By Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye
America remains one of the world’s most powerful nations, yet an intensifying debate over its moral direction, social cohesion and spiritual foundations elicits a difficult question: can a superpower preserve its strength while losing the values that once armed its people with a shared sense of purpose? Chinese Professor Jiang Xueqin argues that America’s imperial decline is being caused partly by bureaucratic excess, financialization and individualism.
He believes that returning to its Christian roots could help restore the American Republic. His reasoning reverberates alongside concerns raised by American commentators, Christian writers and prominent evangelists cautioning that material prosperity and military power cannot, on their own, defend a nation from internal decay. But can a renewed Christian identity genuinely unite a profoundly divided society and eliminate the decline these voices describe — or is America’s crisis too complex to be resolved through religious revival alone?
For more on this superpower’s decline, open “America is at stage four [on its path to collapse],” Professor Jiang Xueqin. Thus, if he’s right, only stage V is remaining for its total collapse.
Professor Xueqin warns of an empire in decline — can Christianity restore America’s strength and unity?
Professor Jiang Xueqin is a Chinese who has now become famous because of his two predictions which have come true. The forecasts are the reelection of U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. attack on Iran. He also says that World War III is already going on.
The Singju Post published a 12 May 2026 transcription headlined “Jiang Xueqin: ‘We Are Already in World War 3’”. This transcript was produced out of his 11 May 2026 interview on Greater Eurasia Podcast. In this interview, he stated “The American population has become complacent. It’s become lazy and corrupt. Think about all these American young people who are trying to make their fortunes trading cryptocurrency or gambling online, and spend all their time on OnlyFans. The empire has made America an extremely corrupt and lazy place where young people aren’t able to contribute effectively to the economy.
The problem isn’t the lack of manufacturing jobs. There are lots of manufacturing jobs in America. The problem is you don’t have young people in America who want to work these blue-collar jobs. They don’t want to work for $10 an hour. They’d much rather gamble and try to make $1 million in a year.”
He however acknowledges this great strength of the superpower. “I think that the American Republic is one of the most resilient systems in the world. They have 50 states and all 50 states are different. And so go back to COVID. In Canada or Europe, you have to take the vaccines because the bureaucracy can enforce its will on you. But in America, if you didn’t like the bureaucracy, you move to another state and you could avoid the vaccines.
So that’s a great thing about America. And that’s what makes America so resilient. So I understand the American empire is in decline and it’s going to collapse eventually, but I would not bet against the American Republic. There are certain areas in America that continue to be very dynamic, for example, Texas and Florida.”
Professor Xueqin points out that Christianity forms an optimal weapon which can rescue this empire in decline. “Yes, I think there are 3 major symptoms of an empire in decline. They are bureaucratization. You have this huge imperial bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. that’s no longer accountable to the people. You have financialization where Wall Street is in control. You have individualization, which is like everyone sees themselves as an island. You lose social cohesion. You lose the capacity to stand together.
But at the same time, I see in America a growing movement of people who want to restore the American Republic, and these people are what we call Christian nationalists. And Tucker Carlson definitely falls into a camp who believes that America is a republic and it should be a Christian republic. And I think that that really is a solution to imperial decline. Where if America were to embrace Christianity, then I think that would save the republic.”
Glenn Diesen who interviewed him said “Yeah, no, well, this wider idea that religion helps to keep, you know, a state or a civilization together, and also to keep its morality invigorated, this is ideas of Tocqueville, though. He argued that the American liberalism, their focus on individualism, what made US liberalism sustainable in terms of not just succumbing to, well, complete hedonism, a little bit like the direction it’s taken over the last few decades, was because the spirit of religion would always balance the spirit of liberty, that you would have this balance, that liberty wouldn’t begin to degrade itself into this horrible hedonism.
He also warned, though, that over time, the liberal ideals’ individual focus would begin to seek to liberate themselves from any restraint, which includes religion. So it just seems very difficult for Christianity, essentially, to restore some common identity in America today, though, in order to, I guess, revive the idea of a collective consciousness, a common cause, something along these lines.”
Professor Xueqin responded “Right. I completely agree with the sentiment. America was founded on two pillars. The first pillar, of course, is enlightenment, secularism. And the second pillar was Puritanism, like Protestantism. And so I completely agree with you in that America has shifted too extreme into the enlightenment.
It’s embraced secular liberal democracy and it needs to restore balance by returning to its Christian roots. But I still think that America has so many advantages. It’s still a very prosperous place where people are hardworking, where you still have a lot of freedom, where people still take the Constitution very seriously. And once they start to fully embrace their Christian heritage, I think that a lot of the great advantages of America can be restored.”
