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The title of today’s column is the same as the title of my homily last Sunday, May 25, 2025. On this day, my wife and I—along with our local Liberty Fellowship family—commemorated the 50th anniversary of my ordination into the ministry. My message was a brief reflection of what I have seen and experienced in the last half-century. This column will be the same.
I began last Sunday’s message with my boyhood, but I’ll begin this column from the time I was 27 years old (four years into the ministry) and had accepted a leadership position in the newly formed Moral Majority.
The Moral Majority
At the personal invitation of Dr. Jerry Falwell, I was the Executive Director of the Florida Moral Majority from 1979 – 1989. During my years with the Moral Majority, I met most of the leaders of the Religious Right. I couldn’t count the number of meetings I attended in Washington, D.C. I had personal audiences with President Ronald Reagan and then Vice President George H.W. Bush—and met Pat Buchanan for the first time. He later came and spoke at our church in Florida to a packed-out auditorium.
I travelled with Jerry on his jet on multiple trips (I didn’t know then that the jet was a gift from the State of Israel). I traveled with him overseas on two separate occasions; he featured me in his National Liberty Journal; I had a guest appearance on his national television program, the Old Time Gospel Hour; I spoke at the school, and Jerry spoke at my church several times.
I say all of that to simply let all of you know my background.
Most of the grassroots pastors in the Moral Majority were good, decent, honest men who truly wanted to do what was right for God and country. I later discovered, however, that some of the national leadership—and I’m not here pointing the finger at Jerry—seemed to have visions of political power and financial reward.
Remember, I was only 27 when I began this journey.
I remember a press conference with the Religious Right’s national leaders in Washington, D.C., in which a reporter asked the men on stage, “What is it that you really want?”
When I heard the question, I thought to myself, “What a perfect question. What a great opportunity to give the nation a truncated but descriptive summary of what we were all about.”
I was shocked when I heard one of the men (not Jerry Falwell) say, “All we want is a seat at the table.”
The answer stunned me. I remember thinking to myself, “What? All of this effort, expense, energy—blood sweat and tears—was so some of us could have a seat at the king’s table?” I later discovered that that was exactly what some of them seemed to want.
I can honestly say that much good came about due to the work of the Moral Majority, especially at many State and local levels—and even at the national level to some degree.
However, the ultimate (and persisting) result of those years was not so good. I’m talking about the political marriage between evangelical Christians and the Republican Party. To this day, that marriage remains intact.
Throughout America, evangelical pastors and Christians will turn their backs on spiritual friendships, courageous, truth-telling pastors (pastor-friends), spiritually minded family members or anyone else in deference to a Republican politician—especially a Republican president. And it doesn’t matter one whit how immoral, unethical or unconstitutional the conduct or public policies which that president promotes might be.
That was the forbidden fruit that grew out of the Moral Majority tree.
The other thing that happened was a theological marriage between evangelical Christians and the Zionist State of Israel. To be sure, the relationship between the two had been in an extended engagement period since 1948, and the two began sleeping together after the Six Day War in 1967. But the organized efforts of the Moral Majority, Christian Coalition, Religious Right, etc., produced an overt, unbreakable bond between evangelicals and the Zionist State of Israel.
At another D.C. press conference I attended, a reporter asked Jerry specifically, “Are you a Zionist?”
That was the first time that I heard the word “Zionist.” I was totally ignorant of what it was. But amazingly (looking back), I remember distinctly thinking that Jerry’s answer would be, “No.” Even though I had never heard the term and knew nothing about it, the instinctive answer within my heart was that this was something bad. No sooner had the thought entered my mind than I heard Jerry reply with an emphatic, “Yes.”
Being as young as I was, I simply assumed that my instincts were wrong. After all, Jerry was my mentor and was much older and more knowledgeable than I, so I dismissed my internal inhibitions. I’m SO thankful that the Holy Spirit would later awaken my soul to the truth of Biblical Israel and Christ’s New Covenant and to the wickedness of Talmudism, Chabadism, Kabbalism and Zionism.
Today, of course, Christian Zionism is a deeply entrenched major doctrine within most evangelical churches. Most evangelicals would as soon deny the deity of Jesus Christ as to deny that Zionist Israel is a resurrected Old Testament Israel, essential to the Second Coming.
But the overall purpose of the Moral Majority was to bring goodness back to America after the eight years of the debauched administrations of Bill Clinton. By the way, much of the turmoil, trouble and travesty in which the U.S. is now embroiled in the Middle East had their roots in Clinton’s two terms in the White House.
But my point is that during the Moral Majority years, evangelical pastors by and large stood for goodness. They professed and propounded good government and good behavior in our elected representatives.
The G.W. Bush years
By the time G.W. Bush was elected, I had been hosting my nationally syndicated radio talk show, Chuck Baldwin Live, for seven years. That radio talk show opened doors of opportunity for me throughout the country, including my friendship with Dr. Ron Paul and his endorsement of my presidential campaign with the Constitution Party in 2008.
