SUNDAY DEVOTION: A Christian Nation

Many on the right like to say that America is a Christian nation. But what does that mean? With the left deploying terms like “Christian nationalism” as a way to demonize anyone with traditional values, some on the right are shying away from this traditional view of our country. I think that’s a mistake. We should not let our ideological enemies define our positions for us.

When we say that America is a Christian nation, we do not mean that our government ever established a national church or proclaimed a specific denominational creed. America was not a Presbyterian nation, Episcopalian nation, or Congregational nation. America was, and is at its heart, a Christian nation. After all, our Founders were men of many different denominations, but they all held in common certain foundational beliefs: God is real, He created the world, and He established certain moral ideals. These beliefs are at the heart of American law and tradition.

This is what C.S. Lewis called mere Christianity:

There are questions at issue between Christians to which I do not think we have been told the answer. There are some to which I may never know the answer: if I asked them, even in a better world, I might (for all I know) be answered as a far greater questioner was answered: ‘What is that to thee? Follow thou me.’ But there are other questions as to which I am definitely on one side of the fence, and yet say nothing. For I am not writing to expound something I could call ‘my religion’, but to expound ‘mere’ Christianity, which is what it is and what it was long before I was born and whether I like it or not.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Whether one is Catholic or Protestant, Baptist or LDS, or even non-Christian faiths such as Judaism, Islam, or Buddhism, or even those of no faith at all, I think we can all agree that the bedrock tenets of Christianity that established the basis for western philosophy were what made America great. The Bill of Rights was based on Christian ideals of liberty, privacy, and equality. When America has gone wrong, it was because they failed to uphold those ideals, not because the ideals themselves were flawed.

Today we see the fruit of abandoning the Christian basis for American morality: a legal system that persecutes political dissidents while allowing bad people to go free, a school system that indoctrinates children to hate their heritage rather than appreciate it, a society that promotes drugs and mutilation rather than helping people fulfill their God-given potential, and a population that is unhappy, unhealthy, and addicted to SSRIs and mindless distractions.

America as a Christian nation is not one where nonbelievers are persecuted, certain denominations are given precedence, or where church attendance is mandated. A Christian nation is one where differences of belief are respected, but the basic moral precepts of the Bible and two thousand years of theological traditions once again form the foundations of our law. Very few on the right want to see the forced conversions of the Spanish Inquisition, rather we want to see basic morality given its due once again.

Remember that nature abhors a vacuum. Removing Christianity from the center of our society did not lead to a neutral public square; rather it allowed for more primitive systems of belief —such as those that think man and woman are social constructs rather than biological truths —to take its place. The result has not been a Star Trek style utopia based on secular humanism, but an increasingly chaotic world where anything goes.

The moral foundation of a society serves as a guide for its citizens, guardrails against the self-destruction that we see today. The proof in the pudding is in the eating, and what we are eating today is rotten to the core. Perhaps our Founders had the right idea, so maybe it’s time to reconsider it today.

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

Romans 13:1 ESV