Sermon Tone Analysis

Christianity and Politics in Modern America: How Might We Think About Our Roles?

/Various/

I)       Introduction

A)    News Article:

1)      Fox News, reporting on Sept. 29th:

/For more than half a century, members of the clergy in the United States have been prevented by federal law from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit.

But now, with five weeks to go until Election Day, some clergy are saying the 2008 presidential election is too important to remain publicly impartial, and they are openly breaking the ban./

/On Sunday, the Rev. Wiley Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, California, put his congregation at risk of losing its tax-exempt status by endorsing third-party candidate Alan Keyes for president./

/"If I've been asked once, I've been asked a dozen or more times, why are you doing what you are doing," said Drake, who was once targeted by the IRS for supporting political candidates from the pulpit.

/

/"Well I'm doing what I'm doing because I'm angry, I'm mad./

/He is not alone.

Thirty-two other pastors across the country participated over the weekend in a campaign called "Pulpit Freedom Sunday," organized by the Alliance Defense Fund, a socially conservative legal consortium based in Arizona./

2)      Blogger, The Reformed Pastor:

/Pastors who are getting into partisan politics in the pulpit are abusing their office and their calling.

Preach about moral issues in light of Scripture and theology all you want, but when you get partisan you wind up portraying God as a mere politician….

[Choosing between political candidates is] something that all Christians are called to do as they live as citizens of a democratic polity, but it has no place in the proclamation of God’s eternal Word.

By helping the ADF pursue their legal crusade, these pastors are doing an enormous disservice to their congregations, and the ADF is doing one to the churches that it is supposed to be dedicated to serve./

B)     Religion and Politics

1)      Two things we’re told that we are never to discuss in good company.

Convictions are often very strong in these areas and the likelihood of a conversation about either religion or politics, or especially about religion and politics – the likelihood of such a conversation becoming volatile is pretty good.

I know first hand.

As some of you know, as I have somewhat jokingly told you recently, I thought my good friend Bill and I, who work together on a daily basis, were going to end up wrestling in the work truck on the way to the job site as we began discussing both politics and religion; He initially more politics and I more religion but eventually it became a manic menagerie of the two.

2)      Well, how should Christians think about religion and politics?

More specifically, how should we as Christians, in the United States of America, in 2008, with the presidential election coming in a little over a week, think about our rights or duties as they relate to our dual citizenship?

We, as born again believers in Jesus Christ, being citizens of the Kingdom of God, and also, by nature of the fact that we live in this world, being citizens the kingdom of man; specifically for us the particular kingdom, if you will, of the United States of America.

C)    My approach this morning:

1)      There are several different ways in which I think we could consider this important topic and I considered pursuing several of them.

(1)   It would be helpful to think in the categories of the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man or as Augustine articulated it: the City of God and the City of Man.

(2)   We might also continue the discussion that’s been going on, formally over the last 50 years or so but practically since Christianity came into existence, of the relationship between Christ and culture.

To use some of the terms that H.

Richard Niebuhr used when he published his enormously influential book Christ and Culture in 1951, is Christ /against culture/, /of culture/, or /above culture/?

Are we to lookup on the world with animosity?

Should we withdrawal from the world and everything in it?

And if so, to what extent?

Should we, like the Anabaptists of old or the Amish of today, build our own communities and separate ourselves completely?

Or should we see one of our main purposes as Christians to bring Christ to bear on the culture, to transform culture for Christ’s sake, and if so, how ought we to do this?

Through the political process?

By legislating morality?

Do we want a Christian state, where the job of the state is to enforce the laws that we as Christians see as the biblically binding?

And if so, which ones do we agree are binding?

The question of Christ and culture is far from an easy one.

And in fact, as D. A. Carson has rightly pointed out, to reduce our thinking about our relationship to the world around us strictly to these categories that Niebuhr developed, though they are indeed helpful in many ways, is rather reductionisitic and simply incapable of fully addressing all of the issues.

2)      And so there are several ways I could have approached the subject this morning.

And as I wrestled with it I decided, as I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear, to try and be as simple as possible; which unfortunately, necessarily means I will undoubtedly over-simplify many issues.

