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Character & Destiny, A Nation in Search of Its Soul
by Dr. James Kennedy, Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida Jim Nelson Black, a professional writer, currently living in Arlington, Texas
Reviewed by Stephen and Sandra Alexander
23 February 2005

Many people in the secular world cry “You can’t legislate morality,” but Dr. Kennedy points out that morality is the heart and soul of the law.

In response, the question we must ask is, “Are we truly prepared for the moral and social upheaval that will result as we precipitously continue to move our nation off the moral base that has served this nation well for its 200+ years?" Malcolm Muggeridge, British broadcaster and social critic once wrote,
“Since the beginning of the Second World War, Western
Society has experienced a complete abandonment of its
sense of good and evil. The true crisis of our time has
nothing to do with monetary troubles, unemployment
or nuclear weapons. The true crisis has to do with the
fact that Western man has lost his way…..The darkness
falling on our civilization (comes from) the loss of a
sense of moral order in the universe.” (2)
Are we not concerned about what will take the place of God’s truth, as expressed by the 10 Commandments? As W.B. Yeats warned us, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

D. James Kennedy with Jim Nelson Black in their book Character & Destiny, A Nation In Search of Its SOUL, writes “We have taken religion out of our schools by removing the Bible and prayers. We have taken morality out of our schools by removing the Ten Commandments….” And now our schools have a vacuum which is already being filled by the “morality” (or rather lack of morality) of whomever comes along. (3)

60 years ago the brilliant British atheist, Sir Bertrand Russell, rejected the Christian value system because “God’s laws tread upon my right of immorality. He did not say that God’s law was unjust, or invalid, or untrue, only that he preferred his “own law.”

Since Sir Bertrand, his disease has spread….just think of all the different descriptions and tricks people have come up with to justify what they are doing:

1. “Values clarification” means establishing a new set of
humanistic values based on secular morality.
2. “New Age” means a ‘new theology’ that disregards the
Bible, Creation, the Incarnation, the Resurrection and
Second coming.
3. Playboy philosophy, Liberation theology, and even the more
recent Hillary Clinton ‘politics of meaning’, all of these
are simply new terms for ‘ancient heresies’ in modern dress
…systems for denying God’s authority in order to invoke
man’s most fallible authority. Remember the ancient promise
of Satan: “You shall not surely die, but you shall be as gods.” (4)

Our American Revolution came out of a nation of people who, because their hearts were yielded to God, gladly attempted to live by His Commandments. James Madison, 4th President and Father of the U.S. Constitution, said “We have staked the whole future of American’s civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future…upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to sustain ourselves, according to the Ten Commandments of God.” John Adams said “We have no Constitution, we have no government empowered to govern an Irreligious or Immoral people. The Constitution has no power to control such people.” George Washington said “Let not that man claim the title of Patriot who labors to undermine our country’s fundamental pillars of Religion and Morality.” William Penn said “If we will not be governed by God, we will be ruled by tyrants.”

Some 30 years after the French Revolution, a young French aristocrat and scholar, Alexis de Tocqueville visited America for just under a year, traveling all over our young nation, watching, listening, and asking questions in our nation’s city halls, churches, and our public squares, meeting many leaders in our churches and in our political system. He said in his book that “the essential difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution was that the American war was fought for ‘freedom of religion’, while the French Revolution was a war against “God and the Church’.” (5)The American Revolution was built upon God, upon His Word, and upon faith in the salvation of Jesus Christ. The French Revolution was anti-God, anti-Christ, and anti-church. One produced freedom and the other produced slavery. 20,000 heads rolled in the streets of Paris as the “liberated” overthrew Government and Church…great fear, terror, despotism, then anarchy, leading to the tyranny and reign of Napoleon. Whereas the French revolutionists believed that religion is the enemy of freedom, de Tocqueville said of America:

“There is no country in the world where the Christian
religion retains a greater influence over the souls of
men than in America, and there is no country so free.” (6)

Can it be that in 2005, at a time when we have just observed the birthdays of our 1st and 16th Presidents (Washington and Lincoln), that many of our fellow citizens have been sinking to the place where the French people were in the 1790’s?

1. Confusion of Liberty with License
2. A forgetting that true liberty is being unshackled from
the dominion of sin, the tyranny of men, and their
inability to follow God, which thereby enabled them to
live for HIM a godly, righteous, and moral life.
3. Dare I say that “liberty” today is looked on by many as
the “freedom to do any blasphemous, ungodly, immoral,
unrighteous thing they can get away with”? I believe that
this was the view, a godless view of Robespierre (leader of
the French Revolution), Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot of Cambodia, Karl Marx and every atheist leader who
has led their people into bloody gulags,
executions, chaos, and destruction.”

Many people in the secular world cry “You can’t legislate morality,” but Dr. Kennedy points out that morality is the heart and soul of the law. “When God handed down the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai, what He was doing was legislating His morality. He was not giving Moses a set of rules with which to punish the people. He wasn’t giving the nations laws to make life more difficult, but to make life happier, healthier, more enjoyable, and generally better. All law, ever since that time, seeks to emulate that standard and to give people a set of values around which a society can be organized……Morality is the only thing you can legislate. If you don’t legislate morality, you legislate immorality.

Dr. Kennedy and Jim Nelson address many other issues of importance to those who care deeply about America. I would highly recommend this book.

Stephen Alexander is a retired judge in Kitsap County, Washington.

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