There are others who strongly support it
Ross Douthat
The New York Times released an opinion headlined “Can Christianity Be Restored to the Center of American Life?” on 31 Mar 2026. It was authored by Ross Douthat, The New York Times’ opinion columnist. He starts, saying “Over the weekend I wrote about the debate over religious revival in America, touching on the evidence for and against resurgence, the possibility of renewal and decline happening together, and the question of whether revival can reach beyond realms of concentrated social capital to reshape the country as whole.
In this newsletter I want to take up a related but somewhat different question: not whether Christianity can revive itself (it may or may not, but I’m sure that it can), but whether what you might call a Christian center can be restored in American life. By ‘center’ I mean a set of religious beliefs and institutions that are embraced and respected in the broad middle of the country, cultivate a widely shared interpretation of the American story and operate effectively at the elite level, informing political conduct and intellectual arguments even among nonbelievers.”
Douthat highlights “This kind of religious center is what America decisively lost somewhere between the 1960s and 1980s, when the institutions of mainline Protestantism went into steep and perhaps terminal decline. Much of the subsequent culture war can be understood as failed attempts by different forces — the religious right and the progressive left especially — to occupy the mainline’s stabilizing, consensus-establishing place.
I’ve written about our post-mainline situation many times before, but here I want to take as a text a recent essay by the political theorist Joshua Mitchell, entitled ‘Whither the Reformation in America?’ Mitchell offers a number of sweeping observations about the splits dividing Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and the different forms of Protestant Christianity, but he circles around to a core claim about the relationship between the Protestant tradition and the American idea.”
According to Douthat, “That relationship, Mitchell suggests, was founded on the ‘civilizational wager’ that a modern society could be modeled on the narrative of biblical Israel, complete with an errand in the wilderness, a sense of divine mission and a covenantal relationship with God. Exodus is the fundamental model for America, in this account, rather than ancient Greece and Rome. Our real founding doesn’t rest on careful philosophizing about the ideal polis, but on the quest to found a holy nation amid the exploration of a wild frontier, rooted in a ‘Hebraic Christianity’ that believes with Abraham Lincoln that God has at least almost chosen America, and maybe chosen us in full.”
Douthat argues that the American religious revival ought to extend to other spheres than just faith and morality. “This American religious quest, crucially, should be understood in terms not just of faith and morality but also of material progress and environmental stewardship. America is to be the place where God’s initial commandments in Genesis, for human beings to fill and subdue the earth but also tend it like a garden, are brought to as much fulfillment as possible under the conditions imposed by original sin. Thus it’s natural for America to be a land ‘of machines and of industry,’ for its Christianity to have a more Promethean aspect than in Europe — even as its environmentalists step forward to ‘save’ its Edenic natural landscape.”
He continues “Here is Mitchell, waxing eloquent: America is the New Israel, the city on the hill, the light to enlighten the nations, a battleground on which Satan and his legion tirelessly seek to undermine the promise of God’s New Israel. Did not King’s speech on the steps of Lincoln’s temple in 1963 call on America to live up to that promise? … Errancy and return: This is the New Israel’s perennially erratic path through providential history.
America is not Aristotle’s polis, nor is it the faint glimmer of Plato’s iridescent city set up in the heavens. America is the 40-year wandering of Exodus, searching for the American dreamland of milk and honey (Exodus 33:3). Is not the frontier — from its ‘westward’ iteration in the 19th century to Musk’s expansive vision for Mars in the 21st century — an American recapitulation of Exodus for the New World, and for other worlds, without end?”
Bailey Duran
Liberty University forms a private, non-profit evangelical Christian university situated in Lynchburg, Virginia. It ran a piece entitled “Opinion: America Must Return to its Foundation Before its Too Late” on 21 September 2020. The opinion was written by Bailey Duran.
Duran said “For years I’ve known that our beautiful country has been falling away from its foundation of biblical principles. While some people may say America was not founded with biblical principles in mind, I beg to differ. One of the main reasons the Pilgrims came to America in the first place was so they could worship God.
In England, they were required to worship in the state church. They couldn’t worship God the way they wanted to, so they moved to Holland where they were free to worship. While they had religious freedom in Holland, they were concerned about how the secularism of the nation was affecting their children. After a few years in Holland, the Pilgrims came to America. They wanted to worship their savior without the government telling them how to do it.”
She continued “Fast forward to 1776 when the United States of America was born. The Declaration of Independence and other documents that were created during the birth of our nation were laced with biblical truth. While our founders weren’t perfect (who is?), they laid the foundation to make our nation one nation under God. It has been said, ‘America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.’ As people have slowly but surely become more enamored with the things of this world, they have begun to lose sight of what truly matters. The morality of our great nation has been chipped away by those who hate God and seek to destroy a nation filled with people who truly love him.”
