In my last post, I mentioned the common opinion among
many Christians that America is (or at least was originally) a Christian nation
and stated my disagreement with that assertion. This time, I’ll be exploring
that issue because I think it important that we have a proper view of America
and more importantly a proper view of God and because I believe that assigning
America the title of “Christian nation” distorts our view of both, not to
mention our understanding of what it means to be Christian.
Before I address the validity of the “Christian nation”
assertion, though, it’s necessary to define it. As Russell Moore explains in
this short video (which I would highly recommend watching), the claim being
evaluated is not that America is home to many people who call themselves
Christians but rather that America is a special nation who has a special
covenantal relationship with God that is evident from the time of our early
settlers.
Another term for this approach to looking at our nation’s
past is “providential history,” espoused most famously by men such as David
Barton and Peter Marshall. The term “providential history” can be disarming for
Christians because we do believe that God is sovereign and that He providentially
works in all things. This is in contrast to Deists, who see God as the Creator
who then stepped back to be a distant observer, thoroughly unconcerned with
occurrences on earth.
That God is intimately concerned with us humans, however, is
clear. Take a passage in Isaiah for example. In the midst of revealing that He
will use a pagan king (Cyrus) to accomplish His purposes, God says “‘I
form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the
LORD, who does all these things’” (Isaiah 45:7, ESV). In the next
chapter, God states, “I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet
done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish my purpose,’
calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it”
(Isaiah 46:9b-11, ESV).
Elsewhere Scripture is filled with examples of God’s using
weather, people, and nations to accomplish His purposes, but while Scripture is
clear that God is not unconnected from His creation and that He has an end to
which He is bringing all things, we must be careful not to misapply these
truths about God, as providential history does, to declare that America’s role
as a nation-state in God’s plan can be specifically identified.
As one of my college history professors explains,
providential history takes things a step further from the belief that God is
providential to the belief that it is possible (and good) to determine exactly
why events happen and to articulate specifically how they fit (or do not fit)
into God’s plan. In short, it places us in the position to explain God. Anybody
else see the issue here?
We’re talking about the God who says “For as the heavens are higher
than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your
thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9, ESV). Are we really prepared to assert our
understanding to the same level as God’s? Somehow I don’t think it’s really a
good idea to presume that we can always identify why God allows things to happen
the way they do. After all, look at the response Job got from God when he made
such a presumption!
But it’s not just our view of God that is at stake here; our
view of America should be accurate too.
Although I admittedly haven’t looked into this, I’m fairly
certain that providential history is a uniquely American phenomenon. What I do
know is that providential history in America places our country in a significantly
high position in the scheme of God’s plan, a plan which providential historians
have no qualms in articulating. They also assert that this means we were
founded as a Christian nation.
The most glaring objection to the idea of a “Christian nation,”
as Dr. Moore mentions, is that technically speaking only individuals can be
Christians. Becoming a Christian involves personal belief in Christ’s atoning
death on the cross and repentance of one’s sins and thus cannot happen to a
collective entity. That angle aside, however, the position that providential
history assigns to America elevates the country to “Teacher’s pet” status,
wrongly imputing special divine favor to the nation, just as the nation of
Israel had in the Old Testament. This can lead to a mistakenly high view of our
own importance both in relation to God and to the rest of the nations.
In fact, there is no Scriptural basis for America’s being
the “New Israel.” Providentialists Peter Marshall and David Manuel explain in
their book The Light and the Glory
(which is part of their three-volume series revealingly titled “God’s Plan for
America”) that this idea was one which the Puritans (early settlers to North
America—but by no means the first settlers as the authors call them) themselves
coined. In Marshall’s and Manuel’s own words:
“Further browsing in the history section [of the Harvard Book Store]
revealed that the first settlers consciously thought of themselves as a people
called into a covenant relationship with God similar to the one He had
established with ancient Israel. The Pilgrims and Puritans, looking at the
parallels between the ways in which God had led them to America and the Old
Testament stories of God’s dealings with ancient Israel, saw themselves as
called to found a “New Israel” (in their phrase), which would be a light to the
whole world” (17).
I could go on a lengthy critique of the authors’
historiography here, but even accepting the Puritans’ view as a given, suffice
it to say that their holding to this belief should by no means be enough for us
to embrace it ourselves. As thinking Christians, we are to hold every claim up
against Scripture to test its validity, and the claim that America was given a special
mission from God (to the exclusion of other nations) finds no support in the
Bible.
Yes, the Puritans could have been thinking of the Great
Commission call that believers have—the call to spread the gospel throughout
the world—and would have been completely justified in looking at their
settlement of America through what we would today call “missional” eyes. But to
believe that “God had put a specific
‘call’ on this country and the people whom He brought to inhabit it” and
that “In the virgin wilderness of
America, God was making His most significant attempt since ancient Israel to
create a ‘New Israel’ of people living in obedience to biblical principles,
through faith in Jesus Christ,” is to vastly overstretch the matter (20).
As is most often the case with providential history, the
authors are using the Puritans’ words to assign to America what should properly
be assigned to the Church. The Church is God’s instrument of advancing His
kingdom, not America. Have American Christians been used by God to spread the
gospel to the four corners of the earth? Absolutely. But they are members of
the Church who just happen to be American. There are other brothers and sisters
in Christ from all over the world who have done and are doing exactly the
same—including sending missionaries to
America.
We must be very careful not to inflate our egos or to
project the promises and purpose given to the Church onto the nation that
happens to be our home. We must evaluate messages that we encounter in light of
the Truth of Scripture, recognizing that untruths can often sound very much
like truths—indeed, can be slight distortions of truths.
So how do we recognize providential history when we see it? I’m so glad you asked… ;) Stay tuned next time for some examples of
providential history and explanations of how to evaluate them.
Citation: Marshall, Peter and David Manuel. The Light and the Glory: 1492-1793. Rev. and expanded ed. Grand Rapids: Revell, 2009.
