The Fall and Rise of American Christianity

A New Reformation in Old Truth

Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it… I will give you the keys of the kingdom.” (Matthew 16:13–19)

That moment is the core of Christianity. It’s also the thread that runs through the story of American Christianity. Its faithfulness, its drift, and whatever comes next. This is about all three.

People Right Now Are Hungry

Something’s happening in America. You can feel it. The modern world is wearing out. The sales pitch of the last 60 years—progress, self-expression, feminism, autonomy, therapy—has failed. People see the wreckage: broken homes, fatherless kids, collapsing public morality, churches that look like nightclubs, and a culture that can’t even tell you what a man or a woman is with a straight face.

Younger men especially are waking up and reaching back. They’re not drawn to the trendy churches their parents loved. They’re drawn to words like patriarchy, to generational language, to order, to liturgy, to hierarchy, to beauty, to anything that feels older than suburban youth group Christianity. Women are rediscovering modesty and domestic pride. Families want hymns and creeds, not fog and lasers. Everybody’s suddenly talking about “tradition.”

That instinct isn’t wrong. It’s good to want roots. But instinct isn’t enough.

A lot of this hunger is reactive. People are running away from something false more than they’re running toward something true. That’s why you see a spike of interest in Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy, monarchism, high ritual, incense, and robes. It all looks ancient and stable, and stability looks priceless right now.

But if all we do is run toward whatever “feels” old, we’ll just trade one error for another. We don’t just need aesthetics. We need truth. We need what Peter confessed: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

That confession, not vibes or pageantry, is the rock Christ builds on.

Who Christ Is, and How the Church Is Built

When Peter called Jesus “the Christ,” he wasn’t tossing out a title. “Christ” is “Messiah,” the Anointed One. In Scripture, prophets, priests, and kings were anointed. Jesus is all three perfectly: the final Prophet who reveals God’s truth, the High Priest who offers Himself as the sacrifice, and the King of kings who rules all nations. He’s not just a teacher. He’s not just a spiritual brand. He is God in the flesh, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus says something crucial in response: “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you.” In other words, Peter didn’t figure this out because he’s clever. The Father opened his eyes. It was a spiritual revelation, not a mere logical deduction. You must be born again to know who Christ truly is. You don’t “decide” yourself into life any more than a baby births himself. God makes you alive.

That matters, because it defines real Christianity. Real Christianity isn’t moral self-improvement or spiritual aesthetic. It’s a miracle. It’s dead men raised to life by the Word and Spirit of God. That’s what historic Protestants and Reformers meant by “evangelical.” Evangelical wasn’t a brand. It wasn’t a voting bloc. It meant someone who believed, preached, and experienced the evangel: Christ crucified and risen, received by faith alone.

That’s the substance.

Now watch what Jesus says next: “On this rock I will build my church.”

Rome says that “this rock” is Peter himself, and from that they build the papacy: one man at the top, Christ’s vicar on earth, universal jurisdiction, even the claim to speak infallibly. They say that authority was handed from Peter to the bishops of Rome, and continues today.

That’s their story. It’s not true.

The early church fathers weren’t unanimous on Matthew 16, and many, notably Augustine, explicitly said the rock is not Peter’s person but Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ. You can also see from Scripture itself that the apostles share the foundational role together (Ephesians 2:20), and Christ alone is the chief cornerstone (1 Corinthians 3:11; 1 Corinthians 10:4). Peter was prominent, yes—but not supreme, not sinless, and not immune from correction. Paul had to rebuke him publicly in Galatians when Peter compromised the gospel.

So Jesus is not building His church on a man. He is building His church on the truth about Himself. On the gospel. On His own identity as the Christ, the Son of the living God.

That’s the rock.

That’s also where American Christianity started to fall apart.

Where American Evangelicalism Went Wrong

Historically, the visible church had weight. You had pastors who preached the Word, administered the sacraments, and exercised discipline. You had confession, catechism, psalm-singing, public repentance, and a clear line between the church and the world. You had a people.

Then something changed.

In the 18th century, during the First Great Awakening, God moved mightily through men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. They preached man’s sin, God’s holiness, Christ’s finished work, and the necessity of the new birth. Revival then meant deep repentance and durable obedience. It was God setting fire to the dry timber of His own Word.

But about fifty years later, during what we now call the Second Great Awakening, a different spirit took over, especially through Charles Finney. Finney said revival wasn’t a miracle; it was a technique. You could manufacture conversions if you just applied the right emotional pressure. He invented tools for this: the “anxious bench,” the predecessor to high-drama altar call, the whole emotional script designed to force a crisis moment. He openly denied core doctrines like original sin and the necessity of the Spirit’s regenerating work. He replaced regeneration with decision.

That was the turning point in our history.

Finneyism turned “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”—a confession revealed by the Father—into “repeat this prayer after me.” He traded God-driven conversion for man-driven responses. And American evangelicalism, broadly, inherited this and has since perfected it.

From there you get 20th-century evangelical machinery: stadium rallies, youth movements, parachurch ministries, branding, celebrity pastors, production-heavy services, and a laser focus on getting individuals to “make a personal decision for Christ.” It wasn’t all bad. People were truly saved. God works even through bent pipes.

But something was hollowed out.

The church herself became optional. Sacraments became optional. Membership became optional. Discipline disappeared. Obedience became “legalism.” Holiness became “judgmental.” Doctrine was tolerated as long as it didn’t cut against growth. Worship got treated like a sales environment.

That’s how you end up with rodeos, motorcycles on stage, Stranger Things sermon series, and pastors defending it all by saying, “Look how many people got saved.” It’s just Finney with LED screens. It’s still man-centered, still technique-driven, still built on emotional manipulation instead of reverence, repentance, covenant life, and actual discipleship.

