1/3/09

I was reading this sermon by Karl Barth in which he is resisting in 1933 the demand by the Nazis for the churches of Germany to include Aryan paragraph”, which the state used to remove civil servants “of non-Aryan origin”, = he stated, ‘Jesus was a Jew,’ which at the time was a pretty explosive thing to say at that time. He reminded his hearers that ‘salvation is of the Jews.’

It reminded me of Greg Boyd’s current stand against America as a ‘Christian Nation’ in his book “Myth of the Christian Nation” and similar sermon series. The intro to that sermon series on his website states that Boyd ” argues from Scripture and history that whenever the church gets too close to any political or national ideology, it is disastrous for the church and harmful to society.”

I don’t want to draw any undue parallels but I find the insistence of fundamentalists that America is a Christian nation a scary thing. While trying to preserve America and exalt Christ, I believe that they are endangering America and insulting Christ. The movie ‘Good Night and Good Luck’ about Edward R. Morrow’s opposition of Joseph McCarthy, which we watched last night, contributed to my feelings about this.

Dan Dickinson at 7:54am January 2

I find dialog with people that believe that America is a Christian Nation to be impossible. Chiefly because the premise of their core belief that America is a Christian Nation blindly ignores history and incorrectly projects a future. They often dare to have the courage to consider an alternative thought and you thereby are spinning your wheels trying to talk about any issue of politics, liberty of conscience and faith or economics.

I don’t see the advantage to being a patriotic Christian brings to loving my neighbor, especially when my neighbor is my enemy. Jesus counter cultural third way often does not align with ANY political, economic or religious system. So when American Christians closely align themselves with a political system (a democratic republic) and to an economic systems (capitalism) it is a scary thing. Would we not be able to follow Christ if we lived under Communism? Would we be totally lost to the world if we lived in a Socialist state?

Steve Ranney at 9:01am January 2

As far as I know, this belief that America has a unique political system that is the best, is pretty characteristic of our history. So it might be that the notion of America as a Christian nation just represents the church buying into and baptizing that idea. The empire building that America has engaged in seems to be typically justified by that notion.

But thinking of the British Empire or Soviet expansionism in an earlier time, maybe something similar was at work, whether it’s the gospel of the British Empire or that of Marx.

Maybe human empires going back to Babylon or Rome, always view themselves as bringing peace and prosperity to those they conquer. So for the people of God whether in the Old Testament or New Testament, they are not supposed to buy into that promise.

So the Greg Boyds of 100 AD must have been saying, ‘It is not your job to tweak the Roman Empire.” That seems consistent with what we see in the New Testament.