muslims in modern history than any outsider that the good moderate Muslims that live in the West or America, they accept religious toleration and freedom. But a lot of the countries in Africa that are Muslim and the Middle East have anti apostasy laws. If you leave that religion, it's a death sentence. They have anti blasphemy laws. In other words, you can't give your opinion about a religion. It's a death sentence. So Islam can't be the answer. It's fast growing, but it's mostly a culture religion that comes from childbirth, large numbers of native childbirth in those countries.

Ed Bonderenka (46:12):

I find that with individuals coming into the kingdom, oftentimes there's two things that are necessary. One is that need to be looking for the truth. You need to be willing to give up what you think for what is the truth. And that doesn't mean reject everything you've ever heard. That means search everything out, weigh it out, and find out what is the truth and give up preconceptions. And I'm confident when you do that, you'll come to conclusion that Christ was who he said he was. He rose from the dead. And there were a number of witnesses who went to their death saying that. So the only other thing that keeps some people from coming in, I think, is their willingness to give up something. They think they'll have to give up. I mean, for me, I was afraid I was going to have to be a missionary to Africa, and there's no way that kept me away. I didn't want that. But then it's a,

William D. Howard (47:01):

They're being very successful over there though. Yeah, you need a risk benefit. One of the highest conversion rates,

William D. Howard (47:08):

Actually I've ran across this statistic, lemme throw this one out because it's a really good one that there have been in modern times, modern, at least last decades, 2 million something Muslims in Africa have converted to Christianity. 2 million something Muslims. And I also read across this statistic just recently, just the other day I read it, it said that Christians are people that practice Christianity. On average, they live nine to five years longer than people that don't. In other words, non-religious people, atheists, those people live five to nine years, a shorter lifespan than a Christian because one, stress reduction. Two Christians don't generally kill themselves or kill others. Three, I don't know. They have good food,

Ed Bonderenka (47:57):

Generally eat well when they get together.

William D. Howard (47:59):

Yeah, we get together and we have those big pot dinners.

Ed Bonderenka (48:02):

The cost benefit analysis is what I was getting at. You got to do, I may have to give up something now, but what do I get in return? And eternal life is something that's definitely a big benefit when you look at the return on investment.

William D. Howard (48:19):

Yeah. Blaise, Pascal's, great wager. If we're going to die, why not believe? Because if we're right and there is something there, we'll be blasted If we don't.

Ed Bonderenka (48:30):

Right. And we are what this culture needs, we are the salt and we are the light, and we need to be salt and light and we need to spread that light so that the culture will be redeemed and we'll get away from this paganism. Well, we've been talking to

William D. Howard (48:48):

William D. Howard.

Ed Bonderenka (48:50):

William, Dave Howard, and about his book American Crisis. Thanks for joining us. Thanks Dave for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Great discussion. Thanks Derek for producing coming back for the next episode. I

William D. Howard (49:01):

Enjoyed it. Thank you.