Kirk Cameron hosts story hour in push for new 'great awakening' in America
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Actor Kirk Cameron is hoping that the children’s books he's written will help usher in a “great awakening” in the United States, which he sees as necessary to reverse the moral decline engulfing the country.
Cameron, best known for starring in the 1980s sitcom “Growing Pains,” held a story hour at the James M. Duncan Branch of the Alexandria Public Library on Saturday to read a children’s book that he wrote in collaboration with the publisher Brave Books.
His event at the library, located just outside Washington, D.C., was one of three locations he spoke at throughout the state of Virginia on Saturday.
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The other stops were in Stone Ridge and Stephens City, which are still located in northern Virginia but further away from the city.
Cameron has written three children’s books for Brave Books: As You Grow, Pride Comes Before the Fall and The Fox, The Fair and the Invention Scare. The books stress the importance of acknowledging the fruit of the spirit, humility and loving your enemies, respectively. He read Pride Comes Before the Fall to the dozens of families gathered at the library in Alexandria.
Before reading the children’s book, Cameron led the crowd in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing “God Bless America.” As he read the book, pages from the story appeared on a screen in the background. He concluded the story hour with a prayer and encouraged the children in the audience to make friends with one another.
Cameron elaborated on what motivated him to get involved in writing children’s books in an interview with The Christian Post. “I’m actually a grandfather now,” he said.
“As a grandfather and as a father of six children, I care a lot about what we do in our generation because it will determine so much of what our children live with, the world that they’ll grow up in,” Cameron added. “I want to ... write books and talk to people for as long as I can about turning their hearts toward God, turning their hearts back toward their home, raising their children, not outsourcing their parenting to government institutions that have lesser goals and motives for those children than their own parents do.”
Cameron also expressed a desire to ensure that children “love their country and appreciate what so many men and women did to sacrifice in order to give us a country with so much opportunity, so much freedom and so much prosperity,” adding, “I want to do my part to make that that continues and increases.”
He hopes that the See You at the Library events and his work with Brave Books serve as “a perfect tee-up for another great awakening in America.”
The actor identified the previous great awakenings in American history as “revivals” where “people’s eyes open and they see the trouble that they’re in and they turn their hearts back to God and they experience a refreshing and a renewal of the principles that lead to human flourishing again.”
According to Cameron, “Those revivals have always taken place during times of moral decline, spiritual apathy, economic collapse and political corruption. … We’re seeing a bunch of that right now.”
“I want to communicate to people that now is the time to lean into your faith, to your courage, to your family and regain a vision of victory, not only a pie in the sky ‘let’s just get to heaven’ victory, but a steak on the plate cultural victory in our lifetime,” he concluded. Cameron shared his vision with the parents and children gathered for the story hour, and showed a replica of the National Monument to the Forefathers in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and explained its significance.
Cameron acknowledged that “many of us look around at our country and we have this sinking feeling that something is very, very wrong with the values that our kids are learning.” After expressing concern about “the little kids’ shows that they’re watching, the books that they’re reading,” he noted that “I even have people who have lost hope that things can turn around.” He specifically condemned the efforts to teach “little kids things like ‘gender-affirming care’ and other types of stuff.”
“We’re so far off the rails, the compass is no longer pointing north, it’s pointing the opposite and wrong direction. We can always find our way back to the safe harbor of blessing and protection if we follow this recipe that they left us,” he maintained, referring to the Pilgrims that the National Monument to the Forefathers was created to honor.
Cameron pointed out that the largest figure depicted on the National Monument to the Forefathers was a woman named Faith, who was “pointing to Heaven” and holding the Bible in her hands. “She’s got a star on her forehead representing wisdom,” he noted, as he shared the Pilgrims’ belief that “if you had faith in God and in God’s Word, the Bible, He would give you wisdom and you could reason and think correctly about all of the things that are important to your society and your family.”
“That first important aspect of good thinking is your morality,” Cameron said as he identified the second figure depicted on the monument. “Morality’s holding the Ten Commandments in her left hand, a scroll of Revelation in her right hand. But they didn’t believe morality was … an external standard of good and bad imposed by a government or by law, it began with an internal transformation of the heart, and I know that because to her left, under her chair, it says ‘Evangelist.’”
