(Blog) Will America Forget Her Story and Lose Her Identity?

A nation can survive disagreement. It struggles to survive amnesia.

In this episode of The Smith and Rowland Show, Jeff Rowland and Mr. Smith argue that America's crisis is not only political. They say it is a crisis of memory, because history, Scripture, and civic identity are no longer taught clearly or treated with respect.

After a brief invitation to join the Kingdom Prophetic Society for daily podcast emails, blogs, and weekly teachings, the discussion turned to schools, elections, pulpits, and Israel. The thread running through all of it was simple: when people forget the story that formed them, they start losing identity.

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"Text generated by [rightblogger] based on (Smith and Rowland Video), Will America Forget Her Story & Lose Her Identity? - Ep. 932 - June 24, 2026

A nation without memory loses more than facts

Rowland and Smith said they have been sounding this alarm for years, long before many people took it seriously. Across nearly 1,000 episodes, they have returned to the same concern: ideas once dismissed as fringe are now shaping public life, and many Americans no longer recognize what has changed.

The article at the center of this episode put the issue in direct terms. Drawing on Samuel Huntington's 2004 book Who Are We?, it argued that a nation cannot remain united without a shared culture, shared history, and shared understanding of itself. Once those foundations are removed, society starts breaking apart into tribes, interests, and rival identities.

"If we forget our story, we lose our identity."

That line carried the whole conversation. The hosts agreed that America's story is not only political or military. It is also biblical. They pointed to the article's claim that educator E.D. Hirsch explained how biblical literacy gave Americans a common language, common references, and a moral frame that shaped public life.

That argument matters because the Founders did not build in a vacuum. The episode recalled Benjamin Franklin's well-known proposal for a national seal showing Moses at the Red Sea. That image alone says a lot. Early American thought drew on the Exodus story to think about tyranny, liberty, providence, covenant, and national purpose.

The hosts were not saying every founder was an orthodox Christian. They were saying the Bible still shaped the public imagination. It gave people a vocabulary for law, freedom, dignity, and self-government. Once that vocabulary disappears, people do not only lose Bible knowledge. They lose the story that helped explain who they are.

The political center is shrinking

From there, the conversation moved into politics, and the hosts were blunt. They argued that the Democratic Socialists of America have taken over much of the Democratic Party's energy, especially among younger candidates coming out of colleges with openly socialist ideas.

In their view, this is no longer a fringe tendency. They pointed to primary victories where younger challengers replaced older, more moderate Democrats. They also described a platform shaped by hostility to borders, hostility to police, and hostility toward Israel. Four or five years ago, they said, many people would have laughed at the idea that openly socialist rhetoric could win major races. Now they see it happening in plain sight.

This comparison helps explain how they see the shift:

The point was not that the old guard had become conservative. The point was that the center inside the party had moved so far that figures once seen as far left now look moderate by comparison. The hosts cited Hakeem Jeffries being booed on a large screen at a victory event as proof that even current Democratic leadership is not left enough for this newer bloc.

They also argued that the same drift is showing up on the right. Smith said anti-Israel rhetoric is not confined to one party, and he named media voices such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens as examples of figures who, in his view, push that direction. He also speculated that the next wave of national candidates may come from the podcast world, not from traditional political office. He compared that shift to earlier anxieties about Ronald Reagan being a movie star or Donald Trump being a businessman. The culture of leadership has changed, and celebrity-driven politics is part of that change.

Their complaint was not only about ideology. It was also about silence. They argued that more sensible voices inside both parties often refuse to confront the loudest faction until it is too late.

When schools stop teaching memory, confusion moves in

The political concerns in the episode were tied to a deeper problem: basic ignorance. Smith brought up a street-interview style example in which several young women were asked simple questions about the country. One answered that Abraham Lincoln was the first president. Others agreed. Another apparently stumbled over where Asia was and answered Taiwan.

The hosts did not treat those answers as harmless mistakes. They treated them as evidence that civic memory is falling apart. If people do not know the most basic facts about their country, then they are not prepared to recognize what their country is, much less where it is going.

That is why the episode kept returning to education. Smith said he is not only worried about illegal voting. He is worried about what happens when historically uninformed citizens, and historically uninformed leaders, shape elections and public policy. As he put it, those people are not merely voting. They are winning elections.

The conversation also criticized the way celebrity culture crowds out serious formation. Sports, famous musicians, and pop personalities dominate attention. Meanwhile, history, civics, and biblical knowledge disappear. The hosts were struck by how many adults now carry teenage-level cultural awareness well into their twenties and thirties while lacking basic knowledge about the world.

