Yes, Yes and yes. If we conduct ourselves righteously others observe and imitate because they see it can be done. I teach my children the word. They then question what they don't understand and I answer or find the answer. We both learn. Also throughout the course of a typical workday I interact with many people. I try to be ever mindful of my actions so as not to give the wrong impressions. I also routinely offer many thanks and praise to God for various things while talking with folks. Ranging from waking, the weather, good health and fortune and everything in between. On occasion I have even thanked folks for pointing out my mistakes/errors so that I learn from them and strive not to repeat.
Why do I say all this? Not to blow my horn but to be able to state that my actions in relation to others has for a very long time now resulted in very positive face to face communications. I am the first to admit that my formal education is limited but in trusting God and seeking his guidance I find things flow rather easily. And if I can do it anyone can. It always seems to be when I try to rely on my own will solely or someone elses direction that I encounter obstacles. Love.
Excellent point, Tim. Yet the people opposed to our Christian morals based republic would attempt to stifle the free marketplace of ideas. They do this through "political correctness" in universites, schools, and the media, and through effectively blackballing Christian/moralists in Hollywood. Even more despicable, they attempt to drown out from our governmental institutions, any historically and intellectually honest relation of our Christian (and by Christian I also mean Judaic) heritage, the very basis of the free society in which we live. Many means are used, from the very subtle to the very obtuse.
One means has been to focus on a minsconstrued Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin, as opposed to J. & S. Adams, Henry, Mason, Blackstone, etc.; also to ignore the role of everyman's Biblically informed conscience and intellect, and of course the roles of the clergy, while the hew and cry at the time of our Revolution was actually "No king but King Jesus!" as assuredly as it was "No taxation without representation." Also, in the earlier generation, the leftists and corrupted libertarians focus upon a misconstrued Locke (Locke as Rousseau) vs. Sidney. Since then, of course the existentialists, materialists... and now the immaterialist "post-modernists." (Perhaps there is more novelty and controversy with these people; maybe that is the excuse for all the attention.)
But beneath the revisionism is Marxist-style manipulation and control of the public mind. Hardly the free marketplace of ideas, there.