November 7, 2006 will not really be date of renown in American History, even if one were to consider the facts of the U.S. Congressional elections and the loss of majority status of the Republican Party in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Such an event has happened many times before, ever since the advent of political parties, so in and of itself, this is not something incredible. Over ten years ago, the Republicans did take control of the U.S. Congress after over thirty years of control by the Democrat party. That was an event because it was so unprecedented by the mainstream and really was a first time experience for my generation of Americans.

In any case, control has shifted now from the Republicans to the Democrats. For the first time in United States history, a woman will be Speaker of the House-and subsequently third in line in the American chain of command after the President and Vice President. The U.S. Congresswoman from California, Nancy Pelosi, has now joined Condoleezza Rice as one of the most powerful women in the country by position. I should say that this has created a unexpected amount of consternation for me, AND NOT BECAUSE SHE IS A WOMAN. Rather, the context of her character as a politician as well as her beliefs (which I have to assume influences the policies she holds to) run contrary to most Evangelical Christian groups and conservatives. She holds the extreme ideas of liberalism that frightens most Americans. From homosexual marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, and so on, Ms. Pelosi is famous for stance with the militant brand of liberalism that is becoming almost common place in the West Coast of the United States. Regarding her character as a politician, one could hardly miss her smirks and sneers when ever President Bush made his State of the Union speeches in Congress and other forums. Maybe her actions were something strictly to get "under someone's skin", but one would have no problem seeing the contempt that Ms. Pelosi and several members of the Democrat party-as well as most politically liberal minded folk-have shown the President in the last six years. It was that contempt that drove Democrats in the last couple of years right up to this election. "Bush-Bashing" took place in the mainstream media on an almost daily basis with one Ivy League collared pundit trying to prove his/her brilliance by pontificating that George W. Bush's hawkish approach with international terrorism and rogue states that support, harbor, and provide armaments to and for terror groups such as Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and others such as them, would result in world destruction. Their particular emphasis was the war in Iraq, and really, how could one turn their eyes from the dead bodies of American soldiers on television?

What had once been the main issue for the Republicans in the last election became the same for the Democrats this time around. But nonetheless, very little change will come on the current policy regarding the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Especially considering the fact that Al Qaeda's head guy in Iraq after praising the American public on "electing more reasonable people" into the government threatened to continue their jihad-"holy war" until they blew up the White House. I should also add that the report released by the chief of Great Britain's internal security branch MI-5 has caused great alarm and has once again brought everyone back to a sense of reality regarding the War on Terror, namely that it is a very real enemy that the civilized world faces and a very real evil.

Nonetheless, coming back to the issue of the election, for all practical purposes it was a defeat for the Republican Party. But add to this defeat was the demoralization of the Moral Majority-that group of people from America's Christian population who are concerned for the moral failures or compromises in the mainstream of today. According to a poll taken by the Associated Press, 3 out of 5 Americans voted the way they did on November 7 out of concern of the scandals and moral compromises that took place in the Republican Party in the last congressional term.

There was not a problem with the American economy, which is seeing the lowest unemployment rate in six years, though the Bush Administration could afford to be more fiscally conservative than what they currently are (another conservative idea that was used by liberal successfully). The Democrats came into power then not so much as a result of policy differences and changes, but rather on a mixture of contempt (on their part) for the President and political and moral failures on the part of Republicans. In other words, the Republicans handed their control of Congress to the Democrats. This being the case, any talk about a "new wave of good feeling and excitement" in Washington D.C. has absolutely no substance.

This election affects the Church for many reasons, but most importantly this election should be a wake up call for the Church, and for the country. Regarding the Church, Dr. Ravi Zacharias once said that in this present time, there is a politicizing of religion and a religion-I-zing of politics. One thing that happened in this election season is that any delusion that the makeup of the membership of one political party is more righteous (or shall I say more "Christian") over another has been (at least for the present) bulldozed. This entire year was full of stories of the moral corruption within the Republican party with such things as the Abrahamoff Scandal and others that cost the political careers of even the most powerful members of Congress (I.e. Tom Delay). People should understand that the idea of "Separation of Church and State" is a misnomer, a misrepresented, or worse, a misinterpreted idea. For the longest period of time many groups, without meaning to do so, have fallen to the eschatological ideas of the Mormon cult; that is that America is God's "New Jerusalem" and that at the end of the age, on this continent, and with this nation, God will extend His righteousness, kindness, and justice to all the nations of the world. But in order for that to happen, God's "righteous people" must take over government institutions and elected offices.

