I like this post I found. Sums up a good irony that I completely agree with:
James F. McGrath, Associate Professor of Religion at Butler University, Indianapolis, nails the problem with the "Christian Nation" thesis as articulated by David Barton and many others who like to proclaim that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and has, only of late, become secularist and against Christianity:
"It seems unlikely that at any point in the past the vast majority of inhabitants of the United States were devout Christians with a personal faith, as opposed to nominal Christians for whom their Christianity consisted largely of a "tribal identity" including churchgoing and assenting to some doctrinal beliefs and moral precepts.
Does it not seem ironic, then, that the notion of American having once been a "Christian nation", and nostalgia for that bygone golden age, is found largely among Evangelicals, those very Christians who emphasize the need for a personal faith, and the inadequacy of a Christianity that consists merely of church attendance, denominational affiliation, or even moral living?
Am I missing something? Why would the very Christians who deny the adequacy of such nominal Christianity today, depict its heyday as a sort of golden age for American Christianity?"
There never was a "golden age" in American History when the nation was somehow truly Christian. Maybe there was a lot more church attendance, and there was certainly a time in the not-too-distant past when more people lived more outwardly moral lives. But that doesn't mean the nation was more Christian. It just means that they went to church more, behaved better in the civic squre, and kept more of their personal sins in private for fear of public shame.
This nation has probably not ever been much more, or much less, genuinely Christian than it is now.
1 comments:
As a "nation" I think the quote is correct, but what were we before being a nation, in terms of predominating beliefs? I mean, why is it that political scholars and rhetoricians play up the Puritan heritage as a storehouse for civil religion unless the Puritan religion was once the bedrock of people's actual beliefs?
When we look at the origins of a nation, are we to exclude the precursors that made it possible? I think many evangelicals are ignorant and think that Christianity was a thriving systems of beliefs amongst the Founding Fathers, which it wasn't. But if you go back a hundred or more years before the Founding Fathers, Christianity was predominant. It wasn't until just prior to the Great Awakening that the influences of mercantilism, secularization, and superficial Christianity became more prevalent.
Does that jive with your broader readings in history?
Post a Comment