America is Not a Christian Nation
It’s better that way.
It’s puzzling to hear individuals use the term “Christian nation” to describe America. Surely you’ve heard it, as 53% of Americans are convinced we have a special relationship with God.
But that doesn’t make much sense.
To make it work, you must either drastically alter the message of Christ or you must drastically alter the history of America.
Christianity’s namesake, Jesus Christ, was a homeless, blue-collar, middle-Eastern, pacifist (see also: here, here, and here).
America’s calling card, the American Dream, is ensconced in wealthy, fortunate, nationalistic, imperialism.
Hm.
America has never been a Christian nation, it isn’t now, and it shouldn’t ever be. We can look at a timeline of U.S history and see that there was essentially no era where America resembled Christianity, the Founding Fathers clearly did not intend it, and it wouldn’t work if it was now.
“Let’s win this nation back for God!”
When was America ever a nation “for God”? We have a tendency to look at the past through rose-colored glasses as if America had a “golden age,” where everyone was morally upright and worshiped God because the phrase “In God We Trust” is on our currency, and no one had iPhones then. We watch an episode of Leave It To Beaver and dream of better days.
In terms of morality, America has never had anything even resembling a “golden age.” If we need to reconcile America to its former period of pinnacle morality, when exactly was that time? I can’t find it. Such a bold statement should be put under the knife. Here’s a rough breakdown of America’s moral timeline.
America’s Moral Timeline
Pre-1776: Colonization pre-Declaration of Independence is littered with white person after white person hammering out coastal land masses from indigenous peoples and renaming it as their own (stealing). And lest we forget the Siege of Fort Pitt, where General Amherst’s plan to send smallpox in blankets to Native Americans is very well documented. Colonists were incredibly efficient at genocide. Try to comprehend this quote from William M. Denevan, author of The Native Population of the Americas in 1492:
Research by some scholars provides population estimates of the pre-contact Americas to be as high as 112 million in 1492, while others estimate the population to have been as low as eight million. In any case, the native population declined to less than six million by 1650.
1776–1783: This all starts with the founding document of our nation, the Declaration of Independence. Church and state relations become immensely complex with every drop of ink that dries on the page. I’m going to come full circle later and talk about the founding fathers, but outside the realm of a nation’s birth, indentured servitude is rampant among affluent colonials. Indentured servitude is a fancy way to say “temporary slave.” To be fair, some of them came willingly in order to have a chance in the New World. Still, others did not. From Wikipedia (a valid source, high school teachers):
Indentured servants could not marry without the permission of their master, were subject to physical punishment (like many young ordinary servants), and saw their obligation to labor enforced by the courts. To ensure uninterrupted work by the female servants, the law lengthened the term of their indenture if they became pregnant.
I’ve heard some people say “slavery was just a part of culture. They didn’t view it as wrong.”
No, they definitely did. That’s why, in 1776, the words “all men are created equal” were penned by men who owned several slaves. Slaves were kept because they represented wealth, prosperity, and an enormous pillar to a “white savior” complex. It was a “necessary evil.”
1783–1861: The end of the American Revolution to the end of the Civil War.
Slavery is rampant, and a nation fights against itself over it.
There is a silver lining, however. Toward the end of the this time period, Walt Whitman was alive and well.
1861–1914: America turns to her old ways and, in the name of God under the tactful PR guise of “Manifest Destiny”, pushes westward in a never-ending lust for land at the expense of those who already lived there.
Manifest Destiny has 3 central tenants:
- The special virtues of the American people and their institutions
- America’s mission to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian America
- An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty
In short, it’s the belief that Americans are better and the excitement of a young nation rising to prosperity takes precedence over just about everything else.
1914–1945: In 1919, we have what is known as the Red Summer. The Red Summer was named after several thousand black citizens were killed in race riots across the country. Right here in Elaine, Arkansas, an estimated 100–250 African-Americans were killed (read at your own discretion. I couldn’t hardly finish it). They don’t tell you about the Red Summer in school.
In 1920, the U.S government recognizes women as citizens, and allows them to vote.
In 1924, officials pull immigration to a screeching halt. The Immigration Act of 1924 “limited immigration from countries where 2% of the total U.S. population, per the 1890 census (not counting African Americans), were immigrants from that country.”
The Harding Administration is caught in the Teapot Dome scandal, which involves soliciting bribes for political favors.
