Is America a Christian Nation?

Is there any difference between a militant Christian Fundamentalist wanting a theocratic government and a militant Islamic Fundamentalist wanting the same thing—that is, a nation governed according to either Islamic or Christian precepts/principles/law?

Yet the bigger question might be: Does God want America be a Christian nation—a nation governed or ruled by theocratic law. 

This seems to be the goal of militant Christian Fundamentalists today and alarmingly they are making inroads into government positions in hopes of achieving such a Christian theocracy (see Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, 2006).

So do such aspirations of an American Christian theocracy please God?

Okay, I’m not at all qualified to speak on God’s behalf. But I do believe we can get a sense of what God may or may not want by going all the way back to the call of Abraham (Genesis 12 & 15). 

God made a covenant with Abraham (formerly Abram) promising that Abraham would be blessed (as well as his descendants) and they well as be a blessing to the whole world. 

The Lord established this covenant for the purpose of revealing himself to the world through Abraham’s descendants (known as the Abrahamic Covenant). 

Many years later these descendants, having been rescued from Egyptian slavery (Exodus), occupied a land to begin fulfilling this covenant God made with their ancestor Abraham.

But once these former slaves settled into the land of Canaan (The Promise Land) the people called upon God to give them a king, like the other nations surrounding them. 

They wanted to be a nation ruled by God’s law through a human king.

This defines a theocracy. 

This theocracy ultimately became Biblical Israel. It should also be noted that the modern State of Israel today is not the same as Biblical Israel. Modern Israel is not a theocracy (as many Christians assume it is).

Now the Israelites demand for a king seriously displeased God. Actually God took great offense that his people wanted another authority to rule over them. He knew the dangers of such a religious-political arrangement. 

He knew once a king was in place the road towards idolatry would be both slippery and wide (read 1 Samuel 8). It would also lead to their destruction.

The point to be taken from all this is that God doesn’t want to govern his people through human rulers or governments; rather he wants a faithful covenant people to love and serve him in the world.

Does God want America to be a so-called “Christian Nation” as militant Christian Fundamentalists believe he does? 

The short answer is “No!” 

God wants Christians living in America. or any other nation for that matter, to be faithful covenant partners with him as they bless the world on his behalf. We cannot be beholding to earthy allegiances while at the same time faithfully honoring the covenant God has made with us in Jesus Christ.

Yes it sounds good when Christians talk about America being a Christian nation. But that’s all it is: Talk with no substance, let alone Biblical support.

This doesn’t make America a bad nation nor should it prevent any American Christian from loving the country in which he or she was born. But America is not and should never be a Christian theocracy (as militant Fundamentalists so desire). 

Perhaps Peter said it best in his first epistle: “ . . . for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:8).

Just how clear can it be?

We Christians in America make up what Peter calls a “holy nation.” We are God’s covenant people, bound only in allegiance to Christ. Jesus is our Lord not Cesar. 

Finally, the only way we Christians can truly be a blessing to the world (as God’s faithful covenant people) is to be unfettered from any form of nationalism—a nationalism that will never fully comply with God’s will on earth. 

Biblical Israel learned this lesson the hard way. I suspect modern Israel will not make that same mistake again. 

For What It's Worth : Living as People of Peace in Times of Fear and Ter...

For What It's Worth : Living as People of Peace in Times of Fear and Ter...: The second way Christians can witness to the “principalities and powers” that control both our politics and our economy is to engage the...

Living as People of Peace in Times of Fear and Terror

The second way Christians can witness to the “principalities and powers” that control both our politics and our economy is to engage them as peacemakers schooled in the Way of Christ.

Jesus’ call for his followers to be “peacemakers” is not a mere suggestion. It is not an option for us only when it is convenient or safe to do so, for there are risks when it comes to non-violent peacemaking. 

Indeed, love-infused peacemaking is really difficult and often unpopular. It runs counter to the culture that glorifies and even sacralizes violence and war. 

Yet it inspires a moral vision that is so needed in a world that is determined to self-destruct through its own agencies of escalating violence. When two of the world’s leaders banter with nuclear weapons like two school children fighting in the school yard we know that our children’s world is seriously in danger of annihilation.  

Violence and war captures the impressionable imagination of our youth today especially through lifelike videos produced and sold to glorify them both (not to mention make a mind-boggling profit). These lifelike videos, including Hollywood’s own contribution with movies that sacralize killing (e.g., “American Sniper”), glorifies and normalizes violence as the only way to defeat violence.

