Posted on 10/05/2014 6:02:28 PM PDT by vabible
I have heard much impassioned debate lately about the question of whether America was founded as a Christian nation, so let's set the record straight here. The concept of a Christian nation is not found in the Bible, because it is impossible to have a Christian nation in this day and age. Christianity is the way of freedom and liberty. To receive Jesus Christ's free offer of eternal life is a matter of personal choice and conscience, mysteriously wrought in the individual human heart, will, and soul as God's Spirit draws all men to Himself.
Therefore, it is impossible to legislate Christianity into a nation. You cannot legislate morality any more than you can legislate saving faith. Here is another way of phrasing this: I believe with all my heart that the concept of a Christian theocracy, where both Christians and non-Christians are forced by the state to live a Christian/moral life, is abhorrent to the Christian God, just as forced conversions are abhorrent to the Christian God. We get a glimpse into how God views dead surface-level legalism in how Jesus dealt with the Pharisees - He reserved some of His harshest words for them. God looks at the heart, and that is an area of personal liberty, not political or institutional control.
At this point, I hope that those who come down on the side that America was not founded as a Christian nation are feeling somewhat vindicated, because while they may not be able to put their finger on it directly, something just doesn't feel right about the harsh judgmentalism of the Religious Right and other cultural warriors who want the Bible to be America's Constitution. I apologize that there are Christians who have a distorted view of God. But I wanted to challenge you with this thought:
America may not have been founded as a Christian nation, but it was founded as a nation that was pretty close to how the Christian God would found a nation: not one where people are forced to the faith and forced to live morally, but rather, one where people from all faiths and walks of life are welcome and treated equally. My conviction is that, of all religions in the world, the pure, unadulterated Christian faith has stood out in championing the universal equality of men and women, regardless of race, belief system, culture, or anything else, because all people are made in God's image.
America has tried to live out this heritage, and I would grade the past 200+ years as a D, or maybe a D+. I could list out the reasons, but they are too obvious. The slavery issue pretty much sealed the deal. But even so, the hallmark of freedom remains. Most Americans are no longer Christians today, and as a result, the landscape has changed. But this is all besides the point, for all of those who are lambasting single moms and broken families and blaming the culture of divorce and you name it for America's decline. The point is that the underlying DNA of freedom is still here. My belief is that that ideal of freedom (in other words, limited government) - where we can choose to believe anything, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, you name it - has descended from the heart of the Judeo-Christian faith.
One corollary, and I'll move onto final thoughts. Why is conservative political thought dying? Because by itself, it is powerless. Conservative political theory is one of non-action on part of the state. It must be bolstered by an impassioned plea for individuals, families, and communities to be agents of progress and change, or else it is a dead political philosophy. Just ask Leslie Knope what she thinks of Ron Swanson's political philosophy.
I digress. I end with an invitation for those who do not call themselves Christians to take advantage of our freedom here and continue to explore the truth. I especially invite you all to explore the Christian faith. If you come across stumbling blocks in the form of Christians who talk about people as if they are the enemy to be condemned, then I plead with you to brush them aside, and continue exploring.
My best wishes and prayers are with you all.
As is written and history shows time and again.... when a Godly nation defies God and turns it's back on Him they are invaded.....and it's not always militarily.
“Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul; and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your children, talking of them, when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates;” - Deuteronomy 11:18-20
God blessed Israel with a wonderful Law. But if it was nothing more than a list of “dos and donts”, theirs would be “a surface-level, legalistic, theocratic-government-forced dead moralistic (Jewish) nation.”
What God desired and instructed was a nation of people with the Law written on their hearts.
One can found a nation on Christian principles. One of these principles is that the state owes its authority to God, not to the collective will of the people. For that collective will, uninstructed, inevitably will be enslaved by sin, and submit to the will of the few and powerful.
The Founders adopted as their own the Common Law of England. That law can de traced back to the old Germanic Law, but its codification began with The Roman Mission which began the reestablishment of the Church in England. The fist written law of England and it embraced many principle the Justinian code, which was powerful influenced by Christianity. The Courts of Equity, which were founded to counter the inequities in the Common Law procedures, were headed by the Chancellor, who was until the time of Henry VIII a clergyman. One cannot, of course, force a person to be a true Christian but it ought to prevent others from preventing that person from being a true Christian. In order for this to happen, the law itself must defer to that Divine will as well. A Christian Nation is one that acknowledges the Lord and seeks to do his will, however imperfectly.
dear bibble,
Thanks for taking my statement, and amending it without reference to me, the author.
Those who penned the bible are not alive to yell at you, but I am, and I detest plagiarism.
