Fox News host Will Cain turned up at a diner in Marshfield, Missouri, where he basically and inadvertently demonstrated that viewers of this network are largely ignorant and ill-informed. Talking to a group of men at the diner who are part of a Bible study group, one customer named Mitch, speaking in behalf of his companions had quite the opinion after Cain asked him:
“Tell me, what are your biggest concerns with the country right now?”
“Obviously, you know I’m concerned with the threat of gun control and illegal immigration,” Mitch said. “But my biggest concern as a Christian is the fact that you know, decade after decade, fewer and fewer people are going to church, you know claiming Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior.”
Mitch says that like it’s a bad thing. He does have a point, however.
It turns out that the percentage of Americans who consider themselves to be Christians is dropping steadily, The Pew Research Center [1] reports. The center conducted telephone surveys in 2018 and 2019 and found that 65 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian, having dropped some 12 percentage points over the last decade. Conversely, the percentage of those who are religiously unaffiliated — including those who say they are atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular” has risen sharply to 26 percent as opposed to 17 percent in 2009.
So, quite obviously Mitch isn’t wrong here. But he sure is wrong in other ways though.
He may be worried about gun control but lots of us are worried about gun violence because [2] there’s been plenty of it in 2021, and the year isn’t even half over yet. And while illegal immigration in the U.S. is a tangled mess, it’s been steadily declining for the better part of a decade, Forbes [3] reports.
Perhaps Mitch, like so many others, bought into former President Donald Trump’s racist hyperbole. Who knows? But he’s got a laundry list of other concerns, especially for those in his generation.
“And I also am concerned that people my age and people younger than me, I feel like, have lost the knowledge of American exceptionalism, [4]” he told Cain. “And the fact that I do believe that we are the greatest country on the history of the Earth.”
It’s interesting that so many people like Mitch believe America is “the greatest country” on Earth because that’s sure not true if you live in Latin America, [5] the Middle East, [6] and much of Africa. [7]
It’s quite likely that Mitch is ignorant of these facts and that makes it easier for him to stroll down the primrose path. Thus he concludes:
“And I feel like, you know, like it says in the Bible and like Ronald Reagan echoed in the 80s, you know, I feel like America is supposed to be the city on the hill and we’re supposed to be the example for the rest of the world as Christians and as patriots and I feel like we’re starting to lose that.”
“Hear, hear,” Cain echoed.
Some people may find it hard to believe but the U.S. is not mentioned in the Bible. The Book of Matthew does refer [8] to a “city on the hill,” and says, in part:
“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.”
I’m not sad to see Christianity declining in the U.S. I’m hoping this will lead folks to think critically but there are far too many folks who seem incapable of doing this.
Here’s Cain interviewing Mitch in the video below.