Tag Archives: Christian America

Christian Nationalism? Which Christianity?

Recently, we’ve seen discussions about saving “Christian America.”

What would it look like to “save Christian America”?

Which Christian America would we save?

A generally establishment Protestant Christian America? An evangelical Christian America? Would it allow citizenship for those practicing Roman Catholicism? What about Greek Orthodoxy?

Not atheists or Jews or Muslims, I suppose. That does, however, seem to suggest taking a lesson from some Middle Eastern countries which uphold Islam as the state religion. Is making some form of Christianity a test for holding office any better than Iranian mullahs dictating an Islamic government?

Unfortunately, saving Christian America might end up like saving Christian Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Religious wars devastated Europe. Christians who didn’t agree with other Christians killed their Christian enemies with sword and torture while presiding over mass devastation of the countryside.

Getting to practical considerations, what kind of litmus test would we require of seekers after public office? What must they swear to uphold in order to have a “Christian” America?

Maybe we could just require Christian office holders to “follow Jesus.”

Of course, one test for a “Jesus follower” might be a test Jesus mentioned, the “last judgement test.” The only ones accepted at the end of the age are those who followed Jesus in his concern for the “least” people—the poor, jailed, hungry, and so on. Possibly we could make this a criteria for leadership.

 

Divide and Fail

The United States doesn’t have a state religion. Freedom of religion is guaranteed in our Constitution.

The founders of the Republic, despite shortcomings, had learned one thing from the history of countries they or their recent ancestors had left, usually in Europe. Religion as a form of government was deadly. Groups fought, burned at the stake, beheaded, cut in pieces, and otherwise practiced atrocities in attempts to force their particular religious beliefs on society as a whole.

In fact, religious beliefs pertain to ultimate questions: What happens after death? Does life have meaning? What is my purpose for living?

How can answers to such questions be decided by a king or even one group of religious believers for everyone else?

Yet, some of our citizens now practice a kind of “no quarter” politics. It’s them or us, and if our side doesn’t win, it doesn’t just mean we loose for another two or four years, after which we get to try again.

No, it’s now between them and us to decide ultimate questions or the country is doomed: The elites and the true Americans. The other side is not just wrong. They are out to wreck Christian America.

Interesting that the early Christians spread their beliefs so widely in spite of outright opposition, even persecution, by the mighty Roman Empire.

And then Christians, after conquering that empire in a spiritual sense, somehow lost sight of how they had won. Some of them began to assume that this Jesus whom they worshiped needed political power.

Eventually, of course, this seeking after political power led to breakups among Christians and then to abandonment by many, disgusted by this un Christlike behavior.

When the United States was formed, leaders wisely saw what political religion had done to Europe and tried to avoid that mistake in this new country.

The attempt to separate religion and state led, not to an abandonment of religion, but to its unprecedented growth. The current attempt to change course and tie the country to a form of political religion may end up making religion as unimportant in the United States as it grew to be in Europe.