Things That Confuse Both Evangelicals and Liberals

It gets confusing sometimes.  Why do protestants so often cling to the idea that the U.S. is a "Christian nation" and why do liberals fight so hard to dismiss the idea?  The again, why do liberals continue to use Christian language and ethical principles to reach their goals and yet say that "separation" is the standard?  Are both groups being inconsistent with history?  Are they being manipulative?  Or maybe there is something else -- something even more nefarious?  Or perhaps something really simple.


History teaches us.  Well, history can teach us, but we have to learn from it lest the lesson fall on deaf ears.

So what is all this about a "Christian nation" anyway?  Well, there are a lot who think that the U.S. is, because of its history, a protestant nation.  That's pretty true.  It's tough to argue anything else about the American population, except perhaps for Canada and Mexico.  But sometimes origins and ownership get mixed up.  This was, after all, just 200 years more or less after the Reformation.  We can easily forget that.  Time flies but ideas rarely take wing.

Mark Noll (The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind) notes (some of this is from his work and some are my conclusions from it and from other material) that protestants in the early days of the U.S. clung tightly to republicanism as the desired form of government.  Not the capital-R political party, but the governing principle.  To them it represented the best way to account for and deal with human freedom and moral responsibility.  That remains the case today.

But things never stay the same.  The 19th century saw a shift in protestant thinking.  The world was getting better and better and missions and government became tools for the evangelical (and other protestants).  Even rejecting Rauschenbusch's "social gospel" many protestants remained socially engaged.  At least until the fundamentalist movement took hold in the 20th century.

The leftward swing forced evangelicals to sway back to their roots -- republicanism.  But again it's not like this was a party matter on their part.  We can hear it loud and clear today -- the constructionist view of the Constitution reflects the return to first principles.  There is a rejection of the liberal whose loss of meaning (even in the simplest language) and regular calls for violent revolt are seen as socially destructive.  And they are.  Are they not?

Liberals cannot help but borrow Christian language and principles from Schleiermacher, Rauschenbusch, and Ritchl.  They inherited the a religious tradition.  Though these three had nothing at all to do with our nation's founding they did influence religious thought.  They did not get it all from Marx and Hegel.  Some, perhaps.  But not all.  What is unmistakable is how German these ideas are.  Their liberalism contributed significantly to the problems (both of them) of 20th century Germany.  Ethical standard with a Person to obey opened the door to all sorts if issues.  Reason proved inadequate, and that's a fact of history.

Protestants did not distrust the Catholics because of their skin color.  They distrusted Rome's theology and theocracy.  They distrusted what Rome did to Europe and even to some of their own families and property.  The Church of England represented the same thing to many, though perhaps in a lower form.  Protestants in the 19th century U.S. were diverse but often worked together.  From the Wesley revivals and onward the number of "born again" evangelicals in the U.S. grew rapidly and their social influence was unmistakable.  Abolition.

It was liberal Sanger who distrusted the Italian poor because of their ethnicity.

Yes, only a few of the Founding Fathers were evangelical.  And the founding documents represent a more-than-a-little influence from the French Rationalists.  It was their disciples (like Jefferson) who maintained and attempted to contain slavery.  (Liberals have tried containment twice now and it just does not work.)

Thanks to people like Edmund Burke the Rationalists were kept out of England.  (So to speak.)  The revolutions of Rousseau and Paine were kept at bay.  Their influence in the U.S. is notable, but so was Burke's conservatism.  And so was the evangelical protestant voice.  A cacophony of world views and only one could end slavery.  As happened in England, it was not the work of the Rationalists which could accomplish this task.

The rise of the evangelical voice today is no anomaly. The lull created by the mid-20th century fundamentalist was the anomaly.  A loud protestant and evangelical voice is a social conscience.  Like John the Baptist to Herod it is a call to a nation.