Why faith is the key to America’s next 250 years

America is almost 250 years old.

It has been 250 years of trial and triumph, failure and redemption. For 250 years, this nation, at its best, has looked beyond itself and toward something greater.

Faith was present at every one of those turning points—not as a slogan or a political prop, but as the lived conviction of people who believed it was the foundation upon which a free nation can stand. That type of faith brought us here, and it is the faith we need for the next 250 years.

We need that faith because we are living in a moment of crisis. While our politics are broken and many families are struggling, the problem is not fundamentally political or economic. We are living through a crisis of identity. A deconstructive ideology has swept through society, pulling at our foundations by insisting that truth is merely a matter of opinion and that the institutions that have sustained our country are not worth preserving.

When a culture loses its moral foundation, it does not gradually decline. It collapses.

The solution to chaos has never been a change in policy but a return to the foundation. For this nation, our foundation is the Word of God.

The Bible has shaped our country from its beginning. The men and women who built this great nation sought to create a framework rooted in God’s Word—one that has outlasted every empire that has tried to replace it. Proverbs 14:34 states, “Righteousness exalts a nation.” This is the framework America was built upon, one of righteousness, not rage, and we must return to it now.

This is why I am honored to participate in Rededicate 250, a national jubilee of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Faith leaders and believers from every background will come together not to make a political statement, but a spiritual one. We will declare together, as one nation, our gratitude for 250 years of God’s providence and ask for His guidance for the next 250 years.

Some will call this symbolic. I call it prophetic.

The Church is not merely a participant in the renewal of America; it is the catalyst behind it. Every great awakening this nation has experienced began not in a Capitol building but in a congregation. The First Great Awakening did not just change hearts; it changed a culture and helped birth a revolution. The Second Great Awakening fueled the abolition movement. Faith has never stood on the sidelines of American history. Faith was on the field.

It needs to be on the field again.

I have led a growing Latino Evangelical community for more than two decades. In this time, I have sat with presidents and walked alongside pastors who lead communities that will never make the news. I have seen firsthand what happens when the Church retreats from the public square and what happens when it shows up. The difference is truly seismic.

Long before Jamestown or Plymouth Rock, faith was central to our ancestors’ identity. We did not arrive in America and discover faith; we brought it with us. For generations, it has been a constant in our nation—an anchor that held families together when everything else was falling apart.

Our story is intertwined with America’s story.

Two hundred and fifty years in, this nation does not need more anger or division. It does not need more voices telling us what we can or cannot be. Our nation needs the Church to stand up and remind a forgetful generation of who we are and whose we are.

The Church must stop waiting for permission and start leading with conviction. This requires believers to step up and engage not just on Sunday morning but in every sector of society, from the schoolroom to the boardroom. It requires us to hold mercy and justice together, not as competing agendas, but as the twin pillars of a nation that honors God.

Faith got us started, and it carried us through. Faith—the real, costly kind that moves people to act and not just to speak—is what will carry us forward.

Your faith was never meant to stay inside a church building. It was meant to walk into your classroom, your workplace, and your neighborhood. It was meant to show up on Monday with the same conviction it had on Sunday. The next 250 years will not be written in legislative chambers but by ordinary citizens who decide their faith is too important to keep private and too powerful to leave unused.

Two hundred and fifty years from now, let history show that this generation did not flinch. Let them say we returned to our Creator and His Word. Let them say we believed.