It’s funny how history keeps repeating itself. The evangelical friends who praised me for publicly speaking out about the unconstitutional conduct of Bill Clinton called me every dirty name in the book when I spoke out about the unconstitutional conduct of Bush. And they still call me every dirty name in the book when I speak out about the unconstitutional conduct of Trump.
But I digress.
What started as a desire for basic human goodness during the Reagan years morphed into a desire for religious supremacy during the G.W. Bush years.
Evangelicals cheered and applauded as Bush declared war on Muslims and as he ejected the Constitution from the White House and shoved the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the Military Commission Act, etc., down the throats of the American people.
In 2003, evangelicals were completely clueless that Bush’s wars in the Middle East were in reality Israel’s wars. And when Trump takes us to war with Iran, it will again be Israel’s war.
To demonstrate how controlled these politicians in D.C. are: Donald Trump is sending financial and military aid to the same al-Qaeda/ISIS Muslim terrorists that G.W. Bush sent thousands of U.S. soldiers to their deaths fighting. And isn’t it strange how these ISIS Muslim terrorists never attack Israel?
And how ironic that the Republican Donald Trump is using the Republican G.W. Bush’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to declare war on the First Amendment freedom of speech to anyone who simply criticizes Israel and its genocide in Gaza either audibly or in print.
To make matters worse, the head of DHS, Kristi Noem, is so constitutionally illiterate that she doesn’t even know what Habeas Corpus is. Judge Nap played Noem’s comments before a U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing recently.
New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan asked Noem: “So, Secretary Noem, what is Habeas Corpus?”
Secretary Noem replied, “Habeas Corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.”
The good senator had to then school the DHS secretary on the true meaning of Habeas Corpus, that it is the constitutional (Article.1. Section.9. Clause.2.) requirement that law enforcement must present the prisoner and evidence of wrongdoing before a judge to justify the prisoner’s continued incarceration.
Watch Kristi Noem make a fool of herself on national television. These are the kinds of imbeciles that Trump has appointed to protect the freedoms of the American people.
And here is a short video of Kristi Noem visiting the “Wailing Wall” in Jerusalem as a prelude to meeting with her boss Benjamin Netanyahu.
In the Muslim world, Shias and Sunnis fight each other for not being Muslim enough. In essence, that is what the Religious Right did during the Bush years: They wanted to make their brand of religion the law of the land at the expense of a constitutional government that protects the rights of ALL men, regardless of religion.
And each president since 2008—including Donald Trump—has continued the same Neocon/Zionist foreign policies of GW Bush.
To be sure, Obama and Biden didn’t share the right-wing religious fervor of Bush. But one needs to understand that Bush’s emphasis on right-wing religion was but a ruse to sell the Neocon/Zionist war agenda abroad and the attacks against the Fourth Amendment at home to evangelical Christians. And it worked!
Today, evangelicals are at least 80% pro-Zionist and pro-police state. Oh, they would take umbrage with the term “police state,” but that’s exactly what’s taking place under Donald Trump. When he and Attorney General Pam Bondi talk about stamping out antisemitism, they are talking about eviscerating the most fundamental right of a free society: the freedom of speech. And evangelicals either sit in silent indifference or enthusiastically support banishing public criticism of Israel and its grotesque genocide in Gaza.
What they don’t seem to realize is that once you start censoring speech about one subject, the door is open to censor speech about any subject.
The Moral Meltdown
Those same evangelicals who worked so feverishly during the 80s and 90s to bring basic human goodness to America now support the destruction of innocent men women and children—including Christian men, women and children—in Gaza and the Middle East.
They condone Israel’s mass murders; they excuse Israel’s mass starvations; they justify Israel’s genocide; and they facilitate Israel’s ethnic cleansing.
The laws of basic human goodness, the laws of humanity and the laws of fairness and equality have been jettisoned from the conscience of evangelical Christians. All in the name of Israel; in the name of the Bible; in the name of Christianity; in the name of God.
The entire world recognizes the utter depravity of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Almost everyone in the United States recognizes the utter depravity of Israel’s genocide in Gaza—except a Republican president, congressmen and senators from both parties inside the Beltway and evangelicals.
Those same evangelicals who so strongly supported constitutional government during the days of the Moral Majority are now totally silent or actually endorse government abridgment of our constitutionally protected liberties (particularly the freedom of speech) and support America’s direct involvement in and partnership with Israel’s genocidal mass murders.
Over the past 50 years, I’ve watched evangelical Christians take America from the Moral Majority to a Moral Meltdown.
P.S. THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS are now available for pre-order.
This is the giant compilation of America’s greatest historical documents in one book under one title. This giant volume is available nowhere else. This is a limited supply printing and will be available for only two or three weeks. That’s why we allow people to pre-order copies. People who pre-order will be shipped the first copies as soon as we receive them from the printer. Print date is June 12.
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© Chuck Baldwin
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