This is a tale of two nations, because that is what America is becoming: a house divided.

As we head toward the Fourth, it's difficult to say that we pledge any allegiance or sing any anthem in the same voice.

O' say can we see the dissolution of marriage, in the way the Bible defined it? Bombs bursting in air: a military that lends use of its chapels to practitioners of wicca.

One nation, under God -- when atheists are putting up monuments; when abortionists are allowed even to kill babies who dare to survive? And liberty for all when Christian businesses are forced to provide health-care that funds contraception and when evangelical bakers are sued for refusing to bake a cake for a lesbian couple?

We try to be positive here but we also are commissioned to tell the truth and the truth is that there are at least two Americas, this Fourth of July: the Traditional Christian American Republic and the Modern Secular breakaway republic that for the time being has gained control.

A new revolution is underway, and Christians are not winning it.

Let's stop pretending otherwise.

Many find it increasingly difficult to "pledge allegiance" or sing "America the Beautiful" if the image of that nation includes with such prominence a homosexual couple kissing as they take wedding vows (at an official courthouse).

That does not seem like America. It seems like Sodom because it is like Sodom. Did anyone find it ironic that a tremendous heat wave and horrible fire erupted in America's West right after that Supreme Court decision, or that the reading on Sunday (6/30/13) had to do with sins of the flesh, followed today (7/1/13) by a reading on, yes, Sodom (and the Lord trying to find a few good men)?

If you want another reading, try 1 Timothy 4:1-3 wherein it says: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry.”

Forbidding to marry? Do we head toward formal disassembling of the family?

Where are the "brave"?

The Founding Fathers would behold the nation they created with astonishment. The cover of The New Yorker last week: Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street snuggling as a gay couple (as they watch Court proceedings).

The freedoms they bequeathed have been entirely abused and distorted to where now freedom means the liberty to openly transgress laws of God and nature -- whether homosexually, heterosexually, or through other means, such as the occult, entertainment, and drugs -- in a reversal that has given liberty to transgressors and taken away the liberty of those who oppose the immoral.

Hard to get worked up over fireworks when tax dollars go to surgery that changes men into females and vice versa -- this nation where a governor (New York) openly promotes a website dedicated to gays and "transgenders." (Years ago, in the Eighties, the same New Yorker carried a book-length report on the incredibly dismal life of what were then called transsexuals.)

Hard to recall the rockets' red glare.

Few true Christians are ready to pledge allegiance to Gomorrah.

Did you know that Yarnell, Arizona -- where the horrid fire took place --  is home to a shrine to St. Joseph, patron of the family?

Very dangerous times. Pivotal ones. Christians must become more united, to save this still-great nation. While 35 states still define “marriage” as the legal union of one man and one woman (either by statute or in state constitutions), the Court rulings immediately increased the percentage of Americans living in gay-marriage states from 18 percent to 30 percent.

Evil has triumphed, of late, because the good -- the majority of Americans-- have remained silent (or indifferent; or concerned only about the economy).

It can't go on as it is, and Christians must begin to coalesce and realize that they defeat their own cause by immersing themselves in petty racial or religious disputes. Catholics need to form a coalition with evangelicals and evangelicals with conservative Protestants and Christian Caucasians with Christian Latinos and Christian blacks. The politics that divides Christians is immature. Through love, we should seek unity -- not only with fellow Christians, whatever their dominations, and moral folks of other religions as well, but with everyone.

We are all God's children (even atheists).

But exercising love should not preclude living the Truth and speaking it.

Here is that Sunday Mass reading (from Galatians 5): "Brothers and sisters: For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. For you were called for freedom, brothers and sisters. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you go on biting and devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another. I say, then: live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh. For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want."

Hopefully, it will not come down to a choice between loyalty to the United States or loyalty to the Bible; if it did, the choice would be easy.

There will either be another spiritual "awakening" in America, or it will cease to exist as a single country. It was formed as one nation under God.

At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the delegates fought and bickered so bitterly, the convention almost broke up.

But then Ben Franklin stood and began to preach.

"The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of men," the aging founding father reportedly said. "And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"

Then Franklin beseeched them to pray together at the start of every day. After that, an atmosphere of peace and reconciliation came upon the founders.

"And they were able to proceed," notes a commentator. "And to finish their job of hammering out the American Constitution and Bill of Rights -- and in a context of prayer."

[resources: Fear of Fire (advance copies) and Sent To Earth]

[see also: Anthem: 'Home for the gay'?]

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