Fourth of July weekend is upon us and for most of us, that means it’s time to celebrate. Some of us just celebrate a day where we don’t need to go to work, but others of us will actually celebrate our nation’s independence and the freedoms that this secures for us.Okay. Let me just lay my cards on the table. I’m what most people would probably refer to as a “conservative Christian.” And conservative Christians are supposed to have certain views regarding church and state, our founding fathers, and America’s identity as a “Christian nation.” I guess I just don't quite fit the stereotype.
I do feel that those who seem actively opposed to all things Christian have a tendency to go way too far in their attacks on the idea that we have a Christian heritage and Christian principles upon which our nation was founded. At the same time though, I feel that conservative Christians tend to massively overstate their case as well, overreaching their position and leaving them as easy targets for those who would disagree with them.
From time to time (mostly through emailed urban myths) you’ll hear about the ACLU or some other like-minded organization suggesting that we need to remove the words “In God We Trust” from our currency. I had a pastor once who actually suggested that the Church ought to beat the ACLU to the punch and spearhead the movement. His line of thinking was that, as a nation, we certainly did not trust in God, and to say that we did was to use the name of God in vain.
I’m not sure I agree with where his reasoning led him, but I’m not sure I disagree either. We tend to have this presumption that we as a nation are the people of God. While I feel there is no doubt that this nation has been immeasurably blessed by God, it is wrong to say that this marks us out as His nation (other than in the sense that all nations are His).
The idea that we are especially His often ushers us into the misapplication of the Bible. One classic example would be the (mis)use of 2 Chronicles 7:14 which reads, “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
Conservative Christians (at least those who are Americans) are eager to apply this verse in such a way that understands the U.S.A. to be a proper referent for “their land.” At first glance it seems reasonable. After all, as the song goes, “This land is your land, this land is my land…”
What needs to be kept in view though is that the Church/State nexus that was Old Testament Israel is actually to whom this promise was addressed, and the “land” to which God is refering is that very same land about which he speaks one verse earlier in 2 Chronicles 7:13 where he sets the stage for his promise with, “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land…” You see, God’s promise here really has more to do with agricultre than with American culture.
That’s not to say that there is no modern day application for us in this passage. If there is an entity with the right to apply the ideals in this promise, it would not be our nation, but the Church. If the Church were to humble itself, pray, seek God’s face and turn from whatever evil ways it might have, then God is indeed faithful to forgive our sin and and bring healing within our midst.
One of the other big issues for conservative Christians seems to be prayer in school. We are told that the moral slide of our nation began when prayer in school was outlawed and we can trace everything bad back to that. Well, it’s not quite that simple.
First of all, as Richard Hardy, one of my political science professors in college taught me, as long as teachers give exams, there will be prayer in schools! Of course he was making a joke and what we’re talking about is something altogether different.
It occurs to me though, that I’m pretty sure I don’t want a teacher (who might worship some false god or no god at all) being the one who is leading my child in prayer, modeling for them how one should pray. Conservative Christians are often quick to object to certain subjects being taught from the atheistc viewpoint of certain teachers, but they want to open the door to prayer being modeled and thus taught by the same atheistic teachers? It seems to me that the wall of seperation between church and state, which is intended to protect the religious practice of people from the government intervention (not vice versa), actually serves us pretty well here.
The moral decline of our culture did not begin with removal prayer from schools. It began in the Garden with the Fall (see Genesis 3). And I reckon that the lack of prayer in public schools is nowhere near as influential in the continuation of this decline as the lack of prayer in our homes. It is we parents who have too often failed to train up our children in the way they should go, and for this we must repent.
Okay. Now that I’ve ticked off 90% of the people who might actually read this blog, let me finish off by taking care of the other 10%. According to our Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” I think it is a legitimate question to ask this 4th of July, that if we, as a culture, cease to accept the fact that there is a Creator, what does it say about those rights? Would not logic dictate that they were not quite so inalienable after all?
You see, God is indeed the source of all our rights, and of all that is right. We are his and he has made himself known to us through the Bible and in the person of Jesus Christ. He did this not so that we could have a Christian culture or a Christian nation, but so that we could have forgiveness from our sins, and be, as the Church, his bride.
May we be thankful that he has blessed us as Americans to live in a land and a time where we are among the most blessed people ever. May we be thankful that we live in a land where we are free to worship him. But most of all, may we be thankful that God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Now that’s reason to celebrate!
1 comment:
As a member of the religious Left, I pretty much agree with your points on nationalism and Christianity, particularly with the idea that believers should keep the church out of state politics. Not that voters should leave their values outside the booth or that community activists should hide their faith, but that they should put much less stock in the often oppressive and always compromising structures of government. I would hope that, with the decline of the Moral Majority and the cultural backlash of the 1970s-2000s, Christians will be freer to assert all aspects of their faith without worrying about whether it made them "liberal" or "conservative." There are such politically ecumenical movements afoot concerning the environment, social welfare, and the death penalty, as well as the standbys of abortion, public decency, and "family values."
However, one area that could still use a lot of work is foreign affairs. Perhaps Christians do not need to be pacifists or internationalists (I would argue the point), but they certainly need to be more humble about America's "chosen-ness" than they have in the past. I think that your overall thrust, a Lincolnesque "let's hope not that he is on our side but that we are on his," strikes the right balance. One's first loyalty should be to the church and its values.
A few quick points on the school prayer issue:
*For all the bellyaching about school prayer since the 1960s, it is worth noting that by that point the practice of prayer and bible reading had already been omitted or drastically reduced in most religiously diverse communities, especially those in Northeastern cities. Conversely, school prayer continues unabated in more homogenous regions, especially in the rural South. For the communities in between, the process of taking prayer out of the schools has often been gradual and contingent on local conditions. Compromise has been the most common course of action: chalk one up for the decentralization of American education... (Those Christians advocating stringent national or state curricular standards should bear in mind the virtues of this sort of local diversity.)
*Not only should Christians be skeptical about state employees leading their children in religious devotions, but the sort of treacly, watered-down prayers that would likely be legalized (and were, in fact, already the norm when the Supreme Court issued Engel v. Vitale in 1962) hardly constitute a "joyful noise unto the Lord." Mandatory prayer would be uninspiring as well as unconstitutional.
*Much like the "intelligent design" position in biology classes, advocates of school prayer seem to be losing their bearings as they moderate their demands. If the point of school prayer is to reclaim a common morality and instill meaningful spiritual beliefs in today's youth, then the prayers would (by definition) need to be impositional and have some doctrinal bite to them. However, since preachiness doesn't go far in the present political climate, many school prayer advocates frame their demands in terms of "freedom of expression," demanding only that a moment of silence be observed or that a group of like-minded students be allowed to meet during the day to pray. The solution for much of the twentieth century was to release students early to attend catechismal classes at the church of their choice, which neatly sidestepped problems of proselytization. Those methods, while laudable and (in some cases) legal, hardly accomplish the goal of mass conversion or moral regeneration.
*Good books on the topic of school prayer include Jonathan Zimmerman's "Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools" and Benjamin Justice's "The War that Wasn't," which discusses religious compromise between 19th century Catholics and Protestants.
Best,
Cam.
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