So, in your statement:
“You can have a Buddhists, Daoists, Confuscianists, Mohammedans, Pagans, Hindus, Sikhs, Voodoun, or any other as-yet-to-be-defined theoologies, such as Mormonism nation. But you cannot have a Christian nation because the Christian faith is founded upon an individual response to the Gospel, not legislated forcefully.”
Are you attempting to define America as NOT being founded as a ‘Christian nation’, or not, which was the premise of the original poster?
I find the answer to be ‘yes’, starting with The Mayflower Compact, (which was a piece of legislation), and running all the way through all of the documents of state.
Do you mean like the Roman Emperors ? Did the Christians rise up and kill people because Caesar's taxes were too high ? No, they submitted to ordinances that did not violate the faith and were martyrs without trying to overthrow the government when the ordinances did violate the faith.
It was founded as, and was assumed by its founders always to remain, a nation comprised overwhelmingly of Christians who would be influenced by their faith in their politics.
However:
* The things that the founders actually DID with Christianity were, by the standards of European politics, and English law, RADICALLY secularizing. No established Church, and zero meaningful subsidy for churches generally. (Religion is FAR more subsidized in 2014 than it was in 1789 because of the deductibility of contributions from taxation — neither income taxes nor deductions therefrom existed.) No prohibition of Jews or Catholics from public office, jury service, certain professions, etc.
* Many of the founders were not at all orthodox Christians — many plainly did not take the Bible seriously at all as divine Word, and many who did were highly heterodox, especially with regard to the divinity of Christ. It should not be inferred that they intended their descendants to be bound by law to beliefs or practices they themselves did not hold to.
* The things we think about as distinctively “Christian” in politics in 2014 were simply not issues in the late 1700s. I don’t think that Christian super-majority character of the nation was expected to have any relevance to illegitimacy, abortion, divorce or homosexuality, or the relative authority of husbands and wives over household and family. Even if we were “founded as Christian nation” is doesn’t actually mean anything in terms of what policies we should endorse or not.
Thanks for your reply. We need to come to agreement what constitutes a Christian nation. From my article, it ISN’T a nation politically ruled by men of the Christian faith, but rather one where the Bible is the “law of the land.”
Yes, the Founding Fathers were mostly Christian, devout men, but that doesn’t make America a Christian nation.
My argument is that the concept of a Christian nation isn’t found in the Bible for this dispensation (Pentecost to 2nd Coming). Rather, the Christian faith is walked out via the Church, which is a non-political entity. The Christian faith cannot be legislated from the State.
Just a guess here, but are you by chance a Libertarian? Your fears of a Christian “theocracy” sure sounds familiar, we hear this sort of things from the Libertarians all the time...and their next of kin, the Democrats.
Unless it be certain types of Roman Catholics who would like America ruled by a Catholic monarch, FReepers do not believe this country is supposed to be a theocracy.
A Biblical based Christian nation, yes, but not a Roman Catholic theocracy like they had in Europe for a thousand years. Our Christian forefathers came to this country (the Mayflower Compact comes to mind) seeking to establish the very opposite of what they had in Europe.
Methinks you would sing a different tune about Christian America if you had been reared in an atheistic Communist nation, or in Hitler’s Germany.
"My argument is that the concept of a Christian nation isn’t found in the Bible for this dispensation (Pentecost to 2nd Coming)."
If I agreed with your complete premise, then I would probably agree with your conclusion.
Deist not Christian
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Because the gods gave mankind reason not religion.........
The United States is not a theocracy, and I for one would never want it to be a theocracy. Theocracies have proven to be very dangerous.
The United States is not secular in nature. It is supposed to be neutral. The 1787 Constitution said positive on the issue of religion vs non-religion, except that the principle was established that there would be no religious test for office. This repudiated the British policy of requiring all office holders or voters to communicate in the Church of England, which barred Catholics and Protestant dissenters as well as non-Christians. The States were left free to impose such barriers. The Bill of Rights went further in forbidding a religious establishment and passing laws that discriminated against anyone on the basis of faith. Hence the United States abandoned the idea of the Confessional State, which was the norm in Europe.
Deism is an almost meaningless term. The Deist conception of God is a kind of updating of Aristotle’s unmoved mover, substituting Newtons’ physics in place of Aristotle’s. No purpose in the universe, only Inertia. Not many people really held to such a view with any rigor.
No purpose in the universe, only Inertia. Not many people really held to such a view with any rigor.
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No, it allows others their freedom to their own belief without compelling anyone to die/kill for their re-introduced religion of men. Christianity is just another ‘Johnny come lately’ cult.
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