‘Pray for revival’: Pete Hegseth says ‘generations have stopped prioritizing faith’

“One nation, under God.” It’s a phrase every American knows.

But according to Fox News’s Pete Hegseth, Americans no longer value the meaning behind those words and have stopped prioritizing the Judeo-Christian values upon which our nation was built, and our country will most certainly suffer as a result.

(Video: Fox News)

Filling in for Jesse Watters on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Hegseth delivered a passionate argument for the importance of bringing God back into America’s homes, schools, and institutions and urged Christians to “pray for revival” at a time when it is needed most.

Hegseth opened the segment with some “alarming” statistics from a Pew Research Center study that found the number of Christians in America is rapidly declining.

“Look at these numbers,” he asked viewers. “In the 1990s, 90% of adults identified as Christians. Then in 2007, it dropped to 78%. And most recently, only 64% say they are Christian.”

“Our nation’s faith is diminishing at an alarming rate,” he stated. “The question is why.”

In his eloquent, reflective monologue, Hegseth, a deeply religious man, said, “I believe we have only ourselves to blame.”

The host noted that, while previous generations have passed down enormous gains in peace and prosperity and progress in the fields of medicine, science, and technology, they have failed to pass down the most essential component to their success: their faith.

“Along the way, previous generations passed along all of the wants of the world and not enough of the needs,” he said. “They took for granted the main ingredient that underwrites all of those worldly advancements, and that’s faith.”

“Faith in something greater than ourselves,” he explained. “The belief that God is the architect of our good fortune and the bedrock of our blessings. Nothing else matters or even makes sense without a sincere reckoning with our Creator. It’s the single most important thing I can teach my kids and you, yours.”

“Somewhere along the line, we stop prioritizing Christianity in our homes and within our families,” he continued. “We took it for granted… assuming that the faith of our forefathers would just self-perpetuate. So Christian schools shrunk, church attendance plummeted, prayer — outright banned in public life.”

“Christians allowed this to happen,” he stated. “In exchange for convenient and godless public schools; vapid and decadent entertainment; and endless rabbit holes of social media. Instead of raising our kids to be Christians, learning and living according to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, we outsourced our values to an increasingly Godless culture, schools, and media.”

It matters, Hegsegseth argues, because the Judeo-Christian values taught in church are the foundations for a just, kind, and free and prosperous American future.

“Our founding fathers understood this,” Hegseth said. “They built our system knowing two key things, among others. First, men are not angels. We are prone to power consolidation, to greed, and to pride. Always have been, always will be. Hence, they built a system of checks and balances, separation of powers, equal justice, and not a pure democracy. Instead, a constitutional republic, predicated on the fact that our rights come from God, not from government.”

“Second,” he continued, “our founders believed — and they said it time and time again — that the viability of our system relied on religious faith.”

Hegseth quoted John Adams, who wrote, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of another,” and James Madison, who stated  that our constitution requires “sufficient virtue among men for self-government. Otherwise, nothing less than the change of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.”

“When we failed to pass these timeless truths, based in human nature to the next generation, as this poll is revealing to us, we create future is citizens who think government should be all powerful because government can create utopia on earth,” Hegseth argued. “Kids think man is perfectible if only government did more, redistributed more, controlled more, equalized more.”

“Then we start to fall for schemes,” he continued. “Like there are 100 genders, not two. Let’s do racism in the name of anti-racism. Imperfect founding fathers must be canceled, not studied. 1776 is outdated and racist. 1619 is our real founding. The Bible? Old, outdated and regressive. Not the inspired word of God.”

“Instead, we try to play God,” he argued. “And our search for heaven on earth unleashes human hell. It’s all a lie. The big lie, you might say. But the secular left tells us it’s science, their truth, or social justice. They say it’s progressive. Instead, they are pulling us away from timeless truths, down an endless rabbit hole of regressiveness.”

This attack on objective truth is as old as time. The first words Satan ever spoke in the garden of eden were did god really say?

Pointing to a flood of anti-Christian videos on social media, Hegseth urged Christians to step up.

“It’s on you,” he said. “It’s on me. It’s on parents and grandparents in large ways and small to fight for a Godly if imperfect nation. Church pews. Dinner tables, nightly prayers, guarded hearts, faith-filled schools.”

“Pray for revival,” he urged viewers. “We need it more than ever.”

Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk joined Hegseth and called the speech “one of the most important monologues I have heard in quite some time.”

Kirk echoed Hegseth’s thoughts on the importance of Judeo-Christian values in American politics.

“There is two things we as Christians have in common. We believe there is a God, and we are not Him,” he said. “When you believe those two things, all of a sudden that orients your government views, your political views your philosophical views.”

“It’s very important,” he stated. “You don’t try to play God. You separate powers, you believe in checks and balances.”

In terms of what Americans need to do now, Kirk didn’t mince words.

“We have to pull the fire alarm now,” he stated. “America has become profoundly less religious and less Christian for a lot of different reasons. One of the reasons though, Pete, I believe that American institutional Christianity has been far too focused on bigger buildings and bigger budgets and not enough on preaching the word of god clearly and concisely like you just did.”

“Institutional and corporate American Christianity has decided to be part of the world instead of speaking truth into the world,” he noted.

“If we do not reverse this trend, we’re going to see something that will be so unrecognizable and so horrific,” he continued, adding for any “doubters” out there that America was built on the Bible.

“And for all the doubters out there who say, ‘I’m so tired of hearing about religion,’ you live in a civilization that was founded by religious and courageous people,” he stated. “You live in a civilization where the Bible was the basis of all of it.”

“Maybe instead of scoffing at it,” he suggested, “you should open up a history book and understand that the Bible and Judeo-Christian values built the greatest nation ever to exist.”

Melissa Fine

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