A Call to Divorce - Thoughts for Independence Day

America and American Christianity have long been married and have long been at odds.  The Church in America has commonly reframed its teachings in order to support American ideals while also fighting American policies.  Often we will view history through an optimistic lens, seeing the right acts of America and American Christians as the true America and the true American Church and declaiming the wrong acts of the same as a betrayal of the true American or Christian spirit.  The trouble is, each of us can frame history through this lens and have a wealth of support in our own history simply because America and American Christianity have never been a unified set of ideals.

When we look at the beginnings of our nation, we see the founders coming to a general sort of agreement about needing a new nation and hating tyranny and wanting a different system.  We do not see them entirely agreeing on what that system ought to be, but they do come to an accord eventually.  This is the general spirit of American governance.  We have multiple parties disagreeing, and eventually through either reasoned discussion or the use of force (political or military) we come to something that we’ll all agree on for at least a little while.  And when we get tired of this, we’ll come up with a new agreement.  I would also argue that America began as a group of people who rejected authority; not necessarily the concept of authority, but certainly the authorities over them at the time.  They rejected authority and established their own system and authority structure.

American Christianity is surprisingly similar to the rest of America in this regard, with one notable exception:  There is no point at which we feel the need to come to an accord.  So each denomination, congregation, or parishioner feels the liberty to interpret and define doctrines and dogmas according to her own understanding.  When one disagrees with the authority in place, rather than come to an accord she leaves, either finding a new church or setting up a new congregation or even denomination.  Those who highly value the rights of the individual will perhaps have no issue with this, but there is one major problem that should be apparent to us all:

When faithful Christians want to support or denounce an action, they will generally use religious language to make their point.  We use scripture and invoke the will of God to discuss what ought to be done.  We claim “This is the clear belief of Christians” or “the clear teaching of scripture.”  The trouble is, American Christians do not agree on what is the clear teaching of scripture or belief of the church.  We are divided against ourselves.  So scripture and church teaching are used to both support and denounce revolution, to support and denounce slavery, to support and denounce segregation, to support and denounce every aspect of the sexual revolution of the last hundred years.  The argument that “As a Christian nation” we must do this or that has become nothing but wind breaking in the halls of the Capitol.  The Christians of the nation do not agree on what we must do as a Christian nation, and so our statements carry no weight.  Further, we are making ourselves a stench in the nostrils of those around us.

It is abundantly clear that the values of our nation do not represent the values of our Lord or our Mother the Church.  And yet, somehow we have conflated the two.  We hold patriotism as a high value, forgetting that Christ made us one body with all believers throughout the world and called us to leave behind our earthly ties.  We uphold the importance of wealth and consider it a measure of success and a faithful life, forgetting that Jesus upheld the poor and called us to leave our wealth behind, declaring boldly that no one can serve both God and Mammon.  We uphold Capitalism as the greatest economic system, forgetting that it is a system built on the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy and ignoring our Lord’s declaration of freedom for the oppressed.  The list could go on.

Beyond these, we have found ourselves seeking the Middle Class.  If we are Middle Class, then we are neither the oppressive rich nor the lazy poor.  We are able to sit very comfortably between the two, casting judgment on every side.  But the sickness is deeper than this.  We seem also to aspire to a Middle Class of holiness.  Rather than seeking the riches of the Kingdom of Heaven, we seek the comfortable state of “security of salvation.”  We cast judgment on the sinners surrounding us and scorn those who devote their lives to righteousness.  And we spend countless hours working out just how much we have to do and how much sin we can reasonably get away with.  We do not work out our salvation with fear and trembling.  Rather, we test God, assured that he will overlook our every fault and give us the free gift of salvation.  We seldom wonder whether we will be those who look astonished at Jesus, declaring the ways they have served him, only to be told, “I never knew you.”

So what is the point of this?  Simply put, I believe it is time for America and Christianity to get a divorce.  We’ll split up our belongings and let America have his values while the Church takes hers.  We work within our churches to be reunited to one another.  We stop splitting ourselves over disagreements and even find the willingness to submit to authority.  And by all means, we stop insisting that America is Christian.

What ought our role to be in politics?  Not to overturn court rulings because they do not uphold the perfect standard of Christianity.  Given that we can’t agree on what that standard is, we aren’t doing much good.  Rather, we can fight for the good of the oppressed.  As our mothers and fathers have done throughout history, when they did things like standing up in the midst of the Colosseum to end the gladiatorial fights at the cost of their own lives or demanding the abolition of slavery.  We can fight for the rights of the workers, the rights of the poor, the rights of the oppressed and enslaved.  Maybe we can even do something about Capitalism.  We can fight for peace between nations, cities, and men.  We can fight for the good of those being wronged.  As much as we talk up every political declamation as being for the good of others (like the children who might get very much the wrong idea of morality if a certain sin is normalized by the government) we ought to be able to recognize the difference between a potential wrong and a current wrong.  We can defend those who are being harmed now.

It is relevant at this point to remember how the Church in the past affected change.  It was rarely through the use of legal structures used to force a government to change its mind.  Rather, she spoke prophetically to the leaders, calling them to repentance.  When the government, be it emperor, monarch, or congress, did not repent, then the Church continued to do what was right in spite of the governmental decision.  And it sometimes did what was right at the cost of life and liberty.  It did not declare that the government had no right to do what it did, but that it was not right to do what it did.  And when they suffered, they did so willingly, for the sake of the gospel and the opportunity to share in the sufferings of Christ.  But again, until we can present a united front, it is unlikely that our declamations will find any ground.

So how ought we to pray?  Ought we to pray for the repentance of our nation and our church?  Absolutely.  At the top of our list for repentance should be repentance of the division we have sown, cultivated, or simply affirmed by our inaction.  We should pray for the church to repent of its esteeming the values of our nation above the values of our God.  We should pray for the church to be united as one body once again, rather than this fractured mass of warring opinions.  We should confess and repent our role in breaking the bones of the Lamb.  We should pray and strive for righteousness, repenting of our idleness and contentment with the Middle Class road.  We should beg God with weeping and fasting to correct us and restore us, for his name’s sake, and for the sake of the world that desperately needs to know his mercy.  And each of us, individually and corporately, must repent and turn away from American Christianity.  When we have done this, we might humbly and rightly pray for the courts.