Laurence White - senior pastor, Our Savior Lutheran Church, Houston, Texas; involved in a broad variety of activities in the District, Synod, and auxiliary organizations of the Lutheran Church; founder and current chairman, Greater Houston Area Pastor's Roundtable, an organization designed to increase pro-life, pro-family Christian participation in the American political process.

It is a pleasure and a privilege to be here with you this afternoon and to talk about the concerns and the challenges that confront us as Americans in this moment of our history.

Our America is in deadly peril. The issues currently under debate among us will not merely decide what kind of future America will have. Oh, my friends, the manner in which we resolve these issues will determine whether America has a future at all.

Over the past few years I've spent a great deal of time traveling back and forth across this country, giving speeches like this about what's happening in America. That means, of course, that I've had a whole lot less time to spend at home with my family. So I was particularly pleased last winter to have the opportunity to take my two sons, Adam, who's 23, and Aaron, who's 21, on a trip to Germany.

We arrived in Berlin the day after Christmas, December the 26th. They had a wonderful time in that great, world-class city, doing all the things that 20-year-old boys do. I was looking at churches; they were looking at other things.

On December the 28th, however, we rented a van and drove out into the countryside to a little village, a nondescript little place that no one would ever have heard of were it not for the fact that Heinrich Himmler chose it as the site for one of his first prototype concentration camps, a dreadful place sarcastically called "Saxonhausen" -- the "Home of the Saxons." That camp is now a memorial, and I wanted my sons to see it.

It was an appropriately grim day -- sleet falling from dark gray skies. The place was deserted. We walked through the black iron gate with its lying slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" -- "Work Makes Freedom." You see, they wanted the inmates to believe that if they cooperated and worked themselves to the bone, they just might survive.

That was a lie, just like everything else at Saxonhausen was a lie. You didn't find freedom there no matter how hard you worked. You found torture, suffering, torment and death.

We walked out across the vast expanse where the barracks had once stood and toured the museum with its bales of human hair, piles of children's shoes. We walked through the medical laboratories and gleaming white tile, immaculately clean, where gruesome experiments had once been conducted without benefit of anesthetic on people who were believed to be less than human because they were gypsies or Jews.

And finally, far in the back of the camp, we came to the crematoria, the ovens, where the bodies of the dead once were burned. Out in front of that ruined building with its gaping metal superstructure was a statue of two emaciated inmates dragging the body of one of their comrades toward the open doors of the oven.

It was three days after Christmas. On the ground in front of one of the crematorium was a withered Christmas wreath with a white ribbon. And on that shiny ribbon was this inscription: "From the Christians of Germany. We kneel before God in humble repentance and bitter regret. We ask His forgiveness for the death of the Jews and all the others who died in this wretched place." I translated the German words for my sons and didn't say anything else, because I didn't think anything else needed to be said.

We turned to go, and walked out across that vast compound once again, through the gathering darkness. As we walked, my youngest son, Aaron, came up next to me and put his arms around my shoulders in the condescending way that sons have with their fathers. And all he said was, "Dad, you need to keep giving those speeches you've been giving."

There on a cold, gray December day in the ruins of a Nazi concentration camp, my two sons looked at evil for the very first time in their lives. And they understood how much is at stake in our America.

Now, both boys have always been pro-life. They've never had any choice in the matter. We vote in every election. But for the very first time, they recognized how much we stand to lose in America unless we do something quickly.

The Christians of Germany learned only too late that the people of God in Christ cannot disengage from the culture in which they live. They looked the other way, they minded their own business, they kept their religion and their politics strictly separate from one another, and the innocent were slaughtered and their nation was led down the path to destruction. That retreat was encouraged and facilitated by the endlessly repeated lie of the separation of church and state.

Pastor Martin Neimoller, one of the few heroes of the Christian resistance against Nazism, would later recall a meeting held in the German capital of Berlin in 1934 as the moment in which he recognized that his country was doomed.

Adolf Hitler had been Chancellor of Germany at that point for just over a year. He was leading the nation through a process that in English means "coordination," bringing every part of the nation's life into conformity with the National Socialist world view. And eventually that involved the church, too.

Criticism and complaints had begun to rise about the Nazis' heavy-handed intrusions into church activities, so Hitler gathered together the most prominent and influential evangelical pastors in the land to use a combination of reassurance and intimidation to allay their fear and stifle their criticism. He moved through the crowd that day, Neimoller recalled, smoothly and amiably, patting the preachers on the back, making them feel important, promising them that their state subsidies would continue, their tax exemptions were secure. The church had nothing to fear from a Hitler government, he promised.

And finally, brash, young Niemoller had had enough. He was what we would today call politically incorrect. He was going to tell the truth, no matter what.

He pushed his way to the front of the room until he stood eye to eye with the German dictator, and he said, "Our concern, Herr Hitler, is not for the church. Jesus Christ will take care of his church. Our concern is for the soul of our nation."