Their criticism was not limited to public schools. Colleges took the hardest hit. Rowland said institutions of higher learning are producing students who are not simply untrained, but indoctrinated by ideas that do not match reality. He argued that these schools are giving young people an ideological lens first, then sending them into politics, media, and public life with that lens already fixed in place.

That concern explains why Huntington and Hirsch mattered so much in this discussion. The loss is not only academic. It is civilizational. When people forget the nation's story, they do not only miss trivia answers. They lose the ability to interpret public life with any depth.

Biblical illiteracy has reached the pulpit

The strongest part of the episode was the argument that America's problem is not only out there in politics or education. It is also inside the church.

Rowland said there was a time when even people outside the faith still respected the Bible, the house of God, the people of God, and the man of God. They may not have lived by Scripture, but they still treated it with reverence. In his view, that public respect is gone. What replaced it is open contempt.

He pointed to a recent podcast exchange involving Candace Owens as an example of how quickly public discourse can move from quoting Scripture to mocking it. His point was larger than one personality. He said the problem is the growing boldness with which people speak about the Word of God, with no fear, no reverence, and no restraint.

The hosts were equally concerned about what is happening in churches. Rowland said many churches now interpret the Bible by asking what kind of behavior they want to justify, then reshaping the text around that goal. In other words, the text is no longer the authority. Personal preference is.

He also made a sharp observation about how many people approach preaching. They do not come to hear something new from Scripture. They come hoping to hear what they already believe so they can leave confirmed in their own mind. That habit does not produce biblical literacy. It produces self-approval dressed up as Bible teaching.

Smith drew a distinction between two kinds of failure in the pulpit. Some pastors are ignorant. Others are wolves. Both cause damage, but not in the same way. An ignorant preacher may repeat error because he does not know better. A wolf teaches error on purpose.

That matters because theology has consequences. Once the pulpit loses confidence in the authority of Scripture, the culture around it will not recover by accident. The hosts said the reason there is so much biblical ignorance in the country is because there is so much biblical ignorance in the pulpit. If the Word is not being taught clearly, people will not think clearly.

Israel is where history, theology, and identity meet

The episode returned again and again to Israel, because the hosts believe this is where biblical literacy becomes visible. The article they discussed said America's affinity for the Jewish people did not begin with the modern state of Israel. For generations, Americans read Jewish history through Scripture and found in Israel's story lessons about covenant, liberty, and national purpose.

As biblical literacy fades, that older framework disappears. Israel is then treated only as a modern political problem, stripped of its biblical and historical setting. The hosts argued that this loss of context has opened the door to rising anti-Semitism across the United States and the West.

They were especially forceful on replacement theology, the belief that the church has replaced Israel in God's purposes. In their view, that doctrine does not merely misread prophecy. It trains people to resent Israel and erase Jewish identity from the biblical story. Smith summed it up with a memorable line: people are asking Israel to lose its identity so they can steal one for themselves.

If a theological system leads to anti-Semitism, they argued, it is not of God.

That claim shaped the rest of the section. Rowland said hostility toward dispensational teaching often travels with hostility toward Israel, and he insisted that readers cannot understand the signs of the times if they erase Israel from the text. The hosts extended that argument into prophecy and the rapture. Whether someone believes those teachings or not, they said, biblical truth is not cancelled by disbelief.

They tied that same issue to what is happening on college campuses and in churches. Professors, in their view, are teaching young people that Israel has no legitimate claim to the land. Then Christians, already formed by that cultural pressure, start reading the Bible through the same anti-Israel lens.

Several warning signs kept surfacing in this part of the conversation:

Anti-Semitism is growing in public life and on college campuses.
Biblical illiteracy is spreading both outside the church and inside it.
Many readers approach Scripture with a political lens already fixed in place.
Prophetic teaching gets distorted when Israel is treated as disposable.

That is why this debate matters so much to the hosts. For them, Israel is not a side issue. It is one of the clearest tests of whether people are letting Scripture speak for itself or forcing Scripture to fit a prior ideology.

Final thoughts

America does not lose its identity all at once. It loses it when history is no longer taught, when Scripture is no longer honored, and when people forget the story that once gave moral meaning to public life.

The warning in this episode was plain. A country with no shared memory will fracture, and a church with no biblical clarity will not help hold it together. The deepest issue is not information. It is memory, and memory always shapes identity.

If America forgets her story, she will not only lose facts about the past. She will lose the language needed to understand the present.

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(Blog) Will America Forget Her Story & Lose Her Identity? - Ep. 932