Under Siege

It has been said that Nero fiddled as Rome burned. If someone were to wonder how America has arrived at this current crisis, where its foundational principles are under assault and where a significant portion of the population is sympathetic to their wholesale rejection, a brief tour of modern evangelical churches might be instructive. One would not find in many of those churches any defense of America’s founding as the apex of achievement in human history. He would not hear America’s Founders being described as having done more good, for more people, than any other group of men in the history of the world, nor would he hear that a superior political construction will not be found until we are all under the kingship of God. And perhaps most surprisingly, he would not even hear in any of those churches a case for the moral superiority of Christianity to all other religions. From those who should be expected to be the most vocal in their appreciation of these blessings, he would hear mostly silence. Evangelicals have allowed themselves to be muzzled by the myth that the religious can be separated from the political. And they have sold their souls for tax-exempt status. They have absolved themselves of the guilt of their inaction with worn-out platitudes like, “morality cannot be legislated”, while immorality routinely is. They have abdicated their civic duty in favor of inane messaging which has reduced them to mere support-group counselors, and in the meanwhile they eagerly anticipate their day of “rapture”, as though the demise of America is to be welcomed as some sort of eschatological vindication.

One of the most remarkable elements in all of Christianity is one that is under-appreciated as such. Perhaps even more important than the Resurrection itself is the uniquely Christian understanding of the Incarnation, the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction idea that the God of the universe became flesh, dwelt among us, and subjected himself to the will of his own creation. The idea is so preposterous as to be absurd, and yet from this single assertion follows most of the political philosophy supporting representative government and individual freedom. Christianity alone is responsible for the American ideals: All men are created equal; government exists at the consent of the governed; governments must be limited in power, because they are composed of corruptible men; our innate rights as human individuals take priority over the interests of the State — each of these is a direct philosophical extension from the behavior of the Christian God, who does not impose his will on us.

Whether the Founders were Christians, or not– they were, nevertheless, christian. So, when the anti-Americans slander the Founders, and the founding, make no mistake — they’re slandering Christianity. The American ideals were simply not conceiveable in the absence of Christianity. But how will your congregation know this, if they have not heard it? And how will they hear it, without a preacher? It’s time that influential evangelicals started speaking up and defending the inherent virtue of America’s founding.