It was immediately evident that that brash, young pastor spoke only for himself, as his colleagues moved away from him and a chagrined silence fell over the room. Hitler noted their reaction, and with a politician's natural instinct, he understood exactly what it meant. He smiled as he said to himself, almost reflectively, "The soul of Germany -- you can leave that to me."

And they did. In 12 short years, their country was destroyed. A great civilization, the homeland of the Reformation, descended into a swirling maelstrom of barbarism, death and destruction.

 My friends, it's happening again. It's happening right here in our America. Once again, the innocent are being slaughtered and the nation is being led down the path to destruction. Once again, by and large, Christians are looking the other way, in large part because every time a Christian, particularly a Christian pastor, raises his voice on a matter of public policy, the immediate hue and cry from the political establishment, from the media elite, is "Wait a minute! We have the separation of church and state in this country. You Christians, you keep your morality to yourselves."

As history repeats itself, they smile reassuringly, and they tell us, "The soul of America -- you can leave that to us."

The time has come and is long since passed for us to stop listening to, and being immobilized by, these lies from the father of lies.

The time has come instead for us finally to pay heed to the word of the Lord God Almighty, who calls us to be the stinging salt that stops the decay of death, the shining light that dispels the darkness of doubt and fear, the gleaming city set high upon a hill that shines as a beacon light of hope and life to this nation and every nation. We must stand for life within this dying culture. We must reclaim the soul of America before it is too late.

To compare modern America to Nazi Germany is no mere flight of oratorical exaggeration. Consider what is happening in our country and the changes that we are presently contemplating. We are in the 26th year of a bloody abortion holocaust that has seen nearly 40 million little boys and girls offered up to a bloodthirsty modern Molach that we call reproductive freedom.

We are building our much-boasted bridge to the 21st century out of babies' bones. And the blood of those brutally slaughtered children cries out to God for vengeance, for justice, from the soil of America. The day is coming soon when He will heed that cry. When He does, woe to us and woe to America.

A militant homosexual minority is aggressively promoting its own radical political agenda, demanding not only toleration but complete acceptance, absolute approval, and preferential legal treatment for their perversion. We have descended to a level where even the most basic assertion that marriage is the relationship of a man and a woman is scorned as homophobic intolerance.

Even as we speak, a great battle has begun in the bellwether state of California. Under the courageous leadership of Ed Atsinger and the California Restoration Project, the Defense of Marriage Act -- DOMA, as it called -- has been placed on the ballot for the March election next year. This act will legally define marriage in California as the relationship of a man and a woman.

There should be nothing controversial in that. And yet militant homosexuals and radical liberals are raising $10 million in California to defeat that ballot initiative. If they succeed, marriage and the family in America will have suffered a mortal blow.

Our nation's leaders wallow in decadence and deceit while the people look on in apparent indifference. Our President is an adulterer, a liar, a sexual predator, and perhaps a rapist, and nobody seems to care.

"We need to get on with the nation's business" is the endless refrain of our liberal friends. There was a time when righteousness and justice were the nation's business, and unless that time comes again soon, this nation cannot long endure.

How many more high schools must be littered with the bodies of dead teenagers before we understand what's going on in our America? Springfield, Oregon; Paducah, Kentucky; Jonesboro, Arkansas; and now Littleton, Colorado. How many more cities must be added to that heartbreaking list of anguish and pain before we finally recognize what we are doing to ourselves and to our children?

Pat Buchanan had it exactly right a few days when he said, "At Littleton, America got a glimpse of the last stop on that train to hell that she boarded decades ago when she declared that God is dead and that each one of us is his or her own god who can make up the rules as we go along." Buchanan went on to say, "At a time when America desperately needs to have an authentic voice of moral authority from the White House, that office is regrettably occupied by a draft dodger in the cultural war for the soul of America."

The culture of violence that reaped its bloody harvest in that beautiful Colorado town begins in the bodies of babies torn from their mothers' womb before they are born. That body count will go on rising, and the blood will continue to be shed until the people of America remember that we are all created in the image of God and that every human life, born and unborn, is precious in His sight.

The economy's good. I have what I want, so who cares? I'll bet the economy was good in Sodom and Gomorrah, too, until the fire of God's judgment descended from heaven upon those wicked cities and destroyed them.

The flames of righteousness that once burned so brightly in America's pulpits have sputtered and gone out. The moral meltdown of our nation has been met by a deafening silence from those pulpits and the people-pleasing preachers who presume to stand within them.

And unless those flames of righteousness are rekindled, the flame that burns in Lady Liberty's torch in New York harbor will also flicker and burn out, for a nation where the people would rule must be a nation where morality prevails.

There is an indissoluble connection between goodness and greatness. And if that's true, then America is in the twilight of her greatness, for we are surely in the twilight of our goodness.

