OPINION:
The United States is not and never has been a Christian nation.
As I argue in “Serpents and Doves: Christians, Politic, and the Art of Bearing Witness,” Christians are a distinct group of individuals united by faith in Jesus Christ who seek to point to and glorify the Triune God. Throughout the history of the United States, however, leaders in the political and religious realms have often made it seem as though America was and should continue to be “Christian.”
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Commenting on American civil religion, sociologist Robert Bellah notes, “The American Civil religion was never anticlerical or militantly secular. On the contrary, it borrowed selectively from the religious tradition [of Christianity] in such a way that the average American saw no conflict between the two.” Unfortunately, seeing no conflict between America and Christianity does not mean that America and Christians always have the same objectives.In fact, the opposite is often the case.
Some Christians may be tempted to see the recent decision by Louisiana lawmakers to require that the Ten Commandments be posted in all public schools as an unqualified good. While we should encourage our political authorities to align our society with God’s order by, for instance, doing justice and maintaining a certain standard of morality, Christians should be less than enthusiastic about the political uses of the biblical text. Christians need to recognize the difficulties associated with the assimilation of the biblical text by governing authorities.
First, Christians should acknowledge that when the Ten Commandments are used by political authorities, there is a tendency for “God” to become a generic term that does not refer to the Triune God of the scriptures. Read in the context of the biblical story, the Ten Commandments speak against aspects of our nation’s constitution, namely, the freedom of religion. The first three commandments (or words) require an unreserved commitment to the Lord as God. This is not a generic higher power, but the God who liberated Israel from Egypt and would later raise Jesus from the dead. This specific and exclusive claim is, at best, pushed to the background and, at worst, denied by reconceptualizing God as a non-specific higher power.
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Second, the commandments in both Exodus and Deuteronomy begin with a reference to the Lord’s deliverance of His people from Egypt. Detaching the commandments from the story of God’s redemption, which the Louisiana law does, allows a specific portion of the biblical text to be incorporated into American history and civil religion. For instance, the Louisiana law makes no mention of the Bible’s authority as divine revelation, but consistently highlights the historic use of the Ten Commandments as a means of summarizing “civic morality.”
Requiring the display of the Ten Commandments seems to be motivated by religious zeal, but not Christian zeal. As such, Christians need to be wary of celebrating the law without, at the same time, acknowledging that the law is not advocating that all public school children become disciples of Christ. Instead, the law seeks to create good citizens of the United States and active practitioners of America’s civil religion.
Finally, encouraging people to follow some moral code is appropriate, yet that isn’t all that displaying the Ten Commandments in schools is doing. The moral code is embedded within a story about our nation that competes with the Christian story. It is not so much that Christianity and the United States are at odds at every turn. There is generally an overlap in the aim of the church and a given political regime in pursuing justice and peace. However, that overlap does not mean that the ultimate aim of the church and the state are the same. They will, at some point, diverge because the church recognizes the lordship of Jesus Christ and the governing authorities do not.
Incorporating the Ten Commandments in public schools is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the desire to encourage a general morality aligned with God’s order is encouraging. Christians and the governing authorities share a desire to curtail murder, theft, the integrity of the family, and truth-telling. On the other, Christians must recognize the gap between affirming moral principles and being transformed by the Holy Spirit.
So how should Christians think about the law regarding the Ten Commandments in Louisiana?
We should recognize that displaying the Ten Commandments in schools reinforces American civil religion rather than Christianity. The intermingling of Christian ideas, biblical passages, and Christians throughout America’s history is not trivial. There are positive benefits that we reap every day from governing principles inspired by the Bible more generally and the Ten Commandments in particular. At the same time, however, Christians must take care to distinguish between being inspired by God’s word and living under the authority of God’s inspired word. The former draws selectively from the Bible and Christian tradition to serve a broader American project. The latter recognizes America’s governing authorities are subject to the Triune God whether they acknowledge Him or not.
The Louisiana law may be the latest shell fired in America’s culture war, but Christians need to remember that we are not responsible for fixing a broken culture, but for living as a distinct people within that culture as we wait for the culmination of God’s kingdom.
As we wait, we must resist the temptation to adopt America’s civil religion. America’s civil religion confuses the message of the gospel by substituting wholesomeness for holiness. It aims to retain “baseball and apple pie” rather than acknowledging the authority of a crucified Savior. As Christians, we must recognize that American civil religion presses truth into the service of a false narrative in which the United States assumes the status of the people of God without accepting the obligations associated with being the people of God.
In short, it is a false religion. As such, Christians must take care to distinguish the church from the state so that God’s people may point to and glorify the Triune God amid a world that does not acknowledge Him.
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James Spencer earned his Ph.D. in Theological Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He believes discipleship will open up opportunities beyond anything God’s people could accomplish through their own wit and wisdom. As such, his writing aims at helping believers look with eyes that see and listen with ears that hear as they consider, question, and revise the social, cultural, and political assumptions hindering Christians from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. James has published multiple works, including “Christian Resistance: Learning to Defy the World and Follow Christ,” “Useful to God: Eight Lessons from the Life of D. L. Moody,” “Thinking Christian: Essays on Testimony,” “Accountability, and the Christian Mind,’ and “Trajectories: A Gospel-Centered Introduction to Old Testament Theology.” In addition to serving as the president of the D. L. Moody Center, James is the host of “Useful to God” a weekly radio broadcast and podcast, a member of the faculty at Right On Mission, and an adjunct instructor with the Wheaton College Graduate School.
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