Are we a Christian nation?
In these paranoid times, the finger of suspicion points not only at non-Christians, it points at the “wrong” kind of Christian. Norma Barnett explores the issue.
Tulsa preacher Jackson Lahmeyer is building a movement to battle “demonic” Democrats and put Donald Trump back in office. He wants to create a Christian nation, however, he unequivocally rejects Christians who do not believe as he does. Democrats are “enemies of God,” even Nancy Pelosi, a devout Catholic. Pelosi, a scapegoat for Christian Democrats, is anti-God. He does not define “anti-God.” It is likely that it is Pelosi’s power and her political views that defile her Christianity.
Lahmeyer is not alone. Far from it.
But what arguments support the designation of America as a “Christian nation”? Lahmeyer (leader of “Pastors for Trump”) asserts that godlessness equates with the “godless globalism of the left,” which seems a political issue converted into a xenophobic litmus test. Lahmeyer declares, “the purpose of America was to form a Christian nation.”
According to polls, between 45% and 48% of Americans identify as Christians and agree with Lahmeyer. This belief would require all 45+% to accept that the Bible offers only one interpretation and one way of life. And anyone who does not accept the “one true interpretation of the Bible” cannot qualify as a Christian.
I suspect many Americans, not just Fundamentalists, accept that our Founding Fathers were Christian. Some would claim that this history justifies continuing to pursue a Christian nation. The actual religious views of our Founders is not an established fact. The historian David L. Homes, author of The Faith of the Founding Fathers, assessed their religious leanings by analyzing public statements, correspondence, and public comments. Holmes asserted that the Founders’ views placed them in one of three categories.
The smallest group were those who had left Christianity and became adherents of Deism, a rationalist intellectual movement. Thomas Paine represented this group. Some Founders retained supernaturalist views and belief in the divinity of Christ. They represented many denominations. Included among practitioners were Patrick Henry and Samual Adams. The largest group maintained some loyalty to their Christian roots but were influenced by Deism. They rejected supernaturalism and belief in miracles to embrace a rationalist faith. This group included Washington on the conservative right and Franklin on the left.
Our forefathers left England because Puritans and other Protestant sects were persecuted by the Church of England. The outcast sects varied in their religious views, but they all abhorred the corruption and the power of the Church. Nevertheless, the Puritans began shunning and persecuting other sects. My 8th great-grandmother, a pious 70 year old woman, deemed as uppity and harsh, was hanged as a witch. Among her “sins” was raising a Quaker boy alongside her own children. Eventually the state of Massachusetts absolved her. And so began the debate over who designates the “good” Christians.
Our national life never rested on a stable and unitary vision of Christianity. Even if such a Christian homogeneity existed, just because 30,000 immigrants arrived here between 1620 and 1630 (The Great Migration) does that require today’s 340 million Americans to become Christians? Representative Rick Allen (R) from Georgia writes: “Our Nation is at war, it is a Spiritual War at the highest level. This is not a war that can be fought conventionally, this is God’s battle and He has used President Trump in a powerful way to expose the deceit, lies and hypocrisy of the enemy.”
Allen decides not just that Christians are embroiled in a Spiritual War. He names and accuses the enemy, and has chosen Donald Trump to expose them. Allen, a Fundamentalist, believes in the inerrant truth of the Bible. I’d like to see the Scriptural evidence for Trump’s annunciation.
The First Amendment does speak about the relationship between church and state: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” There is agreement that the original intent of the Founders was to prohibit a state mandated religion. Contemporary legal scholars have reinterpreted these clauses in various ways. But according to John F. Kennedy, “It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers that led to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom.”
So, are we a Christian nation? First of all, who is “We”? All those who claim to be Christians? No, some Christians are enemies of God. What about those of other faiths or those with no religious beliefs? The “we” appears to be only the minority approved by the likes of Allen and Lahmeyer.
Are we Christian? There seems to be little agreement on what it means to be Christian. According to Lahmeyer, Nancy Pelosi pushes anti-God things, one of them undoubtedly reproductive rights. The Bible says that there are just two great commandments (see Matthew 22:35-40): Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is similar: Love your neighbor as yourself. Which Christianity is “correct”?
Finally, are we a Christian nation? Christianity first arrived in the New World in the form of missionaries who imposed Christianity on Native peoples. There also arrived stealing of land, infectious disease, destruction of cultures, war. I am sure there were devout, wise, ethical, and kind persons, Christian and otherwise, then as now. But our nation did not emerge from love and tolerance alone, and genocide is part of our history
Tragically, Christian Fundamentalism has spawned suspiciousness, lack of curiosity, and lack of compassion regarding those different, even violence toward “Others.” Perhaps more damaging is that the persecuting attitudes of Fundamentalist Christians have permeated the body Politic. It’s not the Quakers who are now evil but the Democrats.
In my generation, religion surfaced as a contentious issue during Kennedy’s campaign for the presidency. Many feared that he, as a Catholic, would take his counsel from the Pope. Pressured to repudiate his Catholic beliefs, instead he spoke directly “not about what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me – but what kind of America I believe in”.
In his speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, Kennedy stood firmly for the separation of church and state. Kennedy believed that other issues loomed larger than religion: “war, hunger, ignorance, despair.” He agreed to give the speech because the religious issue had become divisive.
Kennedy also predicted that religious intolerance would not end with him: “For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed…it has been…a Jew – or a Quaker – or a Baptist…Today I may be the victim – but tomorrow it may be you – until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.”
Kennedy refused to apologize for his religious views, and he refused to consider his religious beliefs as contrary to patriotism. “But if the time would ever come…when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.”
Now Christian Nationalists argue that religion, their religion, should be dominant, in politics and governance.
Amanda Tyler of the organization Christians Against Christian Nationalism summarizes: “The language, symbols and imagery of the Christian right…it may look and sound like Christianity…Closer examination reveals that it uses the veneer of Christianity to point not to Jesus but to a political figure, party or ideology.”
According to Tyler, Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. As Christians, we are bound to Christ, not by citizenship, but by faith.
Kennedy’s prediction has become history. The “finger of suspicion” points to non-Christians, and it points at the “wrong” kind of Christian. This fundamentalism has infected politics even of the supposedly nonpolitical Supreme Court, whose six right-leaning justices are practicing Catholics, and whose decisions reflect their religious convictions. Tragically, we are seeing, as Kennedy foretold “the whole fabric of our harmonious society (being) ripped at a time of great national peril.”
May whoever or whatever is there to help us, please help us all.
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This is timely, as many of us here in Sonoma are being accused of being prejudiced against Christianity. What we are worried about is not belief in a religion, but a campaign and organizations that work to roll back equal rights. My mother, a devout catholic, practiced her religion, but always told us, they were her beliefs and she did not expect others to live by them. She taught us to respect the beliefs of others and to treat all people with the same level of respect, in short, “Don’t do to others what you would not want done to you.” Of course she hoped all of us would be Catholics, but was realistic when we all choose our own path and our own beliefs. Religion was personal to her, as it should be to all of us. Equality and fairness are universal concepts, and the basis for a harmonious society, as Kennedy stated.