"Christian Nation"

Gallup recently told us that church membership is down by some 20% over the last two decades. That, of course, is all churches of all stripes and all religions, so we should keep that in mind. Still, I would suggest that it is obvious that America is no longer a Christian nation. Since only 50% of Americans claim to be church members and that includes all religions, it seems obvious that genuine Christians are in a minority. But I think we should be clear on what "Christian nation" cannot and can mean.

When I say I am a Christian, I mean that I have a saving relationship with Christ and believe what His Word says is true. I haven't "arrived;" I'm not perfect. But I'm learning to be obedient and actually have a relationship with the Savior. At no time in any sense has America or any other nation been that kind of "Christian." No nation can have a saving relationship with Christ. Obviously. So that is not the idea behind "Christian nation."

What is it? The term refers to the values that Christianity brings to a nation. A nation that embraces Christian values would be called (no matter how incorrectly) a "Christian nation." Our nation was founded on Christian principles with Christian values largely by sincere Christians. As such, the United States at some point could have been called a "Christian nation" by that definition.

We've been told, however, (and evidence bears it out) that we are no longer a Christian nation. No, we haven't lost our salvation; we've lost our Christian values. What kinds of Christian values are we talking about? At the outset of the American nation, a fundamental Christian value was "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Why? Well, those Christians who had fled Europe to obtain freedom to worship God as they believed their Bibles told them to wanted to insure that they could continue to ... well ... do that (Rom 14:4). Written into our Bill of Rights, it is clearly a Christian value that is no longer valued in America.

Fundamental to our Declaration of Independence and, therefore, our "Christian nation" is the concept of "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Fundamental. Well, the first thing to go is the fundamental belief that there is a Creator. Not only is there a growing doubt that such a being exists; we are now requiring by force of law (and by a queer twist on that other right I mentioned) that any such being if He does exist must have no part in this country. (Thus, by "enforcing the First Amendment" by removing God from government entirely, they violate the First Amendment by making atheism the established religion of the government.) Since the relationship of creature -- humans -- to Creator is the basis for the Christian notion of the value of humans (Gen 9:6), the wholesale rejection of the Creator principle today does not bode well. The suggestion would be that it is not wrong to kill humans ... which, of course, the courts legalized in 1973 and continue to push with euthanasia laws and postpartum abortion permissions. Where will that stop? Without a basis of writes outside of the creature, we can't say.

We originally had laws premised on Christian morality. There were laws against adultery and laws against homosexual behavior and laws defending private property and all sorts of laws premised on Christian values. Today we've pushed Christ out of the legislature, so laws predicated on Christian values are, in fact, deemed illegal. And we've been dismantling those prior laws since. It is legal to cheat on your spouse and engage in what Scripture refers to as unnatural relations (Rom 1:26-27). Private property laws only extend as far as the government allows them to and can be abrogated as deemed necessary. Indeed, the entire concept of morality predicated on God's Word is out today. "You may hold it for yourself if you wish (to the extent that we let you), but don't expect anyone else to." The concept of Objective Morality -- a Christian concept predicated on a Sovereign Lawgiver -- is mostly out. Right and wrong are determined by individuals and by consensus, not by any reality involved. Theoretically in this type of moral system if the group decides that, say, slavery is good, it will be considered good and reinstated as a practice.

And so it goes. In the "values vacuum" we've created by removing Christian values, anything can happen. We can eliminate the longstanding, traditional version of marriage. We can make it mandatory that parents have no say if their 8-year-old son wants to be a girl and have the permanent surgical changes to accomplish it. (Oh, the parents will pay for it; they'll just have no say in it.) We can make the people finance the murder of babies. What else? Legalize pedophiles? Mandate state-sponsored theft? Make religion illegal? "No!" some will say. But on what basis? We are no longer a Christian nation -- no longer burdened with Christian values. Whose will we take? That's up for grabs ... and without any foundation.