The establishments of both of our political parties are driven by polls, powers and the purse -- not principle. The great Democratic Party of Jefferson and Jackson has degenerated into the party of Larry Flynt and Bill Clinton.

The mighty lions of liberalism and feminism have evidently forgotten how to roar. They have remained hypocritically silent while this sad excuse for a President has trampled on the very ideals they once professed to cherish.

And the Grand Old Party of Lincoln and Reagan also seems to be experiencing what we might call an integrity deficit. Its leaders hesitate, compromise, apologize and retreat. "The people are not ready," they tell us. "These issues are too divisive," they warn us. "Our leadership must be patient and realistic," they urge us. If the Founding Fathers had practiced such leadership, we would all today be subjects of Her Majesty, the Queen.

That which they call leadership is not leadership at all. It is the self-serving counsel of cowardice.

And as long as we heed that counsel, the killing of unborn children and the destruction of our families will continue. A leader must do what is right. He must inspire and challenge. He must motivate and educate so that the people will follow his leadership. Then they will do what is right.

Real leaders are not weathervanes twisting and turning with every change in public opinion. Real leadership, as Congressman Henry Hyde and his fellow heroes from the House so eloquently articulated and courageously demonstrated on the floor of the United States Senate, is doing that which is right, personal consequences be damned.

Real leaders do not conceal, compromise and excuse inactivity with the language of compassion. They tell it like it is, and they do what is right.

Over and over again, we have fought tooth and claw for pro-life, pro-family planks in the Republican Party platform, only to see those positions ignored or repudiated by that party's nominees. For millions of Americans, people of faith across this land, this is not about politics or partisanship or even patriotism. God is not the mascot of either political party. He is not a Democrat and He is not a Republican. He's not even an American, which may come as something of a shock.

But of this one thing we can be absolutely certain: The Lord God Almighty hates the murder of innocent unborn children.

We can win the next election or the next ten elections. We can balance the budget, reduce the deficit, bring down taxes, and build the mightiest military machine on the face of the earth. But if we do not stop abortion in this land, then God will, and God should, destroy America.

This Republican Party to which we have given the majority must understand that if we cannot stand together for life, then we cannot stand together at all.

 As the British historian-statesman Thomas Carlyle once noted, "Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into action." The time for empty talk designed to keep the social conservatives on the reservation is passed. With 40 million dead and 4,000-plus dying every day, this is the time for action.

This is not a new argument within the Republican Party. A hundred and thirty-nine years ago, in 1860, the party establishment was worried that a firm, principled stand on the divisive issue of slavery could cost them the election. They urged caution and equivocation. "Let's not make slavery a threshold issue for the Republican Party," they said.

But their candidate, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, would not hear of it. Honest Abe declared, "By no act or complicity of mine shall the Republican Party become a mere sucked egg, all shell and no principle left in it."

Well, we're still covered up with egg-sucking Republicans, desperately afraid that if we tell the people what we truly believe and actually govern on the basis of those principles, we'll lose the election.

They were wrong in 1860, and they're still wrong in 1999.

If we allow the Republican Party to be reduced to a mere sucked egg, all shell and no principle, we will have lost a great deal more than the next election.

The leaders of the Republican Party must finally come to recognize that there are millions of people all across this land who are not motivated by party loyalty or personal advantage. For them, it's not the economy, stupid; it's the morality, stupid. They are Catholics and Protestants, Christians and Jews, whites and blacks and Hispanics, people of faith and moral conviction. They are discouraged and they are disillusioned by a quarter-century of unkept promises. They are sick at heart over what is happening to their country. They are dropping out and staying home, desperate for leaders who are men of real integrity. They will not support a candidate who is slick and smooth, whose convictions are determined by the latest public opinion polls and whose every word is carefully shaded in nuance by his managers and his handlers.

Unless we energize that base with a candidate who will articulate, advocate and implement our pro-life, pro-family values, we will not prevail.

I was a delegate to the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego. Perhaps I should say I was an unpaid television extra at the 1996 Republican Convention, because that's what national convention delegates have become.

I recall an interview that took place after the meeting of the Platform Committee that reaffirmed the party's principled, pro-life stand. The media swarmed around Senator Dole's representatives as they came grim-faced out of the room.

"How do you ever hope to win" the reporters cried, "when your platform takes such a hard line, extreme position on abortion?" (You know, I've never heard a reporter call the Democrats' position in favor of every single abortion ever devised by the mind of man hard line or extreme. I wonder why that is.) "How do you ever hope to win?" they said.

And as Senator Dole's man responded to those questions, I knew that the election was over. He reached into his pocket, and he pulled out his wallet. He held up that wallet in front of the camera and pointed to it as he said, "This election isn't about what happened in that room today. Nobody cares about that. This is what the American people care about."