“America is ceasing to be good.”
Duran stresses “A nation that does not see the inherent value in life cannot be great. I remember when I first learned about abortion. I don’t remember how old I was, but I distinctly remember being horrified. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that anyone could see a precious life as just a clump of cells or as some sort of mistake. The Bible teaches that all life is fearfully and wonderfully made, but this is not what pro-choice people believe. As a result, since the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, 57 million babies have been murdered through abortion.
The Bible has been removed from schools. No longer can children learn about the Bible in their academic lessons as children did in America after its founding. Instead, most talk of religion in schools is ridiculed. Students who choose to speak up for biblical truths are ostracized and teachers who do so are fired. People riot and loot in the streets, causing damage to property and taking the lives of others. The phrase ‘under God’ was even removed from the pledge of allegiance during this year’s Democratic National Convention.”
“Without God in our education and justice system, how can America possibly be good?” she asks, before arguing “Our nation’s foundation was built on the morals and values given to us in the Scriptures. The movement to take away that foundation is one that should terrify all of us. If you are not worried, you should be. ‘America is great because she is good. That goodness that was seen in America wasn’t from the government. That goodness didn’t manifest itself because the people hundreds of years ago just happened to be good.
That goodness came from God. It came about because of the people’s desire to have God in every aspect of this country. They wanted him in the government. They wanted him in the schools. They wanted him in their families. We need to be part of a movement that brings God back into our country. We need to march onward to save our country for our future and the future of the generations coming after us.”
She emphasizes “Once we lose what little of that foundation we have left, it could be lost to us forever. We need to bring God back into every aspect of life. People need Jesus. They need his grace and his love. We need to help stop this horrendous practice known as abortion. We need to bring respect and honor back into our interactions.
In Chapter 13 of ‘Democracy in America,’ Alexis De Tocqueville said, ‘The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.’ We need to repair our faults and bring America back to her founding principles before it’s too late.”
Meanwhile, prominent American figures—most notably evangelists and religious leaders such and Billy Graham and Franklin Graham—have frequently warned that the United States faces moral rot, spiritual decline, and divine judgment for straying from God’s laws.
Billy Graham and his eldest son Franklin Graham
For decades, the late Billy Graham— the renowned evangelist— preached that America was ignoring God’s moral boundaries and warned that a nation turning away from righteousness would face serious spiritual and social consequences. Franklin Graham has publicly stated that America has grown “morally rotten” and “completely sick with sin” due to abandoning biblical foundations. Hitchcock and other various contemporary prophecy speakers link current cultural, political, and economic shifts to an alleged biblical warning that nations departing from God will ultimately fracture or lose their standing.
The Billy Graham Library, on 18 May 2020, released a piece of writing headlined “In His Own Words | Billy Graham on The National Crisis”. In this article, he states “This past year the American people have suffered an emotional trauma that has had few parallels in our history. Our newspapers and our television screens are bringing news of 101 dangerous problems that are rocking the world. Each day seems to add to our already impressive number of crises here at home – an accelerating crime rate, mass murders, soaring drug use, rampant inflation, pollution, the breakdown of families, a jittery stock market – and the list could go on and on.
And the question that many Americans are asking is: What went wrong? What is wrong? It is almost a paradox that our nation, with all the economic affluence for enjoying life, virtually leads the world in crime, narcotics abuse and immorality. As Americans we have at our beck and call all the necessary armaments for national security, but we are still insecure. We have all the material possessions deemed essential for happiness, but we are unhappy. Millions of Americans are happy on the outside, but deep down inside they know something is missing: they are lonely, empty and bored.”
He additionally points out “No one can deny that our nation faces one of the gravest crises of its history. In virtually all of the past crises, with the exception of the Civil War, our nation was confronted by external threats. But today we face the greatest of all threats – disintegration from within. But the supreme crisis that confronts us is neither political nor economic. It is moral and spiritual. And if we fail to solve this moral and spiritual crisis we may be doomed like the great nations of the past.
Look at the skyrocketing crime rate. Look at the rapidly increasing moral permissiveness that pervades almost everything we read or see. Look at the pervasive corruption to be found in almost every segment of our national life. Not just in Washington – it’s all over the country. It’s in every city. Morally and spiritually, we have to confess, our country is on the verge of breaking down. The spiritual problem is also an individual problem – it is one that rests with you and me. There can be and will be no lasting social reform until the individuals who make up society are reformed. The problems of society are caused by men and women in our society. We are a nation of individuals.”
