A more important question than “Is this a Christian nation?”
Author: rich | Filed under: questions, quotesI just ran across this over at Mark Beeson’s blog and wanted to share it with you. (It’s a small part of a much longer post.)
Whether this is a Christian nation may be secondary and consequential to this poignant consideration: Am I a Christian? How many ask the former question to avoid facing the latter? How often do I find myself so worried about what everyone else is doing that the soul-searching work of fulfilling God’s purposes in my own life never gets done? No one is going to do God’s work, with God’s love, in God’s Name but God’s people. Be one of God’s people! This is no time to shrink back. There is work to be done.
Mark Beeson is the pastor of Granger Community Church in Granger, Indiana, where they’re doing the work and doing it well!
Amen! And P.S., I don’t believe we ever were a Christian nation, our founding fathers were deists and Thomas Jefferson was rewriting the New Testament to remove miracles and make it “rational.” Well said.
The claim that “our founding fathers were deists” is somewhat problematic. If one surveys the Founding Fathers as defined by “those 55 members of the Constitutional Convention”, you will find that in that group only three were deists (Franklin most notable among them — Jefferson was not in attendance). Of the remaining “small number”, a breakdown by denominational affiliation shows: 28 Episcopalians, 8 Presbyterians, 7 Congregationalists, 2 Lutherans, 2 Dutch Reformed, 2 Methodists, 2 Roman Catholics, and one unknown (if you count the unknown in with the deists, you get a whopping 7% as “non-Christians”).
One can claim that America is not a Christian nation, and even argue that America was not founded on Christian principles (see the Treaty of Tripoli of 1797), however, one cannot successfully argue that our Founding Fathers were not heavily influenced by Christian values and beliefs.
Personally, I am somewhat thankful we are losing the identity tag of a “Christian” nation. Too many see that identity as an excuse or justification. One day, we may even begin to remove the label of “Christian” from those churches that have abandoned (or never held) orthodox Christian beliefs.
Thanks for chiming in, guys. As much as I love discussing the “Is the USA a Christian nation?” question, I wanted to remind folks that there’s a more important question for us to be asking ourselves…
I wasn’t aware of that Billie. Thanks for sharing. I certainly believe you, but for my own benefit, could you provide a source for that information for my further research?
Rich — I wholeheartedly agree with you. The significant question is our individual relationship with God, not a theoretical underpinning of a form of government. Our responsibility is independent of whatever is popular or desired by any political structure. We need to divorce the church from politics, not that it does not have a voice in politics, it just should not allow itself to be manipulated by either side.
Dan — There are a couple of starting points. One is Greg Koukl did a conversation on this some time ago. It can be found at: http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5097
Another source that lists by religious affiliation those that could be called “founding fathers” or “Founding Fathers” with appropriate links to further information on each individual can be found here: http://www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html
Another source of information that includes an interesting video link of David Barton can be found here: http://www.creationists.org/myth-of-the-seperation-of-church-and-state.html — the video is interesting if you have the time.
Many secularists will point to Thomas Paine as an “atheist”. That is an interesting position to attribute to Mr. Paine. A read of his paper, “The Study of God” does not present Paine as such an atheist as they would want you to believe. Paine surely may not have been a fan of “Christianity” — but, he is at least a theist and not even remotely close to agnostic. Find his paper here: http://www.19.5degs.com/ebook/study-of-god/1667/read#list — It is really not that long.
Hey Billie, thanks for the resources!
I believe Thomas Paine was a deist…