The trouble with 'Christian America'

Jon Meacham wrote a cover story in Newsweek a couple of weeks ago that was titled, "The Decline and Fall of Christian America." A title like that is meant to be a little sensational. And Newsweek probably got just what it wanted when Meacham's piece sent Christians all over the country in a tizzy.

The article itself, though, really wasn't sensational at all. Meacham is a liberal Episcopalian, and he was mostly just relishing the decline of the so-called Religious Right - a catch-all term for the politicized evangelicalism that came to prominence under Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority in the 1980s. Meacham is also the editor-in-chief at Newsweek, and under his leadership over the past couple of years the magazine has drifted left noticeably. A part of that comes out in a particularly left-leaning religious view, which shows up in reporting of all types but is best seen on a regular basis through Lisa Miller's BeliefWatch column. So in that sense, Meacham's article was just standard Newsweek fare.

But Meacham did cite statistics that are troubling beyond his connection of them with the decline of a politically muscular Christianity. A recent survey shows that the number of professing Christians as a percentage of the U.S. population has decline from 86% in 1990 to 76% today. Any position piece is strengthened by hard numbers, and those were Meacham's. (For a different take on them, go to Michael Gerson's recent column in the Washington Post.)

So is 'Christian America' really dying? Is it not just the Religious Right that is fading away, but is the generally Christian character of our society fading as well?

With a little fear and trembling, I take this subject up in my current column in the United Methodist Reporter. My editor at the Reporter was gracious to give me more space than usual, and with the complexity of this topic I used every bit of it. I won't repeat my whole argument here but instead invite you to check out the column on the Reporter's site.

The gist of it is this: There never was such a thing as 'Christian America.' And the Christians in America shouldn't worry about that.

There cannot be such a 'Christian America,' in fact, because citizenship and discipleship can never be synonymous terms. Christians owe an allegiance to Jesus Christ above the allegiance to the nation. And that means that a Christian's primary frame of social reference is not society at large but rather the church.

If we, as Christians, are really worried about declining numbers of the faithful in this land, we should practice a more robust form of discipleship. Ultimately, it is not by baptizing secular institutions or passing 'Christian' laws that we practice fidelity to God. It is rather by preaching the word of God, celebrating the sacraments, forming disciples of Jesus Christ, and witnessing to the love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through our works of piety and mercy in the world.

It is good when Christians exert an influence on the society in which they live. Their participation in the larger world can lead to greater civility in social life and more compassion in the legislation and execution of laws. But the telos of the practice of Christian faith is not to make the world Christian. That makes no Scriptural sense. It is instead to spread the gospel and build up the church. And yes, there is a real difference.

So we shouldn't worry about trying to Christianize America. We should just be concerned with Christianizing the church.

Intersection of faith and politics

In a recent column, Charles Krauthammer writes, "The God of the Founders, the God on the coinage, the God for whom Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving day is the ineffable, ecumenical, nonsectarian Providence of the American civil religion whose relation to this blessed land is without appeal to any particular testament or ritual."

That's a fine statement, for a Deistic view of the Creator of the universe. As Krauthammer rightly notes, it has indeed been held by many politicians since the 18th century as a way to unite diverse populations into one body politic. But it contains an insidious underside, because what it really attempts to do is to convince people to give up their confessional belief in a God with particular attributes in favor of another god - that of the nation-state.

Liberal democracy instinctively insists that accepting the lordship of nation is a necessity if the population in question is extremely diverse (i.e., comprised of a large variety of ethnicities and confessional traditions). But what of the confessional traditions themselves? For instance, are Christians to accept that the way of life called for by the triune God can be simply circumscribed so that it fits neatly into the cultural and political expectations of a secular state?

This is a troubling problem, and it cannot be solved by the insistence on the part of many in the church that "this is a Christian nation" or that anything the state calls on us to do is simply to be accepted. I write more about this in my current column in the United Methodist Reporter. I would welcome your thoughts.

American Civil Religion

Every culture has a form of civil religion, where certain cultural values are treated as quasi-religious beliefs, important figures are treated as prophets or priests, and ideas or symbols are treated as gods. It is just that in the United States of America, our civil religion has a certain level of potency that most other cultures do not reach. I'm not sure why this is the case, except that our culture has a messianic quality to it deriving from our history (settling a new "Promised Land" through a belief in manifest destiny) and our founding beliefs (a form of political liberty unseen in the world up to that time).

If you don't believe this to be the case, witness the debate that goes on anytime the use or abuse of the American flag is brought up. It is one of the most potent of our religious symbols. On this and other blogs, and in the United Methodist Reporter, a seemingly minor recent debate over whether the flag is appropriate to use in the sanctuary ignited visceral reactions on the part of some. Wrapped up in this is the key to understanding the flag (or other pagan icons) as sacred symbols of civil religion: the mere suggestion of circumscribing its use in certain contexts is regarded by many as blasphemy.

As one Methodist wrote in this letter to the editor, "As for our flag, the symbol of freedom -- when it leaves the sanctuary, I leave with it." (Munch on that sentence awhile. Conjure up an image in your mind of what it would look like to leave a sanctuary following the flag. Think about all that it suggests: what you are turning your back on, where you are placing your loyalties, what you are implicitly claiming to be the true "symbol of freedom," etc.).

I bring all this up because of this post written by John at Locusts and Honey. You need to read the Billy Abraham article to which he refers (you can get it from John's post or access it here). It is a penetrating analysis on the religious orientation of President Bush, but what is much more important is the wider context of American civil religion that Prof. Abraham sketches. And underlying it - because Bush is a Methodist and this plays into Prof. Abraham's essay - is an absolutely devastating critique of United Methodist practice.

For instance, Abraham writes, "The operational (if not canonical) theological ideology of United Methodism over the last generation is constituted by a vapid pluralism that makes room for any and all the options that make the rounds. In fact one way to read the ruling orthodoxy of United Methodism as developed in the sixties is to see it as the adoption and then freezing of crucial aspects of American civil religion as it was practiced in the mid-twentieth century. It is surely no accident that the code-words of the functional theology of United Methodism are more or less the code-words of recent American culture. Both are saturated with the language of diversity, multi-culturalism, pluralism, and inclusivism. Both are exceptionally nervous of any kind of robust confessionalism; both want to be formally open to evangelicalism but are paranoiac about its volatility and independence. United Methodism in the United States is an echo-chamber of contemporary American debate and political polemic" (p.13).

To refer back to another recent post on this blog, that explains a heck of a lot about the Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors campaign in the UMC. It is essentially a business-model marketing scheme that aims toward good American citizenship. And it has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity.

If reformations didn't destroy so many good things in the inertia that gets built up through the process of destroying idols, I would say that we were in dire need of a reformation ourselves. As it stands, there is little to distinguish American Protestantism from American Civil Religion. And that means Jesus is probably going to spew us out of his mouth.