The problem with this is not the idea of good righteous people taking over institutions and government offices. In fact, the Bible talks about that quite frequently in virtually every book, especially in Solomon's Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. The problem here is Theological. It has to do with the Eschatological (teaching on the End Times) beliefs that we cling to as the Body of Christ, as well as our Soteriology-the study of Salvation. Even though talking about Theology is seen as a Faux Paux in many Church circles today, the fact of the matter is that everything that we do in practice is based on our view of God Himself, and especially His Word. Hence the troubles that arose for Protestant/Evangelical circles in this last election time.

Who in the Church could ever imagine that a homosexual scandal would ever happen in the Republican party membership? Representative Mark Foley-the now defunct Republican Congressman from California-authored the most comprehensive bill against child sexual predators (commonly referred to as the "John Walsh Bill"). He was known for his moral stance on a variety of issues. But the liberal media had a field day with him once the scandal broke out and email between him and a couple of congressional pages came into light. Even as Congressman Foley was trying to talk about his alcoholism and his being molested by a Catholic priest when he was a child and served as an altar boy, liberal media pundits were dragging him through the mud referring to him as a hypocrite. One fellow on CNN was laughing with glee expressing his joy at seeing a hypocrite being revealed and, in essence, slaughtered.

What is ironic about this is that the militant homosexual lobbies and groups completely abandoned their fellow homosexual and helped the liberal media in ripping Congressman Mark Foley. Never before has anyone in the liberal fringe groups had a care for morality, or for children being molested by predators and pedophiles, or adopted by homosexual couples and yet now the groups were engaged in wholesale moralizing.

Can the Church say with all due respect, with all credibility, without sacrificing our core beliefs and principles that one political party is more Christian over the other? I would say, ABSOULUTLY NOT. Will any political party ever substitute the identity of the Church of the Living God? NEVER EVER! No one, not the Revs. Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson would ever, could ever make such a presumption. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, if they try such a thing, would be committing wholesale blasphemy to make such an assumption. These gentlemen would be committing wholesale blasphemy if they made such statements, especially when they contradict Scripture and make gross theological error to come to such a statement or conclusion.

There is a great misconception in the mainstream today, that is that Judeo-Christian values are ideas strictly developed by the Moral Majority. I cannot express how wrong such a statement is! No political lobby dictates the beliefs that the Church of Jesus Christ holds to; rather the Holy Bible does. And along this line, no Christian believer needs to have a political party or lobby to tell them how he/she should vote. Rather, the Bible-the Word of God dictates the ideas of morality and mores that prompt followers of Jesus Christ toward a given action. This said, let me say to everyone, to people within the Church as well as the secular humanists, atheists, pundits, adherents to any other religion, and any one else who would read this article who somehow does not fit in to any of these groups. WE THE BELIEVERS AND FOLLOWERS OF JESUS CHRIST WILL NOT BE AT ALL PASSIVE IF SOCIETY AND CIRCUMSTANCES TAKE A COURSE OF ACTION, FOLLOW AN IDEA, UPHOLD PRINCIPLES THAT IS DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO THE HOLY BIBLE AND THE BASIC TENETS AND BELIEFS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.

We will not, we cannot, sit quite while one a segment of society in the name of being "educated", "enlightened", "political correct" slowly erode the moral fiber that made this country's political system a possibility after centuries or war and despotism. We will not sit quite when the political left with the afore mentioned political correctness tries to force its relativistic ideas into the courts, into the schools, and even into the Church pulpit, all for the purpose of subversion.

The United States is not a mere country. It is a land that introduced a concept of freedom and civility to the world based on the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith. Perhaps the greatest symbol of this is that every civil servant, every elected official, every person in this nation's armed forces must take their oath of office or their oath of allegiance on the Bible. This symbol did not just happen over night. It is historical fact that tyranny and oppression was first challenged by Christian preachers; men such as John Wycliffe, John Huss, and Martin Luther. The famous words "government of the people, by the people, for the people" were not President Abraham Lincoln's own ideas or words; they were the words of the proclamation uttered by John Wycliffe after he and his students had finished printing the Bible in the common language.

