I hear a lot of talk from Conservative, Christian people that America is a Christian nation. After I exploded “No it isn’t!”, I remembered that during the election I heard a lot of talk about how America was a Christian nation at its founding and we need to get back to our real roots. One has only to read what Thomas Jefferson thought of Christianity to know that America was not what they claim it to’ve been. But, as always, the real heart of the debate comes back to semantics and epistemology, regarding what we mean by a “Christian Nation”. What would a Biblical definition be?
A Christian nation is nothing more than a great big church (not a church as in a building, but a group of believers). Non-believers are not part of the church and can not be a part of a Christian state. Such was the case in ancient Israel. This notion is repugnant to our modern sensibilities because tolerance has long been heralded as the highest virtue of our times and the redeeming factor in America’s make-up. But this 18th century Enlightenment concept is not to be found in the Bible, and would therefore not be found (in the same way) in a Christian nation. The church is the earthly collection of those who profess Christ and are therefore subject to the authority of church elders, or in the case of the Christian nation, the government.
As long as we maintain that non-believers are part of our group (aka country) then we are not talking about a Christian nation. America is a country founded on freedom, not Christianity. Pennsylvania was the role-model for the rest of the country during the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As Christian subjects to this non-Christian government, we are called to submit in all things that don’t go against the Word of God. This includes things like voting. We must not be confused by Christians being elected to high positions in our secular government. This does not mean that the government has become any more or less Christian; The root of the system is firmly embedded in the ungodly soil of the Enlightenment.
The result of these ideas is a that even ultra-conservative Christians must vote a little more “purple”. Are goal cannot be the Christianization of the federal government of America, though of course we want fellow Christians to succeed and change what can be changed. The highest possible implementation of God’s Law on earth would be an individual state that was theocratic, but it would still be part of the overall, tolerant American scene. We cannot hope to silence or outlaw those who hate Christ or wish us gone in a society that values freedom above all else. At the federal level, we must strive to elect those who will maintain our freedom at the state level to form communities where we can practice religion as we see fit. We must aim to keep the federal government as small as possible, always remembering the Civil War: we are not permitted to leave.
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