I must confess, I am a conservative, right wing, Tea Party supporter in politics and an Orthodox Quaker in my Christian faith but I have some major concerns with the new Christian revisionist attitude in America evangelical churches and conservative politicians in regards to making America a Christian nation. There is much in the history of America that is far from our Christian foundation. We are being told by those who are profiting from the Christian patriotism attitude that our Founding Fathers were strong Christians, but we have a history of injustice in our country. I am reminded of four Quakers who were hanged on the Boston Commons for preaching Jesus Christ. Also, the intolerance our Founding Fathers had for religion other than theirs. There wasn't a lot of Christian love in the beginning of our Nation.
I do realize there is a hunger in America to return to what we view as Christian values. In terms of holiness theology America needs a revival. America needs to return to the old paths of righteousness and holiness. We do not need American Christian patriotism to get America back to God. Now that I have lost some of my reader let’s see if I lose some more. Most American Christians are gullible and have bought into the God-and-country preaching while tolerating theological heresy and scandals in leadership when the politics are conservative. Many American Christians have sacrificed their doctrine on the altar of political conservatism. There are Christians who hold the Constitution more sacred than the Word of God.
How many times has America “Christianity” been used as a political agenda to secure power and position for the conservative politician? American Christians have bowed at the golden calf of economic prosperity and security and forgotten to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. We have chosen Caesar over Jesus Christ.
The new “Christian” leaders of today are the "Osteen" brand of Christianity, never talking about the reason America is faltering in it devotion to Jesus Christ—sin. Our political Christian superstars may be fighting the cultural war but they have lost the battle to sin. The American Christian political leaders have overlooked the Kingdom of God and are proclaiming the Kingdom America. The utopian politics of a Christian America is not the message of Jesus Christ. We are pilgrims and strangers in this land, looking for a city that is not of this world. I would love to have an America without the problems of drugs, abortion, child abuse, poverty, war and crime, but that is not going to happen. The message of “getting back to God” has been reduced to a political slogan. The message America needs is the gospel of Jesus Christ who died for our sins and was resurrected to destroy the works of Satan and the power of sin and death over mankind.
Jesus said that we cannot serve God and mammon. America Christianity has sold its soul to prosperity, power and celebrity. As I said earlier, most American Christians are gullible and have bought into the God-and-country preaching while tolerating theological heresy. The new “Conservative Christian” leaders today rely more upon the philosophy of an atheist (Ayn Rand) than upon the teachings of Jesus Christ. The reality is many of the far-right “Christians” are not even Christian. Am I judging? Yes I am. By their fruits ye shall know them. God made me a fruit inspector to judge between ripe and rotten and there is the smell of rotten on many of our so-called political conservative Christians.
If the political history of this country continues at present rate it will take a major revision to make America to look like a Christian nation in the future. Our concern should not be to paint this nation as a Christian nation but rather to become what we tell people we are--Christians. The actions of our politicians speak volumes about our spiritual condition as a nation. There is a need for much repenting and turning from sin if we are as a nation to “get back to God.”
Jesus said that he would build his church, and he will build it on the statement, Thou art the Christ the son of the living God. He doesn’t need American Christianity to do it. The first-generation of Quaker preachers and evangelists understood themselves as a re-emergence of the true, spiritual Church of Christ. One of the principal slogans of the early Quaker movement was "primitive Christianity revived." Early Friends claimed that the Church had fallen into apostasy in the centuries since the events detailed in the Book of Acts, and they believed that the new Quaker movement represented not a new sect, but a rebirth of the first-century Church. There is an orthodox primitive New Testament Christianity flourishing around the world and it is a re-emergence of a spiritual returning to Jesus Christ. The history of this county may have had its foundations on principles based on the Word of God but we have a history that does not conform to our foundation. Regardless of how the historians revise our history we as a nation have reduced God to a slogan and sold our souls to Caesar.
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