Ironically this portrayal of violence as an appropriate response to violence actually makes sense. It is reasonable and logical. When coupled with the goals of nationalism (safety and security) it is the only course of action that will work (it hardly ever does). This is why young men and women are so willing to lay down their lives for the political aspirations of those who govern them (and often are unwilling to do the same).

Yet war continues. Violence is not eradicated but in today’s world only intensifies and expands—it is even glamorized as mentioned above. 

So into this violence prone and war saturated world Christians are called to take a much different path in making peace—the road less traveled as it were. 

I am so disappointed and saddened that much of the Western Church has favorably looked upon the Augustinian Just War Tradition as ample justification for its participation in perpetuating violence in the world. Just War for Christians needs to be seriously challenged and rethought if we hope to regain our moral bearings as Christ followers.

The belief that violence can forcefully produce peace may be logical but it remains delusional. It is disheartening for me to witness the perversion of Christianity exposed by much of the Evangelical Church’s kowtowing  to this worldly contagion of reciprocal violence.

The logic of such violence offers our children and grandchildren a truncated vision that has expanded about as far as it possibly can. There is absolutely no room for this vision to grow since the potential for a disastrous end is upon us with the possibly of a nuclear war.

It has used up all of its capital. 

But there is hope. 

Indeed, our children and grandchildren need a much larger vision for the world we are handing off to them. It is a vision that is filled with a hope that is grounded not in the promises of elected leaders, who themselves hold dearly to their own toxic vision for the world.

But first we must capture this huge life-giving vision ourselves. We must be willing to let go of that tried-and-yet-to-be-proven method that reciprocal violence is the only sustainable way to ultimately defeat violence. It may beat aggressive violence back for a while but it will never eliminated it once and for all. At best violence simply begets violence.

One of the great texts we Christians love to recite at Christmastime was composed by the Hebrew prophet Isaiah who saw prophetically God’s answer for Christians living in a world terrorized by violence:

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (italics mine).

The real hope of this world is the Prince of Peace. It is in the illogical response of his followers to practice non-violent peacemaking. It is in our regenerative capacity to recognize the powerlessness of the Cross (Romans 1:16-17) as being the answer to the world’s persistent drive towards violence.

It is only by faith that Christ’s peacemakers stand against the Principalities and Powers of this world—a faith that is animated by the love of God for all of humanity.

In the words of author Marcus Peter Rempel: “Jesus’ answer to violent reasonableness is an unreasonable love.” 

I close with the words of the martyred Catholic missionary, Oscar Romero:

“The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.”

For What It's Worth : Grace-Filled Justice

For What It's Worth : Grace-Filled Justice: This is what I know about Jesus:  He was a justice-seeking, peace-driven and love-filled peasant who inspired an unbelievable moveme...

Grace-Filled Justice

This is what I know about Jesus: 

He was a justice-seeking, peace-driven and love-filled peasant who inspired an unbelievable movement such as the world has ever seen.

I hesitate to call this movement “radical” (as some might) for fear of it being associated with such radical groups as the Black Panthers of the 1960s or the White Supremacist groups of today. The word radical just carries way too much negative baggage to apply it to the first century movement Jesus inspired.

Nevertheless, regardless of what we call his movement it indeed subverted the social and political norms of his day and eventually led to his horrific death by Roman execution.  

Jesus was born of the peasant class. His parents were peasants as were roughly 90% of the Jewish population living under oppressive Roman occupation in Galilee and in Judea.

Of course this was nothing new for the Jews since they had already suffered demoralizing domination of other foreign powers. So if anyone should have desired to revamp the political system with revenge-seeking justice it would have been Jesus. 

Yet he refused to become a political activist. He never directly engaged the political process of his day. Remember the attempt of the religious leaders to draw him into a winless debate over paying taxes to Cesar? It didn’t work! His response was genius.

His primary challenge to anyone who would listen to him was crystal clear: 

”Follow me!”

That was it: Follow him on a life-changing, world-shaping trajectory that stood in opposition to the very “principalities and powers” that claimed dominance over so many oppressed people living in the first century—including his one nation of Israel.

Now Jesus actually had an operational plan: To reveal the very heart of God; to reveal what concerned God more than anything else; to reveal how God desired for all humans to flourish under grace. 

"Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). 

Indeed!

So to follow Jesus is to live in such ways that reflect God’s operational plan for humanity: to live justly, peacefully, and lovingly towards all.

First to live justly:

You may remember the story of the Amish children murdered in a schoolhouse located in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. The Amish of that area stunned the world by their response to the family of Charles Carl Roberts IV, the shooter who killed five Amish girls in an unexplained act of evil and senseless violence.

