The Myth of a Christian Nation

by Gregory A. Boyd

  19. See Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1968) and R. P. Beaver, “Missionary Motivation through Three Centuries,” in Reinterpretation in American Church History, ed. Jerald C. Brauer (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1968). For an insightful account of how missionaries were used, often unwittingly, in the exploitation and genocide of native Americans, see George E. Tinker, Missionary Conquest (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). Perhaps the most famous and most informative firsthand account of barbarism carried out by early American settlers is provided by Las Casas, a priest who was part of Colombus’s expedition and provided a trenchant critique of his exploits. See G. Gutiérrez, Las Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ, trans. R. Barr (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995); David M. Traboulay, Columbus and Las Casas: The Conquest and Christianization of America, 1492–1566 (New York: University Press of America, 1994).

  CHAPTER 5: TAKING AMERICA BACK FOR GOD

  1. Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is within You (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska, 1984 [1894]), 344.

  2. Camp, Mere Discipleship, 43.

  3. See chapter 9 for a discussion on difficulties surrounding a Christian assessment of whether a war is just or not.

  4. The claim to having purely altruistic and righteous motives when going into war has been a staple of American politics and culture. Jewett and Lawrence show how this is rooted in the mythic understanding of America as God’s new Israel and the righteous “city set on a hill.” For a comprehensive historic analysis and insightful critique, see Jewett and Lawrence, Captain America and the Crusade against Evil as well as Hughs, Myths America Lives By, esp. chap. 6.

  5. While the intensity with which some strands of evangelicalism are fusing religious ideals with nationalistic ideals today is arguably unprecedented, American Christianity has tended in this direction from the start. For an excellent overview, see Jewett and Lawrence, Captain America as well as E. L. Tuveson, Redeemer Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1968). See also Pat Apel, Nine Great American Myths (Brentwood, Tenn.: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1991).

  6. On the origin and history of the myth of America as a Christian nation as well as the positive and negative effects it has had, see Hughs, Myths America Lives By, chap. 3.

  7. Trocme, Jesus and the Non-Violent Revolution, 53.

  8. Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 238.

  9. Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 234.

  10. A host of difficult questions concerning the ethics of how Christians should and should not participate in government could be raised at this point. For example, are there ways of participating in government that are inherently anti-Christian and thus wrong for Christians to engage in? On one extreme, the Lutheran tradition has tended to hold that, while all ways of participating in government are non-Christian, no way of participating in the government is necessarily anti-Christian, for one is wearing a completely different hat when one participates in government and thus is playing by an entirely different set of rules. Thus, for example, there would be no intrinsic conflict of interests with a Christian ruling a land or serving in the military, even though these offices may require one to directly or indirectly participate in killing others, thus contradicting Jesus’ teaching about loving ones enemies and never returning violence with violence. On the other extreme, the early Anabaptist tradition has generally taught that all ways of participating in government are essentially anti-Christian, for they all at the very least involve compromising kingdom-of-God principles. And of course, there are a number of positions that attempt to mediate between these two extremes. Entering into this labyrinth of issues would take us too far afield from the central concern in this book (though I will address the issue of Christians and the military in chapter 9). My present concern is much more minimalistic; namely, to help Christians see that however they participate in government, it does not express their unique authority as kingdom-of-God participants, though it must of course be informed by their faith and values as a kingdom-of-God participant.

  11. For a superb, trenchant critique of the myth of a Christian nation, as well as related myths America lives by, see Hughs, Myths America Lives By. One of the reasons American evangelicalism is so thoroughly divided between whites and nonwhites is because so much of white American evangelicalism buys strongly into American myths that have marginalized and oppressed nonwhites.

  12. Arguably, in many respects America was less moral in the past than it is today. See Tony Campolo’s interesting discussion in Speaking My Mind ( Nashville, Tenn.: W, 2004), 187–201.

  13. For example, in a treatise with Tripoli (now Libya), John Adams wrote that “the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” The treaty, with this wording, was ratified by more than two thirds of the U.S. Senate and signed by John Adams. William McLoughlin, Soul Liberty: The Baptists’ Struggle in New England, 1630–1833 (Hanover, N.H.: Brown University, 1991), 249. It is of significance that many in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries fought against the secularism of the Constitution, believing that America should be a Christian nation. See Hughs, Myths America Lives By, chap. 3. Several balanced assessments of the faith of the founding fathers and the role of religion in American history are Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 2003); Norman Cousins, The Republic of Reason: The Personal Philosophies of the Founding Fathers (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988); Alf Mapp Jr., The Faith of Our Fathers (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); Corwin E. Smidt, In God We Trust?: Religion and American Political Life (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2001); Mark Noll, Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the 1980s (New York/Oxford: Oxford University, 1990); Mark Noll, One Nation Under God?: Christian Faith and Political Action in America (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988). Several works representing the view that America was founded as a Christian nation are Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Light and the Glory (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1977); Tim LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Green Forest, Ark.: Master Books, 1994), and Pat Robertson, America’s Dates with Destiny (Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson, 1986).

