So much is being made about the political divisions in our nation. It appears everyone has an opinion about why we are so divided, and that partisan politics is driving the division.
I disagree. While there is no question, we face some significant political division in our nation, politics is just a convenient foil in this discussion. Pretending that tax rates, health insurance costs and our status around the globe could cause this type of division is simplistic and naïve.
These types of issues have solutions that are born through compromise and finding common ground. You want a tax rate of 30%. I want a tax rate of 10% and we meet in the middle at 20%.
The real division in our nation is founded on great moral issues. These issues are based on right-and-wrong and they offer no common ground, no compromise.
We have been here before. The issue of slavery drove our nation for the first 8 decades of our existence. The enslavement of another human being is fundamentally wrong and a moral issue that has no room for compromise.
This point is proven by the attempts of the early leaders of our country to foster common ground that would allow us to compromise and move forward. These efforts, while often noble in intent, only solidified the eventuality of war.
The Compromise of 1820, which brought Maine and Missouri into existence, was done to cool the tensions that had been brewing over the expansion of slavery in the South. Maine came into our nation as a “free state.” Missouri entered as a “slave state.”
The tension over the issue of slavery, however, continued to mount. The Compromise of 1850 was crafted by men, many of them well-known to history, Webster, Calhoun, Clay and others, that sought again to cool the mounting tensions of our nation.
Just a few short years later, in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, creating popular sovereignty. This allowed Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether they would be a slave state or a free state. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was yet another attempt to “compromise” on this great moral issue, but ultimately, it only led to bloodshed.
The period became known as “bloody Kansas” as Americans fought each other for the right to own slaves and abolished the Compromise of 1820 which forbade slavery above the latitude 36 – 30. Ultimately, the effort to abolish slavery led to the creation of the Republican Party in 1854 and the eventual ascension of Abraham Lincoln.
History tells us the South fought over economics and the Southern-way-of-life. The North fought to preserve the nation as one country. History also tells us that President Lincoln essentially said that he would save the nation without freeing the slaves or with freeing them all, but his focus was on saving the nation.
Regardless of what we are told or taught, the truth is, the American Civil War was about slavery. The Lincoln-Douglass debates of 1858, made clear Lincoln’s position on slavery. He saw it as a great moral evil. Our nation had been on a slow but sure footing to civil war since the Constitution was adopted as the document did not end slavery as an institution with its signing.
The South was so threatened by Lincoln’s stance on slavery, that Southern leaders-initiated secession of the various states to preserve the institution of slavery as soon as his election was announced. After a long four-year battle that saw the loss of hundreds of thousands of Americans lives, the North prevailed in the great Civil War and slavery was eradicated from our land.
Why did I give this brief summary of our history? I gave it because history is a guide to our future and as the saying goes, those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. That is where we find ourselves today.
While there is no question that we have partisan political division in this country, the battle over tax rates, tariffs, economic inequality have eventual common ground which is how they are solved. It is, however, the great moral issues of the day that drive our very deep division that has us on the brink of breaking apart.
Lincoln said, as he accepted the nomination to run for U.S. Senate in Illinois in 1858, our nation was divided but could not remain so.
“A house divided against itself, cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.”
His point was simple. On that great moral issue, America will ultimately resolve it, not through compromise, but through either becoming fully slave or fully free.
We are in a similar place today, almost 160 years later. We are being challenged as in no time since the Civil War. Our issues today are not slavery, but life itself, and who we are as people.
The issue of abortion has been a cancer on our nation since it became legal on January 22, 1973. The Roe v Wade case was decided on that day and our people have born its shame every day since. Roe effectively said that not all life is a precious and unique gift from God. On that day, our government sanctioned the taking of innocent life for reasons as simple as the birth of a child was inconvenient.
The tension Roe created in America has fostered a simmering resentment and division. As the hard-left in America has driven to expand abortion rights across the land, conservatives have stumbled about how to respond. Politically, pro-life conservatives have sought to avoid the fight over abortion because they have been fed the line, “Conservatives cannot win on social issues” at the ballot box or on the street corner.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Social issues tell us who we are. Our values shape our lives. The truth is, nothing is more important than our values, as they define us as people.
If our values are so important, and they are, how can we not defend them? If God is the core of our being, and he is, and life comes from God, how can we allow the slaughter of an innocent, unborn child because the child comes at a time that is inconvenient with the rest of our life?
Recently, Governors around America have sought to make it even easier to kill an innocent, unborn baby, including taking the life of the child up and until the moment of birth. One Governor, Ralph Northram of Virginia, went on a talk show and described how a piece of legislation in Virginia would allow “an infant to be delivered, made comfortable and then a discussion would occur between the Mother and Doctor to decide what happens to the child.’ This is a child that has been delivered outside of the body of the Mother. Thankfully, that legislation was defeated … for now.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation on January 22, 2019 that allows a woman to abort a child until the moment the child is born. To make his actions even more devastating, he celebrated the signing of the legislation with supporters by having buildings in New York City lit up in pink to signify its passage. Cuomo seeks to make New York state the abortion capital of the world.