Graham proposes the following response to the U.S. crisis. “What is the answer to the crisis that faces us at this hour? The greatest mistake that we could make would be to fail to diagnose the illness, or to offer an effective remedy. The name of the disease is sin. Our nation must seek again the way of God and walk in the law of God. This is the only answer ultimately to America’s problems.
I am not suggesting that more interest in religion is going to save us. A substantial, though declining, number of our people go to church each week. For all too many of us, however, religion is merely a formality that has little effect on the way we live and act during the week. Only a vital, personal faith in the living God of the Bible can get to the root of our problems. The great question is, ‘How can we rediscover the faith that was once a dynamic, revolutionary, life-changing force in American society?’”
He underscores “The answer is to be found only in Jesus Christ, the greatest revolutionary of all time. He was not concerned primarily with political or economic revolutions. Instead, he came to enter the lives of men and women and revolutionize the most basic and stubborn source of the problem – the human heart. This change of heart is what we need as a nation. This is what you need now as an individual. Christ can and wants to revolutionize your life – your home – your community – the entire nation. But it will have to start with you.
Something vital and historic could happen to America that could turn this country around. If men and women across the land will turn to God, it could have a profound effect of the future of this nation. It may seem unlikely, but in spite of all of our problems I see some encouraging signs that this is already beginning to happen. For example, thousands of prayer groups and Bible study groups have sprung up from coast to coast. In many of these groups, Jews, Catholics, and Protestants alike are meeting in their desperate search for life’s true meaning. Thousands of people have already found that Christ is the answer, especially among young people, and that he gives new purpose and direction to life.”
A 18 May 2026 article —titled “Franklin Graham Attacks ‘Transgenderism,’ Gay Marriage at Rededicate 250” published by News Week— reads “Evangelical preacher Franklin Graham used a speech at a prayer festival backed by President Donald Trump on Sunday to warn that ‘America has become morally rotten, completely sick with sin.’”
At the Rededicate 250 event in Washington, D.C., he then declared “Transgenderism, same-sex marriage, opening women’s locker rooms to men are just the tip of the iceberg. The spiritual climate of 2026 is vastly different from the country our Founding Fathers established in 1776.”
To understand the U.S.’s current atmosphere with regard to issues like iniquity which are said to be prevailing in this superpower, read this article: “Every empire that attacked Iran died there. America is next,” — Professor Jiang Xueqin.
Can Christianity deliver the U.S.A from decline?
Some may question the biblical explanation of the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires. However, the Old Testament constantly portrays the downfall of kings and powerful empires as an effect of their arrogance, injustice, idolatry, or defiance of God. The ruins of ancient civilizations and kingdoms still visible today offer tangible evidence that even the mightiest powers of the past could fall and leave behind little more than reminders of their former greatness.
For those who interpret these historical remains through the lens of biblical accounts, such examples carry a profound warning: no empire is invincible, and material power alone cannot guarantee its survival. In light of this, who can dare to deny that America, too, could face decline if it continued forsaking the moral and spiritual foundations that its Christian tradition has long treated as vital to its national character?
And if spiritual estrangement can conduce to a nation’s downfall, could a genuine return to Christian principles assist to reinstate its moral direction, reinforce its social cohesion, and renew its sense of purpose?
As Billy Graham affirms, true Christianity is not merely a religious identity. It instead constitutes a commitment to moral values which can assist the United States to navigate its social, political and diplomatic challenges with greater wisdom and responsibility. By upholding justice, honesty, compassion, humility and the equal dignity of every human being; these principles could permit America to confront internal divisions.
The principles could help the U.S.A to treat all people fairly regardless of their backgrounds or status, and reengineer the public trust and social cohesion which stand essential to national strength. If embraced sincerely and applied consistently in both domestic governance and international relations, Christianity could therefore enable the United States to reinstate its moral direction, strengthen its unity and renew its sense of purpose—not through religious declarations alone, but through actions demonstrating fairness, integrity and respect for humanity.
Therefore, true Christianity can deliver the U.S. from its crisis. A country committed to true Christianity cannot ignore this warning, expressed by Colonel Wilkerson in American Promise. “America goes to war for crony capitalism not freedom, democracy, or the spread of human rights, not even for our own security…America needs to eliminate this pernicious connection—to dry up the money that greases it, to get rid of the laws that sustain it, to take crony capitalism’s money out of politics.”
Various prominent figures have cautioned that corruption, crony capitalism, and wars driven by private interests figure among factors which could eventually contribute to America’s decline. Colonel Wilkerson’s criticism in American Promise echoes these concerns, underlining how the entanglement of financial interests and political power can weaken the principles a nation claims to defend. Such warnings deserve special attention from a Christian perspective, as they raise questions about the contradiction between professed moral values and the pursuit of power and wealth at the detriment of others.