The Churches Finished What the Courts Started

There's a bumper sticker making the rounds on the back of pickup trucks across this country: I miss the America I grew up in.

So do I. But most people can't tell you exactly when it left or why it never came back.

In 1962, the Supreme Court threw prayer out of the public schools. One year later, in 1963, they threw the Bible out behind it. Prayer went first. Then the Book. And when you remove a nation's access to the Word of God — even in the imperfect, institutional form of a classroom — you remove the only thing standing between a civilization and its own moral collapse.

The government didn't finish the job. The churches did.

While the schools were banning the Bible from the classroom, fundamental churches were quietly retiring it from the pulpit. Not all at once. Gradually. Comfortably. One "more readable version" at a time. And what went with it wasn't just a translation preference.

What went with the King James Bible was a standard.

A dress standard. When that Book left the pulpit, the dress code left with it.

A music standard. The psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs of a KJV church sound nothing like the world. When the Book changed, the music followed. When the music followed, the spirit of worship followed with it. You can't separate a congregation's text from its tone.

A holy-living standard. Be ye holy; for I am holy (1 Peter 1:16). That verse carries the full weight of the eternal and the immediate at the same time — preserved, inspired language doing exactly what God intended it to do: expose what is unholy and call a man toward what is.

The King James Bible held the line.

It held the line on what a man looks like, what a woman looks like, what a church sounds like, what a home is built on, what a nation is accountable to.

When the churches quietly set it down and picked up something smoother, something easier, something that didn't make the visitor uncomfortable — they traded their standard for their comfort. A church without a standard can still fill its pews and lose its people at the same time. You want revival? Bring the Book back.

You miss the America you grew up in because the America you grew up in still had churches with the King James Bible in the pew, the pulpit, and the home. It wasn't a perfect country. But it had a Book that was. Call it outdated if you want — that Book changed my life, and it's still changing others.

We didn't lose America in a courtroom in 1962. We lost it when the people of God decided the Book wasn't worth the fight.

"If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" — Psalm 11:3

Pastor Fortunato
Founding Pastor & Preacher of the Word.
Pilgrim Baptist Church — Cookeville, Tennessee

https://pilgrimbaptist.church
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/pilgrimbaptist/