It Is Too Late to Mourn the Death of Christian America

One of my favorite gospel songs is Sweet Beulah Land in which we sing “I'm kind of homesick for a country to which I've never been before” referring, of course, to our heavenly home. Many Christians are longing now for the America that was founded by people longing for religious freedom and formed in a revolution promoted by people of faith.

It is a country that no one has ever seen and has never existed. 

The America of 1776 was a mess of slave holders, British loyalists, unskilled soldiers, and determined patriots longing for independence from England but necessarily encumbered by France to make independence happen. The names we rightly salute as founding fathers who pledged their lives and honor for the infant United States of America spent the productive years of their lives in debate, argument, intrigue, and scandal.

Their product, the U.S.A. in 2018, is an amazing and certainly Providentially ordained land, still one of opportunity and liberty, both of which are yet imperfect. It is not now, and never has been, a Christian nation. Thank God for that.

There has been only one holy theocracy ordained by God in Christian history and that is Israel. To those who say Israel could not be Christian before the incarnation of Christ, suffice it to say for the purposes of this little essay that Jesus existed preeminently in the Old Testament as both a presence and a promise. But the point is Israel failed repeatedly as a theocracy. Every denomination has failed in unity and focus beginning with the first churches after Pentacost. Why would anyone, friend or foe of Christ alike, think that having a nation of redeemed believers electing only Christ followers as leaders would result in the kind of utopia that we scoff at the secular humanist for trying to establish?

What those of us who believe in the Bible as the source of Truth and guidance, who believe that God cares about each person personally and collectively, and those who believe that God is either non-existent or ambivalent about human affairs share is what has been called common grace. Non-believers, by definition, don’t believe in common grace but it is nevertheless a biblical principle that governs their lives. It means that, as scripture teaches, that rain falls on the just and the unjust.

Our prosperity preachers believe that good rain for good crops will fall on the believer who claims God’s promises, but the so-called "prosperity gospel" is false teaching. God’s blessings and provisions are obviously spread across the population, as are calamity and distress. No one, Christian or pagan, is immune to either.

For the purpose of discussing the welfare of nations, the concept of common grace means that God has not limited his blessings and giftedness to believers only, but gives intelligence, discoveries, prosperities, insight, wisdom, and skill. By many measures Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were poor examples in some areas of their lives, yet God used them to craft documents and relationships that sustained our early nation. Wicked kings in the Old Testament were used by God to accomplish things for Israel, whether blessings or punishment. Similarly, those who have occupied the White House during my lifetime must be judged by history as either advocating freedom or advocating restraint of freedom, not whether they were Christian enough or not. Freedom, not merely faith, is the fundamental question of every policy and law, yet a question too seldom asked.

Besides God’s generous grace, Christians believe in God’s ultimate control and victory. While personally we may struggle with what our role is in exercising free will to create change and what we must yield to God’s will to endure, we have the assurance that all things work towards God purpose. So, while we may choke on the idea of this President or that one, or this court decision or that one, we understand that there is nothing that ultimately thwart’s God final, perfect plan even while man, in his free will, often runs amok.

The third principle in considering government and faith, is that believers accept the reality of inherent sin in man. It is this sin that separates us from God, and this separation that God heals in the saving work of Christ. The secular humanist believes that man can evolve to a state of something near perfection if only the right systems are in place. Ironically, the Christian view of a more perfect union is to have a government with Christian values run by Christians. The obvious impediment to this dream is that Christian’s can’t agree what those values are when applied to a national scale, and Christians are also sinners still struggling against their baser natures, and sometimes failing, doing what they know to be  wrong and failing to do what the know to be right while being much more secretive about their transgressions than the other sinners who have no Christian face to put on.

What, then, is the Christian hope for America? 

What is the Christian engagement in government to be? Our first obligation is to explore scripture for guidance. We were told there that governments are put in place by God to establish some order in this sinful world. I have spent my life’s work as an armed government agent. While I’ve seen injustice, I’ve also seen how vital to our freedom is the work of law enforcement – the coercive power to control those who would prey on the defenseless and live a life of violence. So, we are told to be respectful and obedient to the extent that the government is not wholly inconsistent with our individual obligation to obey God. I will preach, even if someday my government forbids it.

We are also told to pray for those in leadership. We are told to live peaceably insofar as it is up to us. We also see that the Apostle Paul exerted his rights of Roman citizenship when treated unjustly by government actors. We are told that “if my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray” that God will hear that prayer and heal the land. This is possibly one of the most slightly misapplied verses in scripture. It is the “my people” part that is misappropriated.

What this verse says is that believers should act out their faith so that the church – not necessarily the branded edifices, but the global body of believers – will be in healthy fellowship and necessarily be salt and light to their neighbors and their nation. This can be in the public square and involve political engagement to advocate for a point of view as would any other faction of the population, but Christians can hardly expect to change a secular government by imposing a system they themselves have failed to execute.

I am not advocating silence by any means. I am not advocating hiding our Christianity, keeping our prayers in the closet, or excessively worry about the Gospel being offensive. We should vote, write to the newspapers, march and protest, but we must do so because we are good citizens and not under the banner of Christianity. There are too many thorns in the wheat, and goats in the sheep pen (as well as wolves in sheep’s clothing) for our claim to be speaking on behalf of God to be believed. Our credibility in opposing abortion (a place I urge compassionate activism) is diluted by our failure to be the best leaders for liberty and equality for our oppressed populations. Our crusades against immorality often look very much more hateful than helpful against a backdrop of our own failure to truly understand the Biblical call to purity for believers as the sacred sacrament of obedience for believers, much less expect the heathen to abide by those truths.

When Christians do what Christians are primarily called to do – love God with all your heart, mind, and strength and love our neighbors – the influence on our communities and political systems will reflect it as, in fact, our very benevolent systems have so very deeply despite the critique of scoffers who claim that our religion has brought only discord and persecution.

We are good citizens because it is part of our Christian character, just as God in His mercy gives the unbeliever the capacity to be good citizens and acceptable leaders. It is necessary for us to work, debate, advocate, and legislate with persons who do not share our spiritual beliefs. Christians do so with the hope of establishing and preserving a better government where the freedom to practice and promote our faith in the marketplace of ideas is guarded and valued. To move past our history that is a blessing to all nations, but with the virus of violence and inequality in its blood. The Truth of the Gospel is far too compelling for us to demand that the sword of government impose it, but we can demand that the sword of government not oppose it.