Trip overseas offers a reminder of how important faith is back home

Note — The following column was published in Monday's edition of The Morning Sun.

I learnt a very important lesson on the role of faith from my two-week working vacation across Britain and the European continent that should be shared with readers of this column.

By this I mean not only the exercise of faith in the public square, but also privately in a way that can provide comfort, stability and certainty in an ever-changing world.

It’s no secret that Americans are a faithful lot of people.

We live in a country that despite some popular notions isn’t secular. Though America was founded in the Judeo-Christian tradition, we adhere to the ideals of religious tolerance and liberty. Americans need no established state church to come together in houses of worship that span the religious spectrum.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for much of Europe, where many of the great churches are today seen more as museums — a living history exhibit for the curious mind into the lost faith of Christianity — than a vibrant house of worship.

There are a variety of explanations for Europe’s loss of faith.

Some of it can be blamed on a long history of central governments and established state churches oppressing religious dissenters. However, the biggest culprits are the leading voices of the modern age, who champion an atheistic culture that stresses moral relativism and at the same time ignores what has made Western civilization the greatest in the history of mankind.

These misguided voices view faith as a relic of an unenlightened time that is incompatible with modernity.

It’s deeply unsettling to see Europe’s great churches, which were built as a testament to God’s magnificence and sovereignty over mankind, become nothing more than a cheap tourist attraction.

There’s something wrong about churches that charge admission or worse yet sell the sacred garments of priesthood, as one church I visited in Sweden did.

The same forces that destroyed faith in the Old World are working tirelessly here in our grand republic, which has always celebrated the exercise and practice of religion. They are committed to prosecuting a war on religion both gradually and through a full frontal assault. In short, they will use whatever means necessary to erode faith both privately and in the public square.

Yet faith has always brought us together. Faith defined the American experience.

Whether in a small town or a metropolis, the sound of church bells ringing on a Sunday morning was a familiar noise. It symbolized the community coming together in acknowledgement of God.

Without faith, America’s foundations will crumble.

The freedoms and liberties that have drawn the tired, poor and huddled masses are more than just words written on paper all those years ago in Philadelphia.

Rather, the hallmarks of America that have separated her from the other nations of the earth are a precious gift from God.

It is because of this that the values of America are the values of faith.

— Dennis Lennox