Our Christian heritage

Is America a Christian nation? It’s a lively conversation in which we spend a lot of time defining terms and extrapolating from the comments of our nation’s Founders. This is not a yes/no question. Still, I’m going to plant my flag with the “yes” side as long as you’ll let me explain.

Have you ever been in a place where much of the conversation takes place in a language you don’t understand? You might get a lot from context so that you know that the people are talking about auto repair rather than animal husbandry but you miss a lot of the details. If you have a basic understanding of the language spoken but are not proficient, you get a bit more but still miss the humor, nuance and subtleties of the conversation. You have a child’s understanding of what is going on. That seems to me to be a good metaphor for American citizens who have no basic familiarity with the Christian Bible. Our laws, art, literature, theatre, figures of speech, and customs are completely mixed with concepts from the Bible. You can be an engaged part of the American conversation having never read a word of the Koran or Book of Mormon, but you are a novice American if you do not know anything of the Book upon which Western civilization is significantly based.

Furthermore, even the nut of truth found in non-Christian worldviews has its source in the God who made us. Ignorant people talk as if the enlightenment of human reason has no source. Why do you think mathematics works or gravity functions in some predictable way? Our Maker is a rationale person who reveals himself in an ordered and purposeful creation. The fact that we can discern some of that is wonderful but the ability is not something we invented. Neither is the interaction between the various elements within creation that we study so diligently something for which we can take credit.

Enlightenment? Sure, our Founders were children of their day. They were optimistic about man’s ability to discover how the universe worked. Optimism has its source in the God who reveals himself, who approves of progress and who made man like himself in important ways. And light always has a source, doesn’t it?

Those most offended by the fact that our nation is a melting pot of cultures overwhelmingly based on Christian assumptions are those who are most offended by the gospel. Groups like the Interfaith Alliance or Americans United just disdain the biblical practice of Christianity. Their piecemeal efforts, in concert with more honest atheist groups, to purge our culture of references to Christianity are disastrous. You cannot purge a culture of a worldview that is arguably religious; you can only switch one religion for another. Name it what you like but the pale universalism of liberal Christians and the materialism of atheists both have the essential elements of religion—just not those of Christianity. For an illustration of a religiously atheist state, feast your eyes on the Soviet Union or People’s Republic of North Korea. For an example of the current state of Christian liberalism, toss a dart toward the map of Western Europe. I don’t see anything we want in any of those places.  

We are not a Christian nation in the sense that the Bible should be our law book or that God is our king. That has been tried many times over the centuries and it does not work. It cannot work unless God has chosen a people, given them a system of laws, and determined to guide them in detail. That nation is not the United States of America. Our own American experiment to build Jerusalem in New England’s green and pleasant land was a bit hard on Baptists and other dissenters. State religion always, always, always results in corrupt religion and bad governance. Show me an example of a truly state church and I’ll not show you a nativity scene on a court house lawn but rather cemeteries or prisons or stocks or whipping posts occupied by people who merely disagreed.

Neither does our Christian heritage imply that professing Christians should be, by definition, preferred as leaders. A president or governor with a credible Christian testimony can be a great blessing to those he governs, to the degree that he daily fears the God who appointed him to the office. And, I’d add, to the degree that he knows how to do the job. We’ve weathered for years and without complaint leaders who checked a box “Christian” but meant it only in the, I’m-not-a Buddhist-or-Moslem way. We elected them because we believed them to be the best candidate being offered. It’s silly to vote for an otherwise unqualified candidate because we like his denomination (remember Jimmy Carter?), or to reject one because we find his religion, though not his viewpoints, strange.

Our Christian heritage implies a few things. First, we have a place to start that many other nations do not. Of course we are less devout culturally than our great grandparents, but the influence of our heritage makes us an exceptional country for this day. Rather than argue about Thomas Jefferson’s faith, we can build on the remaining influence of biblical Christianity in our day to encourage mercy and justice in our communities. Some of the ways in which Christianity is built into the structure of our culture can help people recognize the gospel when our churches or neighbors tell the rest of the story.

Second, it implies a stewardship. In Acts 16:37 and elsewhere Paul called on his Roman citizenship as a way to further the gospel. Peter didn’t have that card to play; neither did most of that first generation of Christians. We live in a country where Christianity is not only tolerated but freely exercised and relatively familiar. As a part of that heritage, we also have the freedom to exercise the full rights of citizens. We can, so we should do. An American-citizen-Christian who can but does not vote is not only an ungrateful citizen but a disobedient Christian, I think. Not only that, I’d go on to say that Christians who do not attempt be informed values voters are also missing the admonition to be salt and light in a nation in which we have an amazing amount of influence.

Third, it implies that the liberty we experience here should never be limited to Christians. It is in our best interest—we who come from a tradition where our spiritual ancestors were persecuted for preaching without permission—to ensure that no man, nor our government, should attempt to coerce the conscience of any man. Christianity is the source of our principles but should not be the legally preferred religion of our nation. One of the most likely challenges we will see in our lifetimes is the move on the part of our government to provide tolerance of specified religious practice rather than liberty. Tolerance has parameters. You can believe what you like but perhaps one day you will not be allowed to preach or teach certain biblical precepts. Worship as you wish but you cannot run your business according to your doctrine. That is exactly the question at issue with the contraceptive mandate being forced on religious institutions by our department of Health and Human Services. When a person or entity can grant or withhold religious freedoms, “liberty” is no longer the right word for our condition.

Friends, it sounds sometimes as though we believe there is a legal remedy for the spiritual condition our nation. There is not. Yes, there is often a legal remedy for injustice or certain sorts of immorality. And I agree that some righteous things are worth fighting to preserve, families to name just one. Our nation is made up of people, some Christian as we would define it, and most not. Our nation can become more or less “Christian” according to who our people are—more Christians equals more “Christian.” Our culture is indeed based on Christianity because of the role the Bible played in defining Anglo-Saxon customs, and American customs specifically. Our laws are influenced by Christianity but there is no one-to-one correlation between biblical precepts and the laws of our land. Our government is not Christian, nor should it be, even if a large number of Christians serve in leadership positions. We have never given our government the right to determine religious doctrine or dole out permission for religious practice. Our government is in place to protect the rights we already recognize as the inherent possession of all men.

As I hinted at earlier, I think we spend too much time trying to guess at what our Founders thought in their private minds. I love history a lot; and the best way to enjoy history is to read the stories of those who lived through significant events. I enjoy the insights that we get into the hearts of those important people who’ve gone before. But it is their deeds that become most significant for the present. I am interested in what John Adams thought and even why he did what he did, but what he did is ultimately what matters. That is what we live with. Our Founders built a nation out of the culture that birthed and taught them—a Christian culture. Some of them understood the manifold mischief that coercive religion had caused during the whole history of mankind. They founded a nation, complete with a basis for laws unimagined, that would not abridge even unpopular ideas published, spoken, or religious in nature. They understood that officially mandated ideas or speech or religion are the enemy of liberty.

It is a vexing reality, but our liberty to practice Christianity is safe only if it exists alongside that of others to trumpet the worst ideas ever conceived. Especially we should understand that in this day when many opinion-makers consider biblical Christianity one of those worst ideas.