  14. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (New York: Signet, 1968 [1845]), 120.

  CHAPTER 6: THE MYTH OF A CHRISTIAN NATION

  1. Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 96 (Winter 1967): 1, 1–21.

  2. See the PBS Frontline special, “The Jesus Factor.” Bush’s identification of America with Jesus is often subtle, but frequent. When, for example, Bush says, “Around the world, the nations must choose. They are with us, or they’re with the terrorists,” he is clearly echoing Jesus’ teaching that “whoever is not with me is against me” (Luke 11:23). See George W. Bush, “Advancing the Cause of Freedom,” speech delivered April 17, 2001. So too, when Bush declares, “There’s power, wonder-working power in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people,” he’s clearly putting America where the old Gospel hymn placed “the blood of the Lamb.” See George Bush, 2002 State of the Union Address, cited in “Bush and God,” Newsweek (March 10, 2003). Such rhetoric uses religious capital to justify demonizing the enemy as evil. On Bush’s religious rhetoric, see K. Lawton, “President Bush’s Religious Rhetoric,” Religion and Ethics News Weekly (February 7, 2003); A. McFeatters, “Religious Leaders Uneasy with Bush’s Religious Rhetoric,” Post-Gazette National Bureau (February 12, 2003); and J. Dart, “Bush’s Religious Rhetoric Riles Critics,” Christian Century (March 8, 2003). On Bush’s effective use of religion in general, see George W. Bush: Faith in the White House, DVD (New York: Good Times Home Video, 2004).

  3. As Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence show, the use of messianic rhetoric, depicting America as the savior of the world—the “Captain America” image as they call it—has preceded every conflict America has gotten involved in. Their
work not only thoroughly documents this persistent fusion of the cross and the sword but shows how it has had, and continues to have, harmful and dangerous consequences in U.S. foreign relations. See Jewett and Lawrence, Captain America and the Crusade against Evil. See also Hughs Myths America Lives By, who fleshes out the interrelated myths of America as a chosen nation, a Christian nation, a millennial nation, and an innocent nation—all of which feed into this dangerous mindset that we are always on the side of good and God while our enemies are on the side of evil and Satan.

  4. President Bush expressed his bewilderment when he said, “I’m amazed that there’s such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us…like most Americans, I just can’t believe it because I know how good we are. And we’ve got to do a better job of making our case.” “This is a Different Kind of War,” Los Angeles Times (October 12, 2001), A16, cited in Hughs, Myths America Lives By, 8. Hughs argues that the bewilderment is rooted in “the myth of an innocent nation,” which is closely related to the myth that America is a “chosen” and a “Christian” nation. See ibid., chaps. 1 and 3. Catherine Keller also has an insightful discussion in her God and Power, 18ff. For sources discussing some of the international activity of the United States that reveal the delusion of the myth of innocence and help explain some of the animosity many have toward the United States, see Mark L. Taylor, Religion, Politics and the Christian Right (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 21.

  5. Gail Gehrig defines civil religion as “the religious symbol system which relates the citizen’s role and…society’s place in space, time, and history to the conditions of ultimate existence and meaning.” G. Gehrig, American Civil Religion: An Assessment (Storrs, Conn.: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1981), 18. R. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” 1–21; See also D. G. Jones and R. E. Richey, American Civil Religion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1974). See also Apel, Nine Great Myths, chap. 11.

  6. “Faith Has a Limited Effect on Most People’s Behavior,” Barna Group Research (www.barna.org). Even evangelicals generally differ little from the culture in terms of their basic values and behaviors. See Ron Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2005).

  7. Further problems the myth of a Christian nation creates for evangelism will be discussed in chapter 8.

  8. Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, ed. C. E. Moore (Farmington, Penn.: Plough, 1999), 232. The whole of Kierkegaard’s Attack Upon “Christendom,” ed. Walter Lowrie (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 1968) is relevant to this point. The worse distortion of Christianity is not found in those who have enough passion to twist it in certain directions. It is found when Christianity loses all passion by becoming little more than the religious dimension of a culture.

  9. For a discussion on questions surrounding the rationale, power, and effectiveness of prayer, see G. Boyd, Is God to Blame? Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Question of Suffering (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2003).

  10. On God’s responsiveness to prayer, see Robert Ellis, Answering God: Towards a Theology of Intercession (Waynesboro, Ga.: Paternoster, 2005); Vincent Brummer, What Are We Doing When We Pray? (London: SCM, 1984); G. Boyd, God of the Possible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book, 2000).

  11. Yoder, The Politics of Jesus. For example, Yoder argues that Jesus’ ministry cannot properly be called “apolitical,” for in calling it this one denies “the powerful…impact on society of the creation of an alternative social group. It is to overrate both the power and the manageability of those particular social structures identified as ‘political.’…Because Jesus’ particular way of rejecting the sword and at the same time condemning those who wielded it was politically relevant, both the Sanhedrin and the Procurator had to deny him the right to live, in the name of both of their forms of political responsibility…. Jesus’ way is not less but more relevant to the question of how society moves than is the struggle for possession of the levers of command; to this Pilate and Caiaphas testify by their judgment on him,” 106–7. See also Wink, Engaging the Powers.

