It is very likely that it never occurred to generations of Americans who routinely began each school day with prayer and pledging alliance to the “flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God,” that they were violating others’ constitutional rights. It is just as likely, that it also never occurred to those same generations that the historical July 4th celebration of America’s independence has never been considered a religious holiday.

Ironically, a predominately Judeo-Christian citizenry (159,003,000 Protestants and Catholics adherents who believe Jesus Christ is Lord), have always taken for granted “God Bless America” in a very special way, celebrated the 226th year as a free nation under “guard.” No doubt praying to an almighty God not to let terrorist rain on their Independence Day parades. Denial notwithstanding, the parades proudly displayed “Old Glory’s” 50 stars and 13 stripes that yet waved as the bands played on. Nevertheless, the drummers that set the beat for the free world were nervously looking over their proverbial shoulders for terrorists.

An Associated Press article alluded to the nation’s 226th Impendence Day being “Unlike any before it—brimming with patriotism but also (with) extraordinary precautions.”
Bravado aside, America has a lot more to worry about than President George W. Bush’s (real or imagined) war on terrorism, insofar as every since two pirated airliners crashed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers on September 11, 2001, our nation seems to have lost its very soul. Then again, there is a preponderance of evidence that America had lost its soul long before 9/11.

There certainly is no denying that evil in high places was already well entrenched, after the sudden collapse of Enron validated that lust of money had been eating away at the foundation of America’s moral fiber like termites in a rotten log for a very long time.
Perchance, even before Presidential Election 2000 shook the integrity of the Democratic process to the very core of its one man-one vote roots. When our nation’s president is accused of stealing an election, America obviously has some very serious soul searching to do. Need we mention the recent sex scandal that is currently rocking the Catholic Church’s world?
Pious citizens, surely are inclined to remember the biblical empires of Sodom and Gomorrah and ponder whether or not, America has become a Godless nation that’s beyond redemption. The recent ruling against “under God” certainly validates the salient fact that one can’t take for granted that God smiles on America.

A glance at the nation’s daily newscasts suggests just the opposite, insofar as man’s inhumanity to man seems to have become an evil legacy that has been passed down to the most violent and spiritually lost generation in America’s history.
“We call ourselves one nation under God,” says Egon Mayer, a sociologist that recently lead a survey to determine just how Godly Americans are. “And we assume everybody is under some religious group’s umbrella. This study is a sobering reminder that a lot of folks are standing out there, not under any umbrella.” The study Mayer was alluding to was the American Religious Identification Survey, conducted in 2001 among 50,281 U.S. households by the Graduate Center of City University of New York.

“The number of people who say they don’t belong to a religion has doubled over the last decade. Some believe Americans bristle at the rules of organized religion, and seek spirituality on their own terms. Others say people have long avoided religion, but only recently felt at ease admitting it,” says Mayer. Perhaps that explains why new prescriptions and anti-anxiety drugs increased 27.5 percent in New York alone after 9/11.
The survey went on to explain, “Last year, 29.4 million people who said that they skip church, mosque and synagogue—up from 14.3 million in 1990, for personal reasons. A rise from 8 percent to 14 percent of the U.S. population.”

But why is that surprising in a nation that has approximately 7.5 million of the world’s1 1/2 billion agnostics and/or atheists? Incidentally, on January 7, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case that involved a Minnesota teacher who was fired for daring to explain the concept of creation in his biology class while he was teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Consequently, 9/11 Americans no longer live in “quiet desperation,” as the great 19th century American writer Henry David Thoreau concluded.

Instead, “There is a general feeling among a lot of people of extreme fear bordering practically on panic,” according to Gloria Leon, a University of Minnesota psychology professor who specializes in the study of people in disasters.

On the other hand, the real reason America is living under guard, is because of a general and ever increasing lack of trust, which is fostered by a “rip-off,” greed-driven society that makes it very difficult for our younger generation to keep hope alive. Sadly, RBC Ministries in Grand Rapids, Minnesota released a report stating: “91 percent of test subjects queried lie routinely about matters they consider trivial; 36 percent lie about important matters; 86 percent lie regularly to their parents; 75 percent lie to their siblings; 69 percent lie to their spouses.”
The truth is that a lying nation isn’t likely to be under God, because Holiness can’t coexist with sin. And, as the great Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote (in “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table VI), “Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.” Nevertheless, Black preachers in the ‘hood, are still espousing from 2 Chronicle 7:14: “If my people which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins, and will heal their land.”

But what do they know? Political naïve Black folks’ are still trusting in the Lord that we shall overcome someday. They even believe that racists, crooked politicians and even terrorist all work together for good to them that love God….