Deliver Us from Evil

The Republican Party of Texas has approved a plank in its platform stating, “The United States of America is a Christian Nation.” Media pundits from Fox TV’s Bill O’Reilly to Reason Magazine’s Cathy Young to the Rev. Jerry Falwell have weighed in on the subsequent controversy.

No one seems to know quite what the phrase means. Is it an attack on “the myth” of church/state separation? Is it an affirmation of Christianity as the core of the American spirit? Is it anti-Semitism? Is it merely a “largely symbolic” response to secular activists and judges? Is it only a statement of numerical fact?

One thing, however, appears obvious: the phrase “Christian Nation” is the sharpest single way of expressing what America's “culture wars” are all about.

Since the 1963 Supreme Court decision banning public school prayer, growing numbers of Americans have come to fear that “Christian values” are losing ground in the public sector. The symptoms of such a “Christian retreat” are numerous: widespread divorce; premarital sex; legalization of abortion; “permissive” attitudes in our schools, communities, and media; removal of Christian displays from public places; growing acceptance of gays.

In reaction, organizations like the Christina Coalition and the Moral Majority have waged electoral battle against “secular humanism” by asserting “traditional Christian values.” This movement helped Ronald Reagan become President in 1980, promoted a Republican majority in Congress over the last 20 years, prompted George W. Bush to offer his “faith based initiatives” in 2001, and is currently planning to push “culture issues” to the center of the 2004 electoral campaign. If these alarmed Christians have their way, we’ll be hearing a lot about “Christian values” in this Fall’s presidential debates.

For such people, the phrase ”Christian nation” sums up the high stakes they are fighting for. They are convinced that the USA’s greatness depends on its foundation as a Christian nation, and that its future is imperiled by the threat of losing its Christian identity. They believe the USA has always been a “Christian Nation”—and they crusade to ensure that it always will be.

For the moment, I’ll pass on the question of how well such Christians understand what Christianity is actually all about, and concentrate another question: how well do they understand their own nation?

In my opinion, American history has arrived at a major fork in the road of its destiny. To move in the right direction, we need to be clearer, wiser, and more realistic about our past, our present, and out future.

Our Christian Past. I think there is ample evidence, and a general public consensus, for acknowledging the USA’s Christian heritage. My part of the country, New England, was founded as a puritan theocracy—a church-state. Pennsylvania has its Quaker roots, Maryland its Catholic roots. French missionaries opened the Midwest frontier and French merchants settled the mid-south. Spanish missionaries brought Europeans to Florida and California, Texas belonged to Catholic Mexico before its own independence, In short, our nation was formed as the native tribes, each with their own local cultures and religions, were overrun and dominated by white peoples who brought distinct versions of the same European culture and Christian religion. It is impossible to understand American history if one ignores its Christian character.

Our Christian Present. The USA today remains the most “Christian” culture among advanced industrial societies, even compared to countries like England which recognize a state church. Most Americans tell pollsters they believe in God, pray, even go to Church. We continue to observe Christian holy days like Christmas and Good Friday and Thanksgiving. Foreign visitors are often stunned to see the number and variety of Christian churches in our towns and cities.

But the Founding Fathers planted a time bomb on December 15, 1791 by adding the First amendment to the US Constitution. In declaring “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” they were acting to guarantee all religions freedom by denying any religion a privileged position as the nation’s officially “established” religion. At the time, they had competing Protestant denominations in mind, but legally they were committing the nation to refusing privilege to any religion, including Christianity as a whole.

Today, of course, most Americans are still Christians. But our immigrant society has evolved beyond the WASP demographics of our colonial era. Huge waves of Catholics in transformed many parts of America; Boston, once the capital of puritan America, has become The USA's first major metropolitan area with a Catholic majority. Nearly half the Jews living outside Israel live in America. Recent immigrations have brought Vietnamese and Cambodian Buddhists, Indian and Pakistani Hindus, and many Middle Eastern and African Muslims to our shores.

The same First Amendment that once protected Protestants from dominating one another now guarantees all these newcomers that Christianity will not dominate them. We can acknowledge that, as a society, America maintains a strong, even dominant Christian presence, but that is simple a fact of our history, not an official public value or principle. And while the constitutional principle that prohibits any religion from seeking a privileged position is permanent, the facts of history keep changing.

Our Future? The fork in the road we are approaching gives us three choices: 1. Do we struggle to maintain a “Christian America”? 2. Do we concede our nation to a secular model? 3. Do we embrace a multi-religious future?

1. Maintaining a “Christian America” is, in my opinion, a futile option. The Constitutional time-bomb makes it inevitable that, as our society becomes more religiously diverse, legal challenges to public support for Christian institutions will grow. The First Amendment’s past effect was to keep each Protestant denomination just one among many other equally protected Christian churches; the Amendment’s future effect will be to make Christianity one religion among many other equally protected religions. The history of America’s Christian roots can never be unwritten, but the era of Christian dominance is over forever.

2. Many crusaders for a “Christian Nation” fear a secular takeover of our culture. Meanwhile the rest of us are beginning to realize that the real threat is not the disappearance of religion but the rise of religious fanaticism and extremism. Isn’t that the most obvious lesson of 9/11? In my view, it is time we recognize that our biggest enemies are not secular humanists but people who are bent on dictating our conformity to a fraudulent, invented version of whatever religion they claim to represent.

The old saying “any enemy of my enemy is my friend" applies here. Just because America becomes less Christian doesn't mean it will become more secular, and humanists are just as opposed to religious extremism as most Christians are. Why not treat them as allies fighting together to ensure a future where the values we share –like freedom—are honored?

3. The “new religions” of America—Buddhism, Islam Hinduism, etc—are also natural allies for the future. We better realize a basic truth before it is too late: resisting the influx of legitimate religions only encourages people to resort to more extremist versions. This means that insisting on Christianity’s privileged status is the surest way to promote extremism. The surest way to prevent Muslim extremism here is to embrace real mainstream Islam. Recent history makes it abundantly clear, to the surprise of many, that the world’s future is neither Christian nor secular, but multi-religious. As André Malraux once said, “The 21^st century will either be religious, or it will not be.” It is folly for us to either to ignore this future or to deliver it into the hands of extremists.

The fork in our destiny’s road is just ahead. We must all learn to cherish America’s Christian roots while embracing its inter-faith future—it is the only future that has a future.

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com