It is true that there was no legal justice to be had since Roberts subsequently killed himself and thus avoided the strong arm of the law. 

But justice was indeed expedited from he Amish perspective by an act of grace extended to the family of Roberts. In the context of their own unbearable pain of loss these followers of Jesus found the courage to offer a grace-filled justice that simply boggles the imagination. They were following Jesus indeed.

As Jesus hung from the cross, experiencing horrific pain and facing impending death he mustered the strength to ask God to forgive his executioners in the midst of intolerable suffering. This was a clear example of grace-filled justice.

He did not seek revenge. He did not ascribe to the world’s need for a pound of flesh. He did not even resort to the ancient rule of an-eye-for-an-eye that was so prominent in his own Jewish faith.

None of the above.

Jesus taught and lived justly in that he was always seeking for ways to restore humans to life as God intended it to be lived, in order that they may flourish under God’s unmatchable grace. He was not interested in a penal approach to justice (often referred too as “Retributive Justice”).

Jesus taught and lived a grace-filled life of justice. 

We cannot expect the world to accept this understanding of grace-filled justice. Neither should we attempt to impose such grace-filled justice upon a society that has yet to be effectively enlightened by the Gospel. 

However the Amish at Nickel Mines showed us that there is an alternative way for Christians to practice justice: We can live and interact with the world (including whatever political system in which we live) in ways that reflect the grace-filled justice of God towards all humans—even towards our enemies. 


We cannot and must not be responsible for the world’s response to God’s grace-filled justice. 

We can only witness to it and pray that it will do its work to bring healing and restoration to so many broken lives.

The Way of Christ and His Kingdom

Every once in a while someone will say or write something that really gets my attention, or reflects what I am feeling or thinking. It happens to me quite often and has played an important role in helping me clarify my ideas and my thoughts.

Such was the case recently as I reread Stuart Murray’s wonderful little book, The Naked Anabaptist. In the introduction Murray quotes several folks who discovered the Anabaptist way of life and offered brief testimonies of their discovery.

One in particular leapt off the page at me. It was the testimony of a lady in London who wrote:

I’d always felt uncomfortable with all forms of “civic religion.” I felt instinctively that Christians should not be ruling society but should be witnesses to it, and alternative society with different values . . . the church to me is not the glue of the establishment, but an outpost of the radical changes the kingdom brings.

I have experienced similar discomfort for a long time now. It was not easy identifying or even admitting the mental dissonance (conflict) that I felt over the active involvement of so many Christians in American politics these days. 

Equally disturbing was the entanglement of a large portion of the church in American politics. I sensed that we had lost our true identity; more tragically we had lost our “first love” similar to the church at Ephesus, as reported in John's Revelation.

In my last post I discussed the meaning of the word Ecclesia. I suggested that I believed it to be, as used in its original New Testament context, a very dangerous and provocative word. Yet historically it has been domesticated or tamed by its translation as “church." We all know the negative baggage that the word church holds for many today.

The root meaning of this Greek word is “called out ones.” Christians are called out by Christ to be his ambassadors to the world—representing Him and the values of His Kingdom.

Now the BIG question is: “What are we Christians called out from?”

Some will say we are called out from a life of sin or from darkness. Though there may be elements of truth in this understanding I believe it means that we are called out to live separately from those greedy, unjust and violent systems that rule this world and certainly one could include corrupt political systems into this category (2 Corinthians 2:17). At least this is how the early Christians understood the meaning of Ecclesia (before the era of Constantine that is).

Of course the issue then becomes: “What does it mean to live a “called out life” for Christ?

I have come to believe that a serious disentanglement of Christianity from American politics (nationalism) needs to occur in America before the church as a whole can reclaim its called out identity as ambassadors of Christ. I say ambassadors as opposed to legislators for whatever that’s worth.

The primary goal of the Moral Majority of the 1980s was to transform the American political system from within, once it obtained seats of power. Elect a Christian President or Congressperson who supported Evangelical (Fundamentalist) ideas and issues then America would be transformed into a nation under God, once and for all.

In fact this was about the time that I began to feel really uncomfortable with the church’s involvement in American politics.

Well it didn’t happen and quite frankly it won’t happen. America has not been turned back to God and perhaps never will. Just consider today's divisive and toxic political atmosphere. America will never be a carbon copy of the Kingdom of God no matter how many so-called Evangelical Presidents or elected officials there are in Washington or the State Houses.

So how might we Christians, who choose to live faithfully as Christ’s Ambassadors, live in Christ-following outposts of the American experience and effectuate any change at all on the political level?

