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a system of domination that necessarily places its trust in the power of the sword.
FOR GOD AND COUNTRY
Since the time of Constantine, Christianity has largely been the obedient servant of the kingdom of the world, while the cross has often been reduced to the pole upon which a national flag waves.
When leaders of so-called Christian nations felt the need to go to war to protect or expand the interests of their nation, they could often count on the church to call on God to bless its violent campaign and use its authority to motivate warriors to fight for their cause “in Jesus’ name.”
their cause could be made “holy” by convincing Christian subjects t...
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Christ—even when the enemy was other professing Christians.
“For God and country” has been the battle cry of Christians, as it has in one form or another for almost every other army, whatever the particular religion or nation.
and when America broke from England, it continued to reign.
heavy use of religious rhetoric to support the invasion of Iraq
Instead of simply arguing that it was in America’s national interest to go to war—a claim that some would accept and others reject—many religious leaders and some politicians invoked God’s name in support of this cause, just as the extremist Muslims did.
Many even argued that supporting the war against the Taliban and Saddam Hussein was a “Christian duty.”
Christianization of military force was strongly reinforced when President George W. Bush depicted America as being on a holy “crusade”
he said that America is the “light of the world,” which the “darkness” (that is, our national ene...
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of course quoting Scripture in making his point—Scripture that refers ...
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Americanized, Constantinian paradigm.
what applies to Jesus (“the light of the world”) can be applied to our country, and what applies to Satan (“the darkness”) can be applied to whomever resists our country. We are of God; they are of the Devil.
Our wars are therefore “h...
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history proves that it’s usually in a nation’s self-interest to use religion and religious rhetoric to advance its causes,
when we associate Jesus with America, even in the most remote ways, we legitimize the widespread global perception that the Christian faith can be judged on the basis of what America has done in the past or continues to do in the present.
us.4 Not only does America represent greed, violence, and sexual immorality to them, but they view America as exploitive and opportunistic.
aggression under the guise of “spreading freedom.”
They can’t see the beauty of the cross because everything the American flag represents to them is in the way.
allowed the cross to become associated with the sword of Constantine.
Far from invoking God’s name to justify the behavior of our nation (for example, to “blow [people] away in the name of the Lord”),
this foundational myth reinforces the pervasive misconception that the civil religion of Christianity in America is real Christianity.
most people in the culture don’t make the dominant religion the central point of their life.
this as the civil role of religion.5
it is undeniable that the civil religion of America from the start has been a deistic version of Christianity.
even our calendar have been influenced far more by Christianity than any other religion. While things are changing quickly, a majority of Americans still identify themselves as “Christian” to pollsters.
further inquires into what actual impact these people’s faith has on their lives, one discovers that in the maj...
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research has consistently demonstrated that the majority of professing Christians, when asked, lack even an elementary unders...
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Civil religion is good, if not necessary, for a healthy culture.
civil religion is simply an aspect of the kingdom of the world. Problems arise when kingdom people forget that the kingdom of God always looks like Jesus and so has no intrinsic relationship with any civil religion.
fail to see that the civil religion of Christianity has no more kingdom-of-God significance than the civil religion of Buddhism, Hinduism, or the ancient Roman Pantheon.
peel back the façade of the civil religion, you find that America is about as pagan as any country we could ever send missionaries to.
If we simply hold fast to the truth that the kingdom of God always looks like Jesus, we can see the irrelevance, if not harmfulness, of the quasi-Christian civil religion for the advancement of the kingdom of God.
here the majority think they’re already Christian simply by virtue of living in a Christian nation.
end up wasting precious time and resources defending and tweaking the civil religion—as though doing so had some kingdom value. We strive to keep prayer in the schools, fight for the right to have public prayer before football games, lobby to preserve the phrases “under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance and “in God we trust” on our coins, battle to hold the traditional civil meaning of marriage, and things of the sort—as though winning these fights somehow brings America closer to the kingdom of God.
you may or may not agree that preserving the civil religion in this way is good for the culture. Vote your conscience.
it reinforces the shallow civil religious mindset that sees prayer primarily as a perfunctory religious activity?
true kingdom prayer cannot be demanded or retracted by social laws
Christianity has been trivialized by being associated with civic functions?
Kierkegaard was right when he stated that the worst form of apostasy the Christian faith can undergo is to have it become simply an aspect of a culture.8
if America looked as pagan as it actually is, if the word God wasn’t so trivially sprinkled on our coins, our Pledge of Allegiance, our civic functions, and elsewhere.
we reinforce the impression that Christianity is primarily about the civil religion, about engaging in social functions, answering a pollster a certain way, and perhaps performing “religious obligations” a couple times of year
Many are so conditioned by the “power over” mindset of the world that they can’t even envision an alternative way of affecting society and politics other than by playing the political game.
the Christian faith must be reduced to private piety without any social relevance.
don’t notice how the white-dominated power structures of society privilege them while oppressing others.
John Howard Yoder has brilliantly shown in his book The Politics of Jesus,
a kingdom that doesn’t wage war “against flesh and blood” but instead fights against “rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness” (Eph. 6:12)
