America Must Pray
By Dr. Mal Couch
Public prayer, spiritual publications of poems and music, have always been a part of America, until recently. There are forces now trying to silence the Christian spiritual heritage of open and free expression to our God that made this nation great.
Each week I’ll add some historical tidbits as how Christian expression and public prayer was a vital part of our nation’s blessing. We may not fully know of the spiritual state of all the men we examine, but we do know none of them were fearful of prayers to the God of the Bible in the public setting.
If you are a pastor or Sunday school teacher, please print off these little bits of our history and share them with others.
Charles Sheldon
The Third Great Awakening was very different from the previous two. With the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution, massive immigration by Europeans, and cities bulging at the seams, the emphasis shifted from personal to social sins. The ills of modern society—crime and other sins—were erupting rapidly.
On the one hand, there were the sins that had been targeted by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union—drinking, gambling, and prostitution. On the other, there were the sins of human neglect. Given the disease, squalor, and hunger of the day, male babies born in 1900 could expect to live an average of 49 years!
Out of this setting one very simple question for the spiritually reform-minded to ask themselves was “What would Jesus do?” A Congregationalist minister, the Reverend Charles Sheldon from Topeka, Kansas, wrote a best-selling book in 1896 entitled In His Steps. During his lifetime the book had the second largest circulation of any book outside of the Bible. It became one of the most published books of all time, translated into more than two dozen languages. In it he wrote:
What do you Christians mean by following the steps of Jesus? Where are the words of sympathy for the downtrodden? What do you mean when you sing, “I’ll go with Him all the way?” It seems to me there’s an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn’t exist if all people who sing such songs went and live them out.