Is America a Christian Nation?

Is America a Christian nation?

This is an assertion I have seen from Christians on both sides of the political spectrum today, and I think it’s a question we need to truly examine, since I have heard many people use the claim that we are as reasons why the government should do one thing or another. And as a historian, this statement has always bothered me. But perhaps that’s because I’m not sure what we really mean when we say it.

Let me start by saying I am a Christian, I am very much in favor of Christian ideals and beliefs, I believe in the sacred, and I am in favor of laws that respect and promote that. Let me also say that I believe Christianity has been the greatest influencer of what we now term “Western ideals.” It is because of many centuries of Christendom spreading that we have so many ideas, today, about what is right and wrong–for instance, children and the helpless needing protecting. Ideals that were absolutely foreign to, say, Ancient Rome, where orphans and unwanted babies were left at the city gates to die. (As one example.)

Historically speaking, most European countries were officially “Christian nations,” with a state religion. France was (still technically is) Catholic, as was Belgium and Monaco and Malta. England began that way and then went through its religious upheaval and named the Church of England as its state religion. Denmark and Iceland are both Lutheran. Greece is Orthodox. And so on.

Looking at England specifically, since that’s the nation the US declared its independence from, it was a big deal that it had a state religion–because that meant the king was the head of that state religion, it’s official “defender of the faith.” It meant that if you did not agree with that state religion, you could be legally persecuted and prosecuted. When the Pilgrims came to America for religious freedom, it wasn’t that long since priests and other Catholics who had refused to convert were literally being hanged for the crime of being Catholic. It was a terrifying era to believe something different from your neighbors…and those neighbors were usually the ones to turn you in.

When our Founders declared independence from England and began to dream up what this new nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” would be like, religion was something they specifically addressed. We sum it up today with the term “religious freedom,” and have adopted the phrase “the separation of Church and State.”

What does it mean though?

In a nutshell, it means that the United States government has no right to tell anyone how to believe, what to believe, or to legislate one doctrine over another. It means, according to Article VI, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Which means you cannot be refused the right to run for office because you are Catholic or Muslim or Baptist or Scientologist or atheist or anything else.

I need to point this out, because I’ve seen some real-life friends sharing posts and memes alleging that there was a 1950s law forbidding Muslims to run for office, which was quietly repealed in the 1990s by Democrats. Let me do a bit of fact-checking for you here and assure you this was never a law–it is blatantly, 100% untrue and it would be 100% unconstitutional. The law quoted is the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, which dealt with immigration quotas from certain world regions (specifically with quotas on Asian nations). Never was there a mention of those immigrant groups being unable to hold office once naturalized, or for their children to be unable to. So let’s just put that one to bed, since it’s not opinion, it’s fact. 😉

So what does this religious freedom that our founders made law mean for us today?

This, I think, is where we need to have conversation. Especially as the term “Christian Nationalism” has become popular and often misunderstood. Because how could it be a bad thing to love both Christ and your nation, right?

Here’s my historian perspective again on how the United States was very deliberately set up. Let’s go from there. 😉

First, my personal opinion on what makes the setup of the US so great. Our documents explicitly state that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

This is more than just important. This is HUGE. As of the time of our framing, this was unheard of. It was always, always, always the state which granted rights. By attributing the origins of these rights to the Creator, that means that the State has no right to take them away. That the state cannot declare one person deserving of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and others not deserving of it. It means that in the eyes of God, we are all equal, and the State’s job is to preserve that.

This is, in my opinion, the most Christian stance we can ever take–and that way, America is ABSOLUTELY a Christian nation, bcause it’s founded on Christian freedom. Because our foundational ideals recognize that we are all made in God’s image, that we should all be treated with dignity and respect and equality. Even those who don’t believe as we do. Christianity did not spread in those early centuries by fighting for it with sword and spear, nor by legislating itself–Christianity spread by showing love no matter what. By believers singing their way onto the floor of the arena before death and offering forgiveness to their persecutors.

In the early years of America, between the Declaration and the Constitution, especially, there were many motions to declare Christianity to be the official religion. And every time, it was rejected. Because already there were so many different “flavors” of Christianity represented…and those different kinds weren’t often in agreement and sometimes questioned each other’s validity. But the freedom to choose which to believe, or whether to believe, was critical to our Founding Fathers…many of whom were Deists. That means that they believed in a Creator, but not a personal God who cared about your life now.

So should we be a Christian nation?

Again, my personal opinion here. I pray we are a nation with many Christians. I am glad we are a nation founded with many Christian ideals built into our laws, because those ideals are what extend to equality to all, even beyond the Church. I absolutely believe we as a nation should live out that Christian freedom, offered freely to all. But I would never want America to declare itself a Christian nation, because when faith and power merge, there is always compromise…and historically, that compromise has always been to faith. I do not want our president to be “the defender of faith” in our land, like the king is in England, because defending one religion means being offensive against another, and that flies in the face of religious freedom.

But my thoughts go a little deeper there. The more I’ve learned about Christianity, the more I realize that it, unlike Judaism, is not meant to be a religion for a nation. Jesus very specifically and carefully broke down those barriers by offering salvation to Gentiles. He spoke not to a nation, but to individuals. He came to offer redemption to sinners and outcasts and those shunned by the Law.

He did not come to establish a new government. He did not take a crown. He did not even take over the Jewish temple. He came to show people how to love God and serve Him and become an heir to His kingdom, which is not an earthly one, but a heavenly one that can exist within any other kingdom, if it first exists in our hearts and souls. He teaches us to be meek, to be radical peacemakers, to choose Him over family, over community, over our own cultural religions, and in the face of our government too.