So here’s the point: that version of evangelicalism is collapsing. It should. It cannot produce stable, multigenerational Christians. It can pack a room, but it can’t build a household. It can get hands in the air, but it can’t hold a line against feminism, sexual chaos, and apostasy. When the show is over, the faith evaporates.

And people know it. They can feel the emptiness of it. That’s why so many, especially younger men, are looking for something old.

Good. But listen: don’t just look for “old.” Look for true.

The Church Christ Actually Gave Us

Right after saying “I will build my church,” Jesus says, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom.”

The “keys” aren’t mystical relics and they’re not papal power. The Reformed confessions are dead simple on this. The keys are:

1. The preaching of the Word.
   The gospel is publicly proclaimed. Repent. Believe. Obey Christ. That opens the kingdom to those who receive it.

2. The sacraments.
   Baptism and the Lord’s Supper mark out and nourish God’s people. They are not props. They are how the Lord feeds His household.

3. Discipline.
   The church admits, corrects, and, if necessary, excludes. This protects the purity of Christ’s bride and calls sinners back to repentance.

Preaching, sacraments, discipline. Word, worship, order.

That is how the kingdom advances in the real world. That’s how Christ rules His church in history. That’s how “the gates of hell” are pushed back.

People get squeamish about that phrase. They picture the church hiding from hell. That’s not the picture. Gates are defensive. Gates don’t attack you. Gates keep prisoners in. Jesus is saying: I’m raiding the kingdom of darkness. I’m emptying the strongman’s house. I’m not losing ground; I’m taking ground. I will build my church, and not even death can hold what I claim.

So no, the church has not died and been restarted by some 19th-century “prophet,” no matter what Joseph Smith said. Christ never lost His church and had to reinvent it in America. That’s a lie. The church didn’t vanish and relaunch in Utah. Christ has been building nonstop, generation by generation, with the same blueprint He gave the apostles.

And that blueprint is not “follow the Pope,” and it’s not “follow the celebrity pastor with the smoke machine.” The blueprint is: confess Jesus as the Christ, gather as His visible church, preach His Word, administer His sacraments, exercise real discipline, and teach the nations to obey everything He commanded.

That’s the Great Commission. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” Jesus says. Then He sends, not one man, not one office, but the church. “Go… make disciples… baptize… teach them to obey.” That’s institutional. That’s visible. That’s concrete. That’s public. That’s generational.

In other words: biblical Christianity is not just “me and Jesus.” It’s Christ and His Church.

What Needs to Rise Here and Now

American Christianity is at a crossroads. We are watching the wrecked husk of evangelical showmanship die. Good. Let it die. We’re also watching Rome sell itself as the only alternative: “We have unity. We have liturgy. We have authority. Come home to mother church.” That pitch is landing with desperate, disillusioned Protestants. I get why. Rome looks ancient, disciplined, masculine, rooted.

But Rome’s system is built on a false claim of authority, a false reading of Matthew 16, and a false idea of unity. Unity in Scripture is not “we all answer to one man in a hat.” Unity in Scripture is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one gospel, held and practiced in many true churches across the earth. The Reformers didn’t abandon the church. They cut Rome’s barnacles off the hull of it.

So where does that leave us?

It leaves us here: We don’t need novelty. We need recovery.

We need to recover old evangelicalism (the real thing): the absolute necessity of regeneration, repentance, and personal faith in Christ.

We need to recover Reformation Protestantism: Christ alone as Head of the Church, Scripture alone as final authority, salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

We need to recover a high view of the visible church: worship with reverence, preaching with teeth, sacraments taken seriously, real membership, real discipline, real brotherhood, generational thinking, covenant households, and fathers leading.

And we need to recover our own inheritance. I’m not talking about a fake, plastic “Christian America” nostalgia. I mean the actual stream we stand in.

The faith that built this country did not start in 1950 with Billy Graham. It didn’t start in 1776 with the Founders. It runs deeper. It runs through the Puritans and Presbyterians who crossed the Atlantic with the Bible in one hand and governing documents in the other. It runs through the Westminster Confession. It runs through Calvin, Knox, and the Scottish kirk. It runs through Patrick preaching in Ireland in the 400s and Columba planting the gospel in Scotland in the 500s. It runs through Augustine, Athanasius, and the apostles themselves. That is our line.

And, for a lot of us in this region, it runs straight through the old Scots-Irish Presbyterians who settled the Appalachian spine and brought their rugged, covenantal, Bible-soaked Protestantism into these hills. That’s not trivia. That’s bloodline. That is the faith of your fathers.

Where We Go From Here

Here’s what all this means for right now:

1. Christ is still building His church.
   Not a brand. Not a marketing platform. His church. And hell doesn’t get to win.

2. The way forward is not reinvention, rebranding, or chasing the next wave.
   The way forward is repentance—real repentance—and recovery of the old paths.

3. Our job is not to engineer revival.
   Our job is to be faithful: preach the Word, administer the sacraments, practice discipline, build ordered households, form durable men and women, and teach them to obey everything Christ commanded.

4. The goal is not a viral moment.
   The goal is grandchildren who are still worshiping Christ in this place after we’re buried.

Call it whatever you want: reformation, awakening, recovery. I don’t care about the label. I care that we stop outsourcing the future of the church to light shows, political influencers, pretend apostles, internet masculinity gurus, papal claims, or spiritual nostalgia.

We don’t need a new thing. We need the old thing, done honestly, with courage.

Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God.
He is the King.
He gifts us the keys.
He builds His church.
He will not fail.

Our task is simple: take your place on that wall. Build.

Painting: Jordan Blackstone