Potentially Christian America

I think I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but this semester I have been taking a class in the General Epistles, where we have been studying the books of James, 1 Peter, and 1 John. This has been one of the most thought-provoking, applicable classes I have had at Ozark. One of the best things about the class has been the books that we have read for it. One of them that I read about a month and half ago is Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon. I thought the book was great, as one can tell by the frequent highlighting throughout. I had been planning to write a blog post about the book when one day I noticed a book on the New Books spinner in the library. The book is called Death of a Christian Nation by Deborah J. Dewart. After scanning the synopsis on the back cover of the book, I realized that this book may be just about the complete opposite of Resident Aliens, so I thought it would be fun to compare the two.

Both Resident Aliens and Death of a Christian Nation begin with the same issue: America can no longer be considered a Christian nation, or at least is losing its status as a Christian nation. Hauerwas and Willimon use a story of how, in 1963, a movie theater began to be open on Sundays. For these writers, this is evidence of the end of Christian America. They write, "Whether we are with Pentecostals, Catholics, Lutherans, or United Methodists, we meet few young parents, college students, or auto mechanics who believe that one becomes Christian today by simply breathing the air and drinking the water in the generous, hospitable environment of Christendom America" (16). Similarly, Dewart looks at legal cases from the past several decades and concludes, "If modern liberal activists have their way, the phrase God Bless America will ring hollow because our Christian nation will be dead" (6). Both books recognize that American life has changed and that our country is becoming more and more "unchristian." However, the two books respond to this situation is vastly different ways.

But before we get to that, maybe we should ask if the United States was every really a Christian nation in the first place. Many Americans, perhaps even most Americans, would not even question this. They point to the faith of the founding fathers and to the biblical principles that undergird the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Dewart's first chapter beings, "In the beginning, God blessed America. Christianity was the bedrock of this country." She provides a number of quotations to show that America was Christian from the beginning. For example, she quotes Thomas Jefferson:

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis--a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the fit of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that  God is just: that His justice cannot sleep forever. (4)

It all sounds very good. However, just in the case of Thomas Jefferson, we may need to examine his Christian convictions a little closer. It is not unknown that Jefferson produced his own version of the gospels, in which he removed any hints of miracles, Jesus' divinity, or the resurrection. His version ends thusly: "Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was man never yet laid. There they laid Jesus. And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed." And that's it. We might be able to ask Jefferson whether the doctrines of a faith can be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis--a conviction that Jesus was God and rose from the dead. What we see in Jefferson (and, though I'm certainly no expert, I would assume we might see in several others among the founding fathers) is a deistic, antisupernatural worldview that discredits a great deal of Scripture and strikes at the heart of Christian faith. Maybe early America wasn't quite as Christian as we have been told. (We might also want to remember that the colonies started a war in large part because they didn't want to pay taxes. Doesn't seem to fit with Rom. 13 very well.)

So then, how do Dewart, Hauerwas, and Willimon deal with all of this? For Dewart, the situation demands that we do everything we can to keep America from losing its Christian identity. She writes:

American Christianity is under attack. From shore to shore, cases are legion. Believers need knowledge. They need to know how fellow Christians are suffering for their faith right here in America. They need to know how current laws impact their ability to apply biblical principles in the workplace. They need to know their Bibles. They need to know where to turn for help. Without this knowledge, our 'Christian' nation will die." (xv)

To Dewart, the greatest danger threatening the contemporary church is that America will cease to be able to call itself a Christian nation. She claims that if this happens, it will severely hamper the church's ability to carry out its mission. She continues, "Moreover, our freedom to preach the gospel is rapidly diminishing, and preservation of that freedom is vital to the church and its mission" (xv, emphasis mine). And, although I have only skimmed Death of a Christian Nation, it seems like Dewart's solution to all of this is that Christian be knowledgeable about their "right" and be able to defend those rights in the public arena.

On the other hand, Hauerwas and Willimon paint a very different picture. They too see that "Christian America" may be eroding. However, instead of making a plea to the church to preserve that system, they see it as a good thing that will allow the church to function as it should. They write, "The demise of the Constantinian world view, the gradual decline of the notion that the church needs some sort of surrounding 'Christian' culture to prop it up and mold its young, is not a death to lament. It is an opportunity to celebrate" (18). This is due to the fact that, when the church and state become wrapped up together, it is typically the church that loses its identity. Instead of the church shaping the state, we find nationalistic ideals molding the church. Instead, the church is called to be "a social alternative that the world cannot on its own terms know" (18). The church stands separate from the state because it is its own entity. We may like to think that, at least in its original condition, American government was buddy-buddy with the church, but this may not be the case. Hauerwas and Willimon write, "The story which comprises American capitalistic, constitutional democracy and the story which elicits the church are in greater conflict than these Christian transformers of culture know" (155). The church functions by its own politic, and it certainly doesn't need the support of the government or judiciary to carry out its God-given mission.

Something we American Christians struggle with is that, our entire lives, we have been so attached to our "rights." We believe that preservation of our rights is required if we are to live the Christian life. However, that doesn't seem to be the image that Jesus gives. Instead, he predicted that all men would hate his followers (Matt. 10:22), and he knew that Christians would be beaten and killed (Mk. 13:9). Meanwhile, we Americans are terrified that our churches might lose their tax-exempt status, or we worry that out workplaces won't let us wear Christian symbols on our jewelry. And yet, in spite of the very unchristian environment of the first-century Roman empire, the church expanded, and what started out as a little mustard seed grew into a tree. For a more recent example, we might look at the church in China, which is growing like crazy even though preachers don't have the politically-sanctioned right to stand on a streetcorner and tell people about Jesus. Oftentimes, it is when the church faces its greatest hardships that it is able to most exemplify what it means to follow Christ and it carries out its mission to the greatest extent. So maybe the loss of Christian America really isn't too bad. Maybe it's just what is needed to help the church be what it was made to be.

What do you think? Is the United States a Christian nation? Is it the church's responsibility to maintain (or recapture) America's Christian identity?