We’ve all read the verse in Acts about where the term “Christian” originated. What I hadn’t fully understood until recently was that, because Roman citizens were legally obliged to recognize Caesar as divine, to call oneself a Christian in Antioch was to admit to being a dissident, a rebel. Christians were not just saying “I reject your pantheon of Gods” they were saying “I reject the idea that my king is my god.” That was punishable by death. And they embraced that label, even knowing where it could lead.

But once Christianity gained power, that’s when we begin to see Crusades and Inquisitions, wars between different Christian sects even, with believers killing each other because they weren’t worshipping “right.”

Is that what we want Christianity–our Christianity–to be?

I don’t. And that’s why Christian Nationalism has for over a decade sent my “spidey-senses” tingling. Again, this is just me, my opinion, and my own experience.

So what is Christian Nationalism? A concise definition is this: Christian Nationalism is the belief that a nation’s identity, laws, and political power should be explicitly Christian—and that this is God’s will for the state.

That means that the state should enforce Christianity. It means that there could (and many say “should”) be laws prohibiting other religions, or at least denying them certain rights. It means that there is an equivalency between “loving God” and “loving your country.” And particularly in the US today, I’ve seen many, many examples where people clain that America has a special covenant with God that equates America with the Church–that the fall of America would be the End Times, that everything spoken to “the church” in the New Testament is specifically for America.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with loving your country. Just as we love our communities, our sports teams, our neighborhoods, our states, our anything-else. But as C. S. Lewis puts it in The Four Loves, we must always remember that every other person in every other country loves his country in the same way, and he isn’t wrong to do so. We must remember that love of country has to come below love of God. And we certainly have to remember that when the writers of the New Testament are speaking to the Church, they are speaking to believers all around the world, throughout time. Not just us today in America. We have to remember that countries full of Christians, even Christian nations, have risen and fallen and not brought about the End of Days. God has a plan and special love for America, absolutely–but He also has a plan and special love for Haiti, for Somalia, for Canada, for Greenland, for Belgium, for France, for Venezuela, for Uganda, for…you get the idea. God loves without borders. Christ wiped away the distinctions between nations. We’re told there’s no more Jew or Gentile in Him–those are national barriers, friends. There is no American or Candian in Him. There is no Somalian or Venezualan.

This, to me, was a critical reframing. I had to reach a point in my own life where I really did value my citizenship in heaven ABOVE any citizenship on earth. That means that I must choose God’s way above the American way. I must view my brothers and sisters in Christ all around the world as my true brothers and sisters, even above physical neighbors.

There are no national borders in the love of Christ.

So if we are a Christian nation…then aren’t we obliged to recognize that? If we claim to be a Christian nation, doesn’t that mean the nation is held to Christian standards of love and giving and sacrifice and a recognition of equality? And yet those I see claiming the Conservatives, for instance, are defenders of the faith, are the same ones who say it’s not the country’s job to do any of those things. In which case…what does it mean, then? That’s my genuine question. If it’s not a Christian nation’s job to behave like Christians, then what is its job?

Just last week, I saw someone on Facebook claim that immigrants weren’t his neighbors, that only American Christians were. And I was boggled. Because in that “love your neighbor” parable about the Good Samaritan, Jesus deliberately chose the immigrant neighbors that Jews hated as his example of who our neighbor truly is. Samaritans were half-Jew, half-Assyrian, a people literally sent in by the oppressor to take over a land and destroy the Jewish culture by combining it with Assyrain culture.

And Jesus says that the Samaritan who sees a person as a person is one’s true neighbor.

He also says we cannot serve two masters. He’s speaking specifically about money in that conversation, yes. Though the connection between money and power is rather well established, so I don’t think it’s a huge leap to say that we cannot both put God first and power first…which is what any “nationalism” seeks to do.

There are absolutely those who serve their nations from a heart of service. And there are absolutely those who serve their nation in order to put their own will upon the people, to gain power. And I would go a step further and say that anyone who equates a political party with Christianity has also made a mistake, because Christ does not belong to one party any more than He belongs to one nation.

Again, I do NOT think this means that we can’t love our country–of course we can! It doesn’t mean we can’t vote our conscience–of course we should! It doesn’t mean we don’t want to see an awakening–of course we do! And it certainly doesn’t mean that if enough Christians are voting their conscience, we wouldn’t see laws that reflect Christian ideals–of course we would!

But it is my prayer that these reflections would be truly Christian–seeking to promote peace, to promote care of those less fortunate, to guarantee equality, to see the value in every person. Not to be self-serving, self-seeking, power-grabbing, or seek to exclude those who are different out of fear of them.

And yes, this is dangerous. Democracy is dangerous. It has an Achilles heel built into it, which is why the ancients observe that democracy is doomed to devolve into tyranny, and from tyranny into anarchy. And that weakness is this: democracy can die very easily in the ballot box, when people choose to give power to someone (either person or party) who seeks to destroy that very thing that gave it to them.

And this fear is one I’m seeing today on both sides. Some who fear it’s what Trump is doing. Others who fear it’s what “invaders” are doing.

Are we right to fear? And if so, what is the correct response? Is it to double down and give all the power to those who will keep it from the ones we fear most…or is to reinstate a balance of power?

What everyone I’ve talked to lately agrees on is that America is at a tipping point, and disaster looms before us. The sides disagree on whether this danger is from without (Muslim immigrants and drug cartels being the main ones I’ve seen, some people claiming an overlap), or from within (the current administration’s tactics, policies, and refusal to concede the Legislative and Judicial branches their rightful power).

Within this context, I think asking if we’re a Christian nation is important. And more, asking what it would mean to be one. Would it mean imposing Christ on others? Or would it mean granting freedom to all?