Marijuana is now legal in the states of Colorado, Washington and California. Voters OK’d casual pot smoking on Election Day in Washington and Colorado. They had already been smoking weed in California for medicinal purposes.

Decades later, politicians and advocates are taking God out of the oaths of office for politicians as well as the oaths taken in court for testimony. There’s even a movement to take all mention of God out of the Pledge of Allegiance and off dollar bills — the currency of the United States. They want all mention of God and religious statements off all government buildings. Some organizations and/or individuals want crosses taken down from land where they’ve stood for almost a century. One national political party even took the mention of God out of their election platform and booed the effort to re-insert His name after negative reactions by some of their delegates.

Students no longer can begin their sports activities with a prayer. Cheerleaders were even made to destroy their signs which gave God credit for their lives.

Marriage has now been redefined — after thousands of years — to include the union between people of the same sex. Gay marriage was on the ballot in four states in the November elections and won with overwhelming support. Black preachers, who stand in their pulpits every Sunday to “preach the Word of God,” have seemingly turned a blind eye to the Gospel as they have bowed to political pressure to stop using the Christian definition of marriage as a means of discrimination against what is now referred to as the LGBT — Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender — community.

White political commentators have accused “the Christian Right” of being too focused on Christianity at the expense of other lesser religions (e.g. Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism) even though as many as 76 percent of the U.S. population define themselves as Christians. By the way, the “lesser” religions account for around 4 percent of the population while a little less than 20 percent define themselves as having no religious affiliation.

So even though the majority of Americans consider themselves as Christians, the 44th president of the United States has declared that America is no longer a Christian nation. And those who are Christian and conservative find themselves victims of persecution and accused of being racists.

As those of us who are Christian celebrated Christmas and declared that “Jesus is the Reason for the Season,” atheists were suing municipalities to have any outward display of the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and the Three Wise Men taken off public land or governmental areas.

So as we watch the news showing senseless murder in the raging fight between religious factions, we seem to ignore the ever growing war against Christianity right here in America.

We used to say “Merry Christmas,” now people greet you with “Happy Holidays.” The efforts of Americans to be all-inclusive have literally destroyed our right to be “real” Christians. The political move toward full “diversity” has caused Christians to forget their family values.

Even as we mourn the deaths of 20 wonderful little “angels” senselessly murdered in Connecticut, our attention has been turned to “gun control” instead of the death of the value of love and human life in a young man’s psyche. We are made to forget that human beings make decisions, good or bad, and should be held accountable for their actions.

We blame everything but the person, forgetting that all actions have consequences and only we are to blame.
So while everyone runs away from what was once glorified as Christian values, those of us who are true to our faith know that in spite of what is “politically correct,” we are Christians still and will be held accountable by God.
Lest we forget, we will suffer the same fate as Sodom and Gomorrah.

Barbara Howard is president of Barbara Howard & Associates and the Florida state chair for C.O.R.E. (the Congress of Racial Equality). This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it