  12. On the work of Christ unmasking the powers, see W. Wink, The Powers That Be (New York: Doubleday, 1998); W. Wink, Unmasking the Powers (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986); item., Engaging the Powers; Hendrikus Berkhof, Christ and the Powers (Scottdale, Penn.: Herald, 962), 30–31. For an overview of how every aspect of Jesus’ life was a socially relevant act of warfare against the principality and powers, see Boyd, “The Christus Victor View of the Atonement,” in Four Views of the Atonement.

  13. For fuller discussion on this, see G. Boyd, Repenting of Religion: Turning from Judgment to the Love of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2004).

  CHAPTER 7: WHEN CHIEF SINNERS BECOME MORAL GUARDIANS

  1. This of course does not rule out intervention in crisis situations where, say, one person is inflicting bodily harm on another. The purpose of such an intervention obviously is not to point out the shortcomings of the attacker—to judge—but to rescue the person being attacked.

  2. On this, see Boyd, Repenting of Religion, chap. 12.

  3. For a full discussion of judgment as “the original sin” that blocks God’s central purpose for creating the world (expressing and replicating the love he is), see G. Boyd, Repenting of Religion. As discussed in this work, the prohibition on judgments does not preclude “discernment.” We can and must distinguish between helpful and harmful behaviors and the like (Heb. 5:14). But we must never separate ourselves from people by comparing and contrasting ourselves with them.

  4. Research conducted by the Barna Group ( www.barna.org ).

  5. David Crary, “Bible Belt Leads U.S. in Divorces,” Associated Press (November 12, 1999); W. D’Antonio, “Walking the Walk on Family Values,” The Boston Globe (October 31, 2004); the Barna Group, “Born-Again Christians Just as Likely to Divorce as Are Non-Christians,” www.barna.org.

  6. Romans 2:1–10 bears reading at this point.

  7. Many contemporary Christians are surprised to learn the church has historically never had a consensus of opinion on these questions.

  8. Names have been changed to preserve the anonymity of the people involved.

  CHAPTER 8: ONE NATION UNDER GOD?

  1. Camp, Mere Discipleship, 94.

  2. The association of America with Israel—not Jesus—has been a powerful cultural force in America from its inception. See Hughs, Myths America Lives By (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), especially chap.3. Some took the parallel between America and Israel so far as to suggest that Native Americans were literally descendents of the Canaanites and that God had ordained their conquest, if not extermination, just as he had in the days of Joshua. Rev. Ezra Stiles went so far as to argue that George Washington was America’s Joshua. “The United States elevated to Glory and Honor. A sermon preached before His Excellency Jonathan Trumbull, Esq. L.L.D. Governor and Commander in Chief, and the Honorable General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, Convened at Hartford, at the Anniversary Election, May 8, 1783,” in Pulpit of the American Revolution, ed. J. W. Thornton (New York: Cap, reprint 1970 [1860]), 403, 439, 443.

  3. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. G. Eliot (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1989 [1841]).

  4. The myth that America is a nation destined by God to bring freedom to the world is a secularized version of one of the foundation myths that have shaped the American mind—the myth of America as “a millennial nation.” See Hughs, Myths America Lives By, especially chap.4.

  5. As Jewett and Lawrence note, beginning in the 1960s, leaders (Kennedy and Johnson especially) began to add to the national civil religious confidence of a messianic calling to free people, “the belief in [America’s] own superpower.” Jewett and Lawrence, Captain America and the Crusade against Evil, 102. This motif, they argue, has taken on very dangerous apocalyptic connotations in recent times. Also instructive is Je
wett and Lawrence’s observation that devotion to the flag has taken on religious connotations, especially in the proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit “the physical desecration of the flag.” (See ibid., chap. 15). Only something sacred can be de-secrated.

  6. Israel has stumbled, Paul says, but it has not been rejected (Rom. 11:1–2, 11, 28–29). God is using their national disobedience as the occasion to reach the Gentiles and will use the faith of Gentiles to win back the Jewish nation (11:11–15, 25, 30–31). Paul is confident that in the end Israel as a nation will return to God and be saved (Rom. 11:26). For an insightful discussion of the role of Israel in Paul’s thought, see James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), 499–532.

  7. In this sense Jesus—and therefore the church—is both the fulfillment and the replacement of Israel’s nationalistic mission. On Jesus as the new Israel, see N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), esp. 18–40.

  8. See, for example, Ray Comfort, How to Win Souls and Influence People (Gainesville, Fla.: Bridege-Logos, 1999); Ray Comfort, Revival’s Golden Key (Gainesville, Fla.: Bridge-Logos, 2002); Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort, The Way of the Master (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale, 2002).

  9. This of course doesn’t imply that confrontational evangelism never works. It sometimes does. But when it does, I suspect it’s usually with people who happen to already share, if only subconsciously, the presuppositions of the evangelist (viz. breaking a commandment warrants eternal hell).