The Urgency of National Repentance

By Tom DeLay and Wallace Henley, CP Op-Ed Contributors Sunday, December 27, 2015

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, speaks during the 'Justice Sunday II' broadcast in Nashville, Tenn., Sunday, Aug. 14, 2005. The program was designed by the Family Research Council to educate voters on how the courts affect the every day lives of Americans. (AP Photo/John Russell)

America's most urgent need as the New Year begins is national repentance.

"I am struck by the high level of anxiety and worry on all fronts," said Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, as PRRI released its American Values Survey November 17.

There are many obvious causes of national nervousness: terrorism, crime and domestic unrest, political weakness and uncertainty, economic woes, and moral collapse, to name a few.

Yet there is unidentifiable angst in the national soul. In our travels and interactions with people across the United States, we conclude this hidden distress is spiritual.

America needs revival, but first there must be national repentance.

Ancient Israel shows how it's possible for a whole nation to repent. There are powerful examples showing how repentance brought return to God, and restoration of the nation to its values and the best of its history, as well as security and general well-being.

America itself has had serious moments of repentance.

The new nation was much in need of revival and repentance just after the American Revolution. Alcoholism, immorality, crime, church decline all were rampant. Tom Paine thought "Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years."

Insightful leaders recognized the need for change and repentance.

In 1781, Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, seeing the evil of slavery, asked: "can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction that (human) liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?"

Then Jefferson laid bare his own soul. "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever."

Sadly, the repentance whose need was implied in Jefferson's words did not come for himself or the country, and God's justice was indeed awakened as America tore itself apart in the War Between the States decades later.

On July 19, 1812, President James Madison was moved not only to "implore the assistance of Heaven" as America was once again at war with Britain, but also to call for national repentance. Madison proclaimed August 20, 1812, to be set apart, among other things, to seek God's "assistance in the great duties of repentance and amendment."

Tom DeLay is the former majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. Wallace Henley, a former Birmingham News staff writer, was an aide in the Nixon White House, and congressional chief of staff. He is a teaching pastor at Second Baptist Church, Houston, Texas.