Cameron discussed the presence of a pastor holding a Bible on the monument, which he asserted was designed to convey that “the heart can be changed by the spirit of God.” He maintains that “once your heart’s changed, you begin to love what God loves and hate what He hates from the heart, and then you have the external standard of the Word of God written in the Bible.”
Cameron explained that another figure on the monument was named “Law” to signify that “this was a Republic that would be based on biblical law and a good morality that lined up with Heaven’s morality, and we know that because here’s the man of law,” referring to the judge included in the monument. He urged the audience to recognize that the “book of law in the judge’s hand is right beneath the book of law in Faith’s hand, indicating that man’s law must always line up under God’s laws or they’re not good laws.”
“He’s balanced on his right by Justice and on the left by Mercy. Why? Because God is both just and merciful. Once you have civility in your society and you’ve restrained evil, now you have the opportunity and the responsibility to educate your children.”
Cameron highlighted a teacher depicted on the monument: “It’s not a government official … in a long robe, it is a woman who is likely the child’s mother.”
“We’ve had great awakenings in the past,” he recalled. “We have had people who have suddenly had their eyes opened by what was going on and they turned.”
Cameron stressed that “when all hopes seem lost, that is usually when the revival is teed up to happen.” Cameron wasn't the only children’s book author to read to the children in Alexandria on Saturday. Pastor John Amanchukwu, who has emerged as a staunch critic of progressive ideology, read his book Deep Within Doomsdometo the families gathered in the audience.
Although written by two different authors, both Pride Comes Before the Fall and Deep Within Doomsdome were published by Brave Books, and take place within the same universe on “Freedom Island” and feature the same main character: a tiger named Valor. The goal of Deep Within Doomsdome is to teach children about the importance of self-control.
As Cameron’s remarks suggest, the former child actor has become outspoken about his Christian faith. When asked what message he had for critics who have worked to shut down his story hours because of their opposition to his religious views, Cameron responded, “If someone told me that they had a problem with my religious views, I would say, ‘Well, you have religious views, too, even if you’re an atheist, and there are people who would have problems with your religious view.’”
“In fact, most people in the world would have a problem with your atheistic religious views, but the good thing about my religious views is that … there’s room for you, there’s a place for you. And in a nation that embraces Christian values, at the top of your list is love your neighbor as yourself. I’ve got Muslim neighbors, Hindu neighbors, atheist neighbors, Catholic neighbors. You don’t have to think like me to be cared for by me, and that’s good news whether you’re a Christian or not.”
Cameron’s speaking tour constituted a small part of Brave Books’ second annual See You at the Library Day, where “thousands of families come together at public libraries to host wholesome story hours that celebrate a return to American, Constitutional, and Biblical values.”
Brave Books spearheaded the first See You at the Library Day after more than 50 public libraries throughout the country denied Cameron’s request to read his books at their locations.
While some of the libraries eventually allowed Cameron to host the story hours, the events did not come without protests seeking to shut them down. Cameron told CP that despite the fact that “library leadership did not want us to come to the Downtown Indianapolis Public Library,” the story hour drew “an overflow crowd of 3,000 parents and grandparents there, the largest attendance to an event in that library's history, according to some of the leadership.”
"They were overflowing, exceeding capacity limits," Cameron recalled. "They were asking people to move to other floors of the library because it was so packed with people and we found that reaction everywhere." While turnout was comparatively modest in Alexandria Saturday morning, Cameron expected larger crowds in Stone Ridge and Stephens City.
Noting that “the director of the American Library Association gave libraries tips on how to shut down these pro-God, pro-America book readings,” Brave Books detailed how the challenges experienced by the actor as he sought to hold the story hours led to the first “See You at the Library” day where “Kirk and communities of families around the nation” read aloud children’s books.
This year, more than 350 See You at the Library Day events took place across 49 states. Cameron told CP that after doing dozens of story hours in several major cities, including New York City, Washington, Los Angeles and Phoenix, he discovered that “people have been wildly enthusiastic” about them.
“I think it does speak very clearly that parents are desperate for our nation to turn around and return to the values that will lead to blessing and protection for our children,” he said, reflecting on the popularity of the story hours.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
