Since our beginning as a nation, the American experiment has intertwined the religious character of its citizens with the religious neutrality of the state. “Faith-based movements across our history have created some of the greatest progress in our history. The abolitionists in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the great fights for social welfare, child labor laws—all [were] led by faith-based groups,” declares Senator Joseph Lieberman, a self-professed observant Jew, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2000, and who now serves in the Senate as an independent. “And of course the Civil Rights Movement did the same. . . .You can’t separate God from America. You go right back to the Declaration of Independence. We have to always remember that the Constitution . . . promises freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.”
One of the most influential statements on what God has to do with America goes all the way back to John Winthrop, the Puritan governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who led a fleet of eleven vessels and seven hundred passengers to New England in the spring of 1630. Unlike Bradford’s separatists, who completely broke with the Church of England, Winthrop’s Puritan community hoped to reform the Church of England from within. They believed it had been corrupted by Catholic practices and rituals and was under God’s judgment for heresy. In the New World, they felt, they would be sheltered from God’s coming wrath upon the church and could start afresh to live in faithful covenant with God.
Winthrop’s 1630 sermon “A Modell of Christian Charity” has since become well known as “The City upon a Hill,” influencing America’s self-understanding down through the centuries—for example, President Ronald Reagan alluded to it in his 1989 farewell address. Winthrop’s message, based on the text of Matthew 5:14, in which Jesus told His followers that they were the light of the world, a city set upon a hill, challenged the Puritans to holy living. He compared their community to the Israelites moving into the Promised Land, cautioning them to remain faithful to God and warning them of the perils of idolatry.
Although Winthrop is no role model for civil leadership today (his Puritan vision of God’s providence did not allow for the concept of democracy), his Christian vision would later find common ground in the founding fathers’ attribution of basic human rights to the God of Judeo-Christian heritage.
Clearly, America was founded on a divine experiment rooted in Judeo-Christian worldviews. This does not mean that America was ever a “Christian nation,” nor does it mean that we should pine for a return to some kind of “Christian” era in America’s past. During the Reagan era, respected historians Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and George Marsden wrote a book titled The Search for Christian America, intended to temper what they saw as an overly romanticized view of America’s Christian heritage. In a later edition, they reflected on the developments stemming from the resurgence of a conservative Christian political agenda: “It seems as though the proponents of restoring a Christian America are as adamant as ever in promoting that ideal. Although we have . . . seen occasional evidence of spokespersons for the Christian political right acknowledging that the United States never was or will be the Kingdom of God, we cannot claim that these views have often penetrated to the core of politically conservative Christian communities.”
I will go on record as a perceived spokesman for the conservative Christian political agenda that the United States never was, nor will be, the kingdom of God, and any attempt to identify it as such is idolatrous. What we need today is not a return to the past, but a turning to a future that has never been: a healthy pluralism in which all views are allowed, encouraged, and respected, and in which a healthy respect for the value of religion in America’s past, present, and future permeates society.
This article is excerpted from Richard Land’s book The Divided States of America? What Liberals AND Conservatives are missing in the God-and-country shouting match! (Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2007), available at local bookstores and at FamilyBookstore.net.
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Dr. Richard Land is president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention's official entity assigned to address social, moral, and ethical concerns, with particular attention to their impact on American families and their faith.
Comments
I guess my thinking is that I am thankful we have the freedom to disagree without one side or the other being thrown in jail or even worse.That is what I mean.I am not saying that I believe every point of view is equally valid or true.However, I am saying that I am thankful that I live in a country where I have the freedom to express my beliefs without fear of imprisonment or death.It has worked in this country for over 200 years.It can continue to work!!
PeaceByJesus: You are absolutely correct. Every law our government enacts represents a specific religious morality........be it Humanism or Judeo/Christian. It will be interesting to see how shari law will play into this mix as the Muslim population insists on its own beliefs be accommodated by government and institutions. Pluralism looks good on paper but doesn't work well in practice as the morals and values between humanists and Chrisitians are diametrically opposed. There will continutally be a battle in the public square over these issues. I suppose the real question is whether or not the battle for ideas in the public square will ever become civil as long as we have the freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
The problem is that one cannot fully separate government, and it's legal and educational facilities, from a belief system. Who says that adultery is wrong, or profanity in school?
The first amendment assumed a Judaeo-Christian morality would be supported, though not formal sanction or requirements of one sect, and never foresaw the implementation (esp. on a State level) of the one-sided separation that modern secularists have pursued, which has supplanted the implicitly sanctioned morality of the general Christian faith with an officially sanctioned secularism, which is a belief system of it's own.
Such supposed pluralism is intolerant of those who hold truth to be exclusive by nature, as logical as that is, and excludes (by various means according to it's power) as "intolerant" those from it's embrace. The rest is history.
Biblical Christianity, not the Roman version, does not act as the State, though the latter does well when it's esteems it's morality, and allows others outside it to practice their own faith, though it seeks by effectively spiritual means by convict the souls of the evilness of sin, and turn many to righteousness thru faith and surrender to the Lord Jesus, who gave Himself for us (and rose) to that end (1Pt. 2:24). Praise the Lord.
Well said, citizen!!
GoldenEagle: We are definitely on the same page in that regard. Religious tolerance all the way. I have to give you props for recognizing that, even though it would naturally be harder for you as the majority faith. It's easy to get comfortable with privilege when you are in the majority, and forget to treat minorities well, lest a day come when you are in the minority. Kudos!
In a pluralistic society such as you describe, we might get along famously in spite of our differences. The problem occurs when we die. Who was right? Which one “made it?” Did any of you “make it” or does it even matter whether did or didn'tt? Certainly not to the politicians and apparently not to the Christian church leaders who refuse to take a stand for true biblical doctrine.
It makes all the difference of LIFE and DEATH to us as individuals. While YOU may not care if I am damned for faith in false doctrine, it matters a great deal to ME! I want to know what God expects of me and to accomplish it that I might be with Him in the hereafter and for my loved ones as well. I even have compassion to hope that YOU would see the doctrine of our salvation and be saved from eternal torment.
13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
“To employ soft words and honeyed phrases in discussing questions of everlasting importance; to deal with errors that strike at the foundations of all human hope as if they were harmless and venial mistakes; to bless where God disapproves, and to make apologies where He calls us to stand up like men and assert, though it may be the most apt method of securing popular applause in a sophistical age, is cruelty to man and treachery to heaven. Those who on such subjects attach more importance to the rules of courtesy than they do the measure of truth do not defend the citadel but betray it into the hands of its' enemies. Love for Christ, and for the souls for whom he died, will be the exact measure of our zeal in exposing the dangers by which men's souls are ensnared". (quoted in a sermon by George Sayles Bishop, author of The Doctrines of Grace and Kindred Themes, 1910).
BOC560
I thought the same thing.As a Christian, I want a nation of religious tolerance.Otherwise, I allow for the possibility of my own faith not being tolerated.Good stuff!!
Wow, excellent article! This man is right on the money.