If the Republican Party stands for nothing more than the bottom line on a balance sheet, then it is not worthy of our support. And without that support, the Republican Party will never be the majority party in this land.

Martin Neimoller, that bold, young pastor we talked about a few moments ago who confronted Hitler in the Reich Chancellory that day in 1934, was a marked man from that moment on. He went back to this church, outside of Berlin, and he faithfully proclaimed the Word of God. The Gestapo agents sat in the pews of his church in their leather trenchcoats, writing down every word he said, gathering the evidence against him.

And finally, late one Sunday night -- they always came at night -- they broke into the parsonage and hauled him away to city jail in Berlin.

The next morning, the prison chaplain was astonished to find his fellow pastor, his colleague, in one of the cells. "My brother," he said, "what did you do? Why are you here?" Neimoller responded, "My brother, given what's happening in our country, why aren't you here?"

Those days have not yet come for America, but they are coming. The question which faced the Christians of Germany then and the question which faces the Christians of America today is simply this: Who is your Lord? Whom do you serve? If Jesus Christ is truly our Lord, then we must serve and obey Him in every part of our lives.

America will not turn from the path of destruction and the killing of innocent, unborn children in this land will not stop until the Christians of America stop blending in and going along. The Christian church in our country has become little more than a chameleon -- we can blend in anywhere, and we can go along with anything, just so long as no one figures out that we are sons and daughters of the Lord Jesus Christ.

As long as that's true, the soul of America will go on dying. We must recover the stalwart conviction of our Forefathers and fearlessly stand for that which is good and right and Godly no matter what the polls say. If Jesus Christ is truly our Lord, he cannot be discarded like an unneeded umbrella outside the polling place as we go into vote. We must actively participate in this democracy that God has given us. We cannot give up. We cannot grow weary. We cannot yield to despair. We must vote not as yellow dog Democrats -- that's what we call 'em in Texas and mean they'd vote for the Democratic candidate even if he was a yellow dog.

We must not vote as yellow dog Democrats or rock-ribbed Republicans, not as senior citizens protecting Social Security or wage earners who want lower taxes, not as blacks or whites or Hispanics, not as members of the middle class or the upper class or the lower class, but as Christians, as sons and daughters of the Lord Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ is truly our Lord, then His Will must reign supreme not only in the church house but in our house, in the courthouse, in the statehouse, and, by God's grace, in the White House of the United States.

It is within our power to stop abortion in this land and to bring this horror to an end. If the Bible-believing Christians of America would resolve today to participate in every election as a Christian, if they would resolve not to vote for any candidate from any party or any office in any election who favors killing little babies, then in one or two election cycles abortion would stop.

We cannot blame the liberals or the media or the corrupt politicians for this 26-year holocaust. We are the ones who have permitted and perpetuated this abomination by our own indifference, apathy and ignorance. We are to blame for the death of 40 million little boys and girls because of our self-serving bargains, expediency, practicality. Every time we vote for a candidate who is not unequivocally and emphatically pro-life because we like his position on other issues or because we think he's more electable or because at least he's better than the other guy, we are allowing the killing to continue. We have entered into a covenant with death that is destroying the soul of America.

Do not be misled by the Establishment's denunciation of single-issue voting on abortion. The truth of the matter is that everyone has some concerns that are of such fundamental and basic importance that they must take precedence over everything else.

Should we, for instance, support a candidate with whom we agree on 95 percent of the issues and who comes from our party but who happens to be a bigot who, along with his strong economic and foreign policies, believes that blacks are less than human and may be traded as property to be bought and sold? Or one who believes that Jews pollute the gene pool and must be exterminated for the purity of the race?

Obviously not. Those issues are of such basic importance that they settle the matter and disqualify the candidate.

The liberals who condemn single-issue voting on abortion aren't really against single-issue voting at all, and in many cases, those same liberals are perfectly willing to vote against any candidate who is anti-choice no matter what else he may believe. Abortion is the great moral issue of our age. There is none other like it. It must take precedence over every other consideration.

On this single issue, there is only one Christian position -- for life. On this single issue, there is only one human position -- for life. In this crucial hour, on this crucial issue, the Lord Jesus, whose name we bear, summons us to serve Him, to stand fearlessly and faithfully for life in the crumbling battle line of our dying culture.

I am convinced that God has given us this crucial moment for America. As His faithful sons and daughters, let us rise to the challenge of these days. Let us snatch our country back from the brink of destruction.

In the incredible mercy of our awesome God, America's day of reckoning has not yet come. America has turned her back on God. God, in His amazing grace, has not yet turned His back on America.

So let us work while it is still day, before the night comes when no man can work. Let us stand together for life, for that which is good and right and Godly, without compromise and without apology. In the bold confidence of the spirit, let us declare to this nation and to the world: The soul of America -- you can leave that to us.

Thank you. God bless you.