Today we continue with our featured Anglican theologian this week, John Keble. This excerpt is from his sermon, National Apostasy, in which he discusses what happens to a nation that turns away from God. Keble wrote about 19th century England. Do you say any of 21st century America in what he has to say?

God forbid that any Christian land should ever, by her prevailing temper and policy, revive the memory and likeness of Saul, or incur a sentence of [damnation] like his. But if such a thing should be, the crimes of that nation will probably begin in infringement on apostolical rights; she will end in persecuting the true church; and in the several stages of her melancholy career, she will continually be led on from bad to worse by vain endeavors at accommodation and compromise with evil. Sometimes toleration may be the word, as with Saul when he spared the Amalekites; sometimes state security, as when he sought the life of David; sometimes sympathy with popular feeling, as appears to have been the case, when violating solemn treaties, he attempted to exterminate the remnant of the Gibeonites, in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah. Such are the sad but obvious results of separating religious resignation altogether from men’s notions of civil duty.