Since the first century, Christians have always had to choose between popular culture and their faith. Often times, governmental powers such as that of the Roman Empire made laws and regulations which went against the core tenets and ideas of the Christian faith. People in those eras would certainly have been asked questions such as, "What's the big deal?" "Why can't you be more like everyone else?" It should not be considered ironic that 2000 years after the ascension of Jesus Christ, that today's Christians still fight against the mainstream in much of the same moral issues as that of the first century: issues such as abortion, sexual depravity, corruption, economic abuses, injustice, extreme violence in entertainment, the family system, etc.

Today's world is seeing a clash of ideas that are not politically oriented in nature yet people are still trying to make politics out of them. There are folks out there who think that there is a political solution to just about everything. I would say the opposite; the problems of today will need much more than politicians to fix them. The War on Terror is one based on ideology which goes far and about just a simple clash of Western and Eastern culture. It is based on religion and a subsequent history therein that most politicians cannot (or will not) grasp, because to do so would be to risk being politically incorrect. And until western leaders understand, any attempt at introducing democracy, or at least the ideas that all people are created equal, and that they have a God given right to think ideas that may be contrary to the mainstream without fear of recrimination or condemnation, is doomed. Both of these ideas are foreign to Afghanistan and Iraq (not to mention the rest of the Islamic nations of the Middle East), and adopting any form of Sharia law into these Islamic countries is not going to help the cause of freedom one bit. Just as it has not in Pakistan, Jordan, Iran, Syria etc. Western leaders should try very hard understand the theology of jihad and why it is so dangerous to any and every nation that would pursue the cause of freedom. It is more than just a "struggle" as many contemporary Muslims are saying, or perhaps hoping. But this is virtually impossible for politicians to do, because this course would never, can never be politically correct. It is a risk to see and recognize the truth.

The African-American community is in a tremendous crisis. Out of the all the new cases of the HIV/AIDS virus in the United States, 50% are black males, and the disease is rapidly spreading the African-American community. Which politician will be able to come up with a solution to this problem? To say the obvious-that there is no political solution to this problem because it has definite moral implications involved in it which would risk a person being considered "politically incorrect".

Homosexuals are demanding the right to be considered legally married. Yet to point out that Homosexual marriages are hardly filled with joy and have a much higher divorce rate would be "politically incorrect". To warn the world that to give legal status to Homosexual couples would open the door for them to adopt children or to become foster parents to children-and to proclaim this as something negative-would be to place one self at the risk of being considered a bigot. And yet this nation scream and sighs at the stories of abuse and other crimes committed against children by pedophiles and other sexual predators.

Before there were courts of law or parliaments and congresses, there was God's institution of marriage as mentioned in the book of Genesis. At the beginning of creation, in the paradise of the Garden of Eden, God instituted marriage to be between one man and one woman. Think about it, when God started creation, He did so bringing order to chaos, and part of that order was His institution of marriage between Adam and Eve. A variation of this story is in virtually ever religious or cultural tradition in every corner of the world. How could any court system or legislative body say otherwise? How could any legal power rewrite or alter the definition marriage which God has instituted before there was a court, congress, parliament, or any form of government? They cannot for to do so would be similar to someone trying to change the seasons, the stars, animal life, or anything else that pertains to God orderly creation of nature. And yet politicians and lobbyist on the left insist of doing this in the name of human rights without considering that such actions and tendencies are destructive naturally and repulsive morally. Yet to make such a statement or claim is not at all politically correct.

Today's world would try to replace right and wrong, concrete morality with a relativism which basically pronounces that everyone is basically right and good and nothing and no one is evil. But the thing about relativism is that it takes more faith to believe in it than the claims of the Bible. And one is not so relativistic when one is directly and/or negatively affected by someone else's "exercise of rights without restraint." I would say that this relativism is evil in and of itself and we the Church cannot be silent, and we will not. No matter who that offends, we cannot afford to be silent. Relativism cannot cover up all the broken hearted and hurting people of the world. Pain is part of the human existence, what's more, it is the one sensation that brings the human race back to reality. May the Church of Jesus Christ always behold that reality in terms of this world and situations and circumstances pertaining to it. In doing so our Christian witness will have be a lot more substantive and clear.