Cuomo made his feelings known about pro-life citizens in 2014. He was quoted in an interview, saying “Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”
I guess in Cuomo’s world, if you are pro-life, that makes you an extreme conservative and you can ascribe any description you seek to make a point. That is, of course, what happens when evil inhabits your soul, as it clearly has Andrew Cuomo’s. The prince of darkness is running strong in Albany, New York.
As Hard-Left activists have sought to use the political process as a means to impose their often sick and usually depraved values on our society, they may have over-reached with their recent efforts on abortion. There is a rumbling in the soul of pro-life Americans that has for too long been silent or at least very quiet.
The core of the divide in America is over values, not politics. The Left in America (very different than traditional Democrats) seeks to embrace whatever the cultural winds blow at them. The Right seeks to preserve the traditional values that made America the place that it is, a not perfect but pretty wonderful country.
The preservation of life is at the core of our values. God created us as precious and unique individuals. When Hard-Left activists drove our government to declare, through the Supreme Court, that not all life matters, our society began a steady and painful decline.
Abortion no longer became a debate about the sanctity of life, but rather a political issue where the Left in our country has sought, pretty successfully, to convince women that without the right to kill their unborn child, they were not equal to men. It is a devastating argument that finds solace in women who have been told they don’t matter, and they have been led to believe that abortion allows them to reclaim their power.
When our Supreme Court stated clearly that not all life matters, it effectively said that nothing really matters, because without life, you have nothing. Abortion is now a political football where the Hard-Left of the Democratic Party uses your support of this barbaric action as a litmus test for fitness for office.
While the political battle rages on, traditional-valued people are having their souls stirred for a spiritual fight. Much like the slavery issue, where political compromise and the Supreme Court where used to attempt to defuse the issue, the people are having none of it.
When our government makes a clear and definitive statement that not all lives matter, the balance of the values we hold dear are also diminished. We have witnessed the decline of the nuclear family, children being born in 43% of households without a Father in the home, active in the child’s life.
We have witnessed the decline of long-term marriages where almost one out of every two marriages end in divorce. Let’s face it. If life is not precious, what else is?
Abortion has become the defining issue of our times, just as slavery was the defining issue at the start of our country. The lies and the depths of intimidation to which the Hard-Left, their political allies and their cohorts in the national media have used to protect this “right” is startling. What was once pitched as “safe, legal and rare” has now become “abortion on demand until birth.”
As Mr. Lincoln said, “A House divided against itself will not stand.” We are a House divided against itself. We will either become a nation where abortion-on-demand until birth and beyond will become acceptable, leading ultimately to our destruction, or we will end this grizzly practice and penalize the doctors who perform it.
We must decide this now. The long-term existence of our nation depends upon it.
The question is, what do we do? Do we take up arms, as a prior generation did and fight it out, pro-life vs pro-abortion? While that is a course of action that could eventually occur, it is not our best course of action.
Christian people in America must unite in prayer. As my pastor says, “We must pray with expectancy.” We must call upon Almighty God to intervene on behalf of the innocent unborn in America.
Despite the prohibition in the First Amendment of our government formally endorsing a religion, the vast majority of Americans self-identify as Christian. It means they believe in and have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
In the Gospel of John, Chapter 14, Verse 13, Jesus says, “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”
When millions of Christians are praying in unison and with expectancy, asking Jesus to intervene, he will do it. The Bible says in the book of Jeremiah, Chapter 
1, Verse 5, “Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee … “
Our nation is powerful when we stand together on the side of right. When we humble ourselves and in unison, pray with expectancy, calling upon our Lord and Savior to intervene, he will.
Our God is not a remote God, uninvolved in the lives of his children. Our God loves us so much, he sent his son to die on a cross to atone for our sins so that we can spend eternity with him. Surely, if our God loves us so much to make such a sacrifice, and he does, he will act as we seek his intervention.
I know there are Marches for Life annually. I know there are prayer groups. What we need is a national movement, not led by our government, but by us, the disciples of Jesus Christ. We need to join together, millions of us at the same time, seeking God’s intervention. We must call upon him to change the hearts and minds of those so possessed by evil that they have aborted 60 million innocent, unborn babies since Roe v Wade in 1973.
This must be our course. The power of prayer is undeniable. America is hurting and God is the answer. We must be bold in our faith and unwavering in our courage to stand strong against the evil wind of abortion that is blowing across our land.
Ray Richardson is the host of the Ray Richardson Show on WLOB Radio. He has authored three books, written a newspaper column for over a decade and is a contributor to Richardson Magazine.
Ray lives with his wife of almost 34 years Dee Dee in Westbrook Maine. They have four children (8 when you count the spouses), one granddaughter and a little dawg who thinks he is human.