Well the first thing that must happen is to recognize that we are called to be “witnesses” to Christ’s Kingdom first and foremost. In fact Jesus very clearly instructed his followers to “seek first the Kingdom of God.” Seeking “first” means just that, “seeking first.”

We must realize that we are called out to be active citizens of Christ’s Kingdom, first and foremost. Our allegiance is to Christ the King above all other rulers. As citizens of the Kingdom we live in obedience to our own Constitution: The Sermon on the Mount. 

I plan to offer subsequent posts that will explain how Christians might witness to this nation in which we live, witness in ways that disentangle us from the political system itself.  

I do encourage helpful and kind responses to these posts, responses that will further the conversation constructively beyond the hateful and toxic rhetoric that has exhausted us all. My goal is to offer an alternative way to live the Christian life in America, a way that is radical to be sure but joyful nonetheless. 

Living in Exile

The New Testament word Ecclesia is a provocative word—indeed a very dangerous word. Unfortunately it has been domesticated and tamed and  lost most of its edginess. 

It appears about 115 times in the New Testament and most of the time is translated into English as “church.” There are exceptions. Three times in the book of Acts the word is translated as “assembly” which probably comes closer to its original meaning.

So what’s so provocative and dangerous about “church?” 



Well that’s my point. 

I recently stumbled upon the following online source that clearly defines the meaning of Ecclesia as understood by early Christians:

A body of Christians called out of the Roman and Judean system to come together into a separate civil community. It meant a politically autonomous body of Christians under no king but Jesus; under no other jurisdiction but that of Jesus. No man ruled them! Only Christ. And that was the reason these same Christians ran into trouble with kings and rulers; were arrested, crucified and martyred. They dropped Caesar as their King and took up Christ.

Author Keith Giles has recently written a little book entitled, Jesus Untangled: Crucifying Our Politics to Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb. The basic premise of Giles book is that the Church (Christianity) in America has become so entangled with the affairs of the State that it is almost impossible to distinguish between the two anymore.

In other words, the American version of Christianity has become so nationalized and politicized that it has lost its unique identity as Christ’s ambassadors to the world. 

To be more blunt, American Christianity has lost its sense of "called out" identity. 

Moreover, its supposedly Kingdom politics has become entangled with national politics and in so doing much of the Church has been co-opted by political power (think the Moral Majority of the 1980s and a large swath of Evangelical Christianity today). 

Author Rance Darity offers an even bolder assessment:

There have been two opposite spirits that have been operative in American Christianity since the beginning of this nation. One is submission. The other is revolution. The one was learned from Jesus, the other from the Enlightenment. This dual spirit explains how guns, soldering,, and Old Glory are virtual sacraments in the life of the American Church. In fact, the average Christian may be more moved by tears by these symbols than they are by baptism, the broken bread and the poured out wine, and the preaching of the cross (Quoted in Jesus Untangled). 

Most recently author Diana Butler Bass posted a series of creative tweets I found interesting. Bass has concluded in her study of contemporary American Christianity, that there are two categories often listed by pollsters: the “dones” and the “nones”.  

The “dones” are those who simply have left the church and sought spiritual fulfillment elsewhere. The “nones” don’t profess any faith at all. 

Yet Bass suggests a third category that she calls the “exiles”.

Exiles are those Christians who have discovered a life of wandering in exile for more meaningful faith rather than being stuck in a church that is, for the most part, tethered to politics and  nationalism.

Exile is a prominent Biblical theme: Abraham and Sarah are great examples.

So maybe in the politically toxic time in which we Americans live we might consider rediscovering the original meaning of Ecclesia, that is to be “called out” from the systems of this world that are unjust, oppressive, violence prone, racist, and loaded with greed—not to mention being surrogates to so much untruth.

Perhaps if Christianity is going to survive and thrive in a postmodern America exiles are going to have to remain in exile and lead us all into a deeper and richer faith and theology.

Perhaps Diana Butler Bass is correct in suggesting that we need to stop trying to rescue these exiles and let them find their way in the wilderness. More importantly maybe we just might learn from them if we are brave enough to engage them in non-judgmental conversation.

Maybe they could teach us what it is like to live and thrive as exiled followers of Jesus in a world that is increasingly hostile to the Faith. Maybe they could teach us what it is really like to live as Christians being untethered to any nationalistic or political system. 

Maybe they could teach us a thing or two about what it’s like to be exiled from  a politically entangled church.

They definitely could teach us about the dangers of being in exile—to be "called out" from the comfort zones we have grown to depend upon as American Christians.