Mission America does not beat around the bush. "Truth is critical to a dying patient, and America is gravely ill. Trouble is, she seems unaware that the prognosis is very grim," says Mission America. "All that can save her is all that has ever been able to save her-the Blood of Jesus Christ. But when will comfortable Christians proclaim this truth to the nation?"
Maybe more Christians are coming back to their true love. In the political world, President Bush won re-election in considerable part because of his perceived commitment to traditional moral values, which a large proportion of voters chose as their No. 1 issue. AP reported November 3 that among the 13,000-strong sample in its poll of voters, "Moral values-heavily emphasized by the President-edged terrorism and the economy as the top issue."
Mission America pursues American Christians in an effort to get them to dedicate themselves to the Biblical morality so eroded in the last few decades, with an active e-mail news service, website, and videos.
"I didn't start it up to convert people to Christianity but to target those people who claim to be Christians," said Linda Harvey, Mission America president and founder, in a recent interview.
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). One major issue for Mission America these days, Harvey said, is the burgeoning and increasingly fascist "gay rights" movement.
Every time the American people have had the opportunity to forbid the recognition of same-sex "marriage," they have overwhelmingly done so, including in the 11 states in which the issue was on the ballot November 2. Only through judicial tyranny has a state adopted the novel notion of two persons of the same sex marrying one another. "Why should voters support state ballot issues affirming traditional marriage on November 2?" wrote Harvey on October 26. "Simple. Look at what's already happening in Massachusetts. Activists are using the 'legalization' of same-sex marriage in that state to force students to listen to graphic glorification of homosexuality, while stifling any and all objections. On May 13, Thomas Payzant, superintendent of Boston schools, instructed all staff in a memo that May 17 would be a 'historic moment in our Commonwealth' because 'two persons of the same gender may apply for a marriage license' and as such, he was announcing a 'zero tolerance policy' toward 'inappropriate or hateful speech' on the subject. . . . And there you have it-the Boston version of tolerance."
"Do you really want 12-year-old boys to be taught this is okay?" Harvey asked.
The fight against government promotion of homosexuality is part of a larger struggle about the ideals of family and sexuality. It's part of "the issue of male and female gender roles and marriage as laid out in Genesis and laid out thereafter in the Old and New testaments," she said. "The issue seems to be homosexuality. It's really pan-sexuality." This translates powerfully into the political realm. "If you were actually to get people to be honest about why they support John Kerry," she said shortly before Election Day, "for over 50% of them, it would a sexuality issue."
Harvey conceded that Christians can appear to be hypocritical when they rail against homosexuality but fail to address rampant divorce. "I only have time for a few hot issues," she said. "Also, I'm divorced. That was before I became a Christian."
Mission America also does battle against creeping feminist "theology" and neo-paganism, both fast on the rise in post-Christian America. One of the central claims of these movements is that mankind originally worshipped some sort of mother goddess, who conveniently allowed people to do whatever they wanted as long as they were nice, until she was overthrown by the male God typified by the Jewish Torah. "There's just one small problem with the 'original mother goddess' claim: there's no evidence it is true, says Philip G. Davis, professor of religious studies at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada and author of a stunning new book, Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality (Spencer Publishing, Dallas, 1998)," Harvey wrote. "In painstaking detail, Davis thoroughly debunks the roots as well as most of the branches of the pre-Christian goddess myth, for anyone who wants to actually put this theory to the test of evidence."
Harvey said that the struggle for the soul of America goes well beyond standard conservative political ideology. "I think asking people to go back to the Constitution is fine, but I think it's broader than that," she said.
