Most Americans probably don't know a lot about a rule in the U.S. Senate known as the "filibuster," but they should. Why? As was made painfully clear during FRC's Pray Vote Stand broadcast last night, the filibuster is the only thing standing in the way of America ceasing to be the free country that we know and love due to the disturbing policies that the extreme Left wants to force through the Senate and impose on all Americans without compromise.
In a country that is politically split down the middle, collaboration and dialogue is what we need more of, not less of. Even so, more and more politicians on the Left are hypocritically calling for an end to the filibuster now that they have the slimmest possible majority in the Senate, even though the Left has been using the filibuster to their advantage for over 200 years whenever they weren't in the majority.
It used to be that the Senate required an even higher bar to pass legislation -- a two-thirds majority to end debate, instead of the 60 votes they changed it to in 1975. Now, instead of working to find middle ground, Democrats want to blow up the entire system and let a simple majority rule. But that's not what the founders intended. They wanted conversation, give-and-take, and cooperation. And if unity is what Joe Biden's party actually wants, then silencing the minority party is hardly the best way to go about it.
Wednesday, one of the moderate Democrats holding the line on the filibuster, Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) told the Wall Street Journal, "When you have a place that's broken and not working, and many would say that's the Senate today, I don't think the solution is to erode the rules. I think the solution is for senators to change their behavior and begin to work together, which is what the country wants us to do."
On Pray Vote Stand, her colleague, Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) agreed. "We don't see enough civility in today's day and age," Young said during the broadcast. "Perhaps if we'd spend a little more time listening to one another and trying to empathize with one another's opinion, we could make more forward progress without fundamentally changing the structure of the United States Senate." Still, never before in America's history has the filibuster been this close to being eliminated. What can believers be doing at this critical juncture? "As they pray ... [they] can lift up our children, lift up the next generation," Young said.
"This is so much bigger than our immediate moment ... All adults of voting age speak for the generations yet unborn, we speak for our children and our grandchildren. We also have a solemn obligation, because we are a partnership across generations, to maintain the integrity of this republic for those generations who have passed it on to us -- it is our bequest from them. We can pray about that solemn obligation and remind ourselves and our children of it as well." Pastor Jim Garlow joined the broadcast and brought a chastening message for all believers in America.
"I'm concerned whether the average American Christian grasps the dimension of what we are now currently facing," Garlow said. "We live in an age not of misinformation, which is serious enough, but intentional, willful disinformation on the part of people in positions of high power ... This is not an issue any longer of Republican vs. Democrat. This is not an issue of Trump vs. Biden. This is not an issue of Right vs. Left. This is an issue of right vs. wrong, of good vs. evil, of the struggle of angelic beings against the demonic forces. That's not hyperbole, it's not melodramatic -- it's the reality of where we are." Garlow went on to relate just how sobering this moment is for those who have the invaluable gift of historical perspective. "All the people I know who've been under communism and a few left that are old enough that were under the Nazis all say to the person -- what they witnessed in their countries is exactly what they are observing in this nation right now."
How should Christians be preparing and praying? "We have to be extremely careful students of the culture, of what is happening," Garlow said. "Find the sources that we can trust and go with those sources ...We need to think in fresh categories ...as a resistance underground movement of some nature ...Eighty percent of the world are in places where they are religiously persecuted. Eighty percent of those are Christians. We can be taught and we can learn from the nations of the world that have been under these kind of pressures for a long time. And then we're going to have to move into a level of fasting and prayer like we've not done before."
Be sure to watch the entirety of this important Pray Vote Stand broadcast.