Towards the end of the Great Depression, unionized workers went on strike, some of which led to physical conflict with law enforcement.
FDR prepares the nation for war, and once joining, imprisons over 100,000 Japanese-American citizens across the nation in internment camps.
The war ended when the U.S dropped weapons of mass destruction on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
We often present the dropping of the a-bombs as a fact of history without thinking hard about what that actually means. Nearly 130,000 people were killed instantly. But many more died after the bombs fell.
In the years following, several children were born with birth defects due to radiation. Increase in radiation exposure caused individuals to contract cancer in the long run (which is sort of counterintuitive. Read about it here).
Here’s an excerpt from a report produced by the K=1 Project, Columbia University’s Center for Nuclear Studies.
Among the long-term effects suffered by atomic bomb survivors, the most deadly was leukemia. An increase in leukemia appeared about two years after the attacks and peaked around four to six years later. Children represent the population that was affected most severely. Attributable risk — the percent difference in the incidence rate of a condition between an exposed population and a comparable unexposed one — reveals how great of an effect radiation had on leukemia incidence.
1946–1965: More racism. (Note: Overt racism not confined to defined timespan.)
1965–1980: Vietnam was bad, bad, bad. It was bad for everyone. It was bad for us, and it was bad for Vietnam. Not bad just for the casualties, bad in every way. The U.S was superbly underprepared which led to a long, drawn-out affair.
Eventually, the U.S resorted to the use of chemical defoliants. Known as Agent Pink, Agent White, Agent Blue, Agent Green, Agent Purple, and of course, Agent Orange. These chemicals, dubbed the “Rainbow Herbicides”, systematically destroyed entire ecosystems, food chains, and lives. “Chemical warfare” is a term that conjures images of evil warfare tactics on the other side of the world, but hat was us not long ago.
1980–1992: We stockpiled nuclear weapons so that Russia would be scared of us. I sort of envision this as holding someone’s collar with a clenched fist waiting to strike. It’s sort of weird. It’s like microaggression and passive aggression rolled up into one big nuclear warhead.
1992-present: Twice we invade the same area of the world. Children in Iraqi schools are drawing pictures of drones killing people in class. Over 500,000 Iraqi citizens have died to due to war. We are being taught to fear the entirety of Islam. Our country denied large quantities of refugees because the most wealthy nation in the world “didn’t have the resources.” We are excluding groups of people from normality on the basis of our own fears.
Why?
This timeline is not to prove that Christian’s don’t act like Christians. We know that. This timeline is to show that the American government does not aim to answer to a Christian moral code. Nor should it. Governments are not people. Governments are not singular entities. They are the sum of many moving parts. Governments are non-human creations that are ran by humans.
The Government of the United States has no more ability to obey God than the mug I sip from. The government does not have the ability to think for itself and decide to be Christian.
One could say “But humans make the choices for the government.” Yes, they most certainly do. We allow people from all walks of life to run our government. That means that people who aren’t Christian will be involved with how the government performs. And some of those who claim to be Christian certainly don’t act that way.
If we required every government official to be a Christian and made the U.S government officially a “Christian nation”, we would be living in a theocracy.
The Christian community has yet to face the reality that “free, Christian nation” is an oxymoron. Americans are free to act as they please. “Freedom” is central to the American identity. In that sense, the ability to do as you please, is not central to the Christian dogma.
Let’s Wrap It Up
The desire to be governed by a nation that supports your personal values is misguided. Deep down, I believe it is motivated out of fear. We have lost the ability to understand those we are unfamiliar with, and instead we turn the other way and cry to our government to “get it together” and make it all go away for us. Depending on worldly entities to rid your life of things that make you uncomfortable is lazy reactivity. It’s a microcosm of a personal blame game that requires the dismissal of personal adherence to a higher moral code.
When we attribute Christian ideals to the government, we run into an impassable field of speed bumps to defend it. We are confronted with hypocrisy, lying, cheating, bribery, and much more heinous activity. America is a western nation, not a Christian nation.
Requiring that our government have our ideological backs makes it incredibly difficult to remember which kingdom we belong to. The line between “church” and “state” can’t be blurred. When the state encroaches upon the church and the church returns the favor, both lose sight of their original purpose.
We have the ability be Christian without our government being the same. And we should absolutely strive for that. It’s better that way.
