Glenn Beck

And then there's the Reverend John Wise.

He was a pastor in rural Ipswich, Massachusetts.

As early as 1687, nearly a century before American independence, Wise was already preaching that taxation without representation is tyranny and that the consent of the people is the foundation of government.

And also that, quote, every man must be acknowledged equal to every other man.

His ideas were so potent that in 1772, as war loomed on the horizon, Massachusetts patriots reprinted his works to rally the colonies, reminding them of the biblical principles for just governance.

Again and again, pastors were at the heart of shaping American civil liberty.

Yet, even with those solid foundations and strong spiritual leaders, part of the human condition is to fall into spiritual apathy.

The Salem Witch Trials, while an extreme example, were symptomatic of churches sinking into decay.

Puritans repeated the kind of oppression that they had fled England to escape.

Their piety had turned rigid and cruel.

By the early 1700s, a sense of decline gripped New England.

Pastors lamented their congregations straying from their first love.

Distracted by business, trade, and worldly woes, their hearts had grown cold.

God, they said, had sent judgments as warnings, such as the devastating wars with the Native Americans and the disaster in Salem.

The New England colonies, they were barely a century old, and they already needed a reboot.

At the first congregational church in Northampton, Mass, embers began stirring.

It was Pastor Solomon Stoddard.

He urged his congregation to pray for God to do a new work in their community.

As Stoddard put it, quote, The sparks from those embers in the Northampton church would ignite something massive, a spiritual renewal that would spread from town to town and change America.

Right now, there are a lot of voices in our culture, and most of them are really loud, pushing in one direction.