What I want to do this morning is simply address some principles we must keep in mind: both those that are derived from the Scriptures that we as Christians ought to live by, and those which are the foundations of the government in which we live; and in the process to point out what I see as some misunderstandings that I think many people have which then wrongly inform their thinking on these issues.

My goal, quite simply, is to aid you to think biblically, informedly, and logically, through the choices we must make as both Bible-believing followers of Jesus Christ and citizens of the United States of America.

II)     Main Body

A)    Main Point

America is not, nor has it ever been, a Christian nation.

1)      Expounded

(1)   Does that surprise you?

I fully understand if it does.

For with all the historically ignorant rhetoric that flies about, especially out of the mouths of Christian leaders who should be deeply concerned with accuracy and truth but unfortunately aren’t always, it would be very easy to buy in to and indeed I think most have brought into the idea that America was founded upon Christianity and was a Christian nation.

It was not.

(2)   Now it may be necessary here for me to be very specific about whom I call a Christian.

The Christian is not just someone who is moral; there are no doubt some very moral atheists.

A Christian is not just someone who believes in God; Muslims believe in god, Mormons believe in god, Jews believe in god, but none of them are Christians.

All kinds of people claim to believe in god who are not Christians.

Christians, quite simply, are those people, whom by God’s grace, have seen the sinfulness of their souls and their need for salvation, and have run to the only source of salvation: Jesus Christ; and through repentance and faith have embraced His gospel.

They believe the fundamentals of the faith:

(a)    They believe that Jesus Christ was and is the Eternal Son of God.

(b)   They believe that he was born of a virgin.

(c)    They believe that he was crucified and that His death was the only source of atonement for sins and that after three days he rose bodily, physically from the grave and that He is now presently reigning in Heaven until that day in which He will return to judge the entirety of mankind according to His perfect unfailing righteousness and justice.

(3)   Many, if not most, of our founding fathers did not believe these things.

Allow me to give you a couple of quotes that you might find disturbing:

(a)    Thomas Jefferson:

(i)      /The attributes of the Jewish God are degrading and injurious to morality and not only imperfect but often irreconcilable with the sound dictates of reason./

(ii)    /Because the disciples were the most unlettered and ignorant of men, Jesus’ teachings found in the Bible are mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible./

(iii)   / If by religion people mean doctrines this would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it, but if the moral precepts, innate in man, and made a part of his physical constitution as necessary for his social being, if the sublime doctrines of philanthropism and Deism, taught us by Jesus of Nazareth, in which we all agree constitute true religion, then without it, this would be, something indeed not even to be named, indeed a hell.

/

(iv)  He spoke of the miracles of Jesus, His claim to deity, salvation from sin and the like as “impious heresies.”

(b)    John Adams:

(i)      /My adoration of the author of the universe is too profound and too sincere of the love of god and his creation, delight, joy, triumph, exultation, in my own existence, though but an atom, a molecule organic in the universe, are my religion.

Howl, snarl bite ye Calvinistic, ye Athanasian divines if ye will, ye say I am no Christian, I say ye are no Christians and there the account is balanced./

(c)    Benjamin Franklin:

(i)      /Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures.

It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.

/

(d)   Other who gave evidence of being deists or heavily influenced by its tenants include: Cornelius Harnett, Gouverneur Morris, Hugh Williamson, James Madison, possibly Alexander Hamilton, Ethan Allen, Elihu Palmer, and undoubtedly Thomas Paine (who published The Age of Reason, a treatise that helped to popularize deism throughout America and Europe).

(4)   Now let me say, just give you briefly, in case you are wondering, a quick definition of a Deist.

According to Oxford’s dictionary they are those who /belie[ve] in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe./

They may borrow much of their language and morality from Christianity but they are not indeed Christians.

2)      Applied

(1)   To say that America was or – and you’ve got to be, almost willfully blind or honestly ignorant to espouse this – /is/ a Christian nation is quite frankly wrong.

Were some of them Christians?

Probably, my history is not good enough to tell you.

But were all of them Christians or even the majority of the Christians?

No. Deists?

Yes.

Moralists?

Yes.

Bible-believing born again followers of Jesus Christ?

No.

And there intention, thankfully, never was to set up a Christian nation.

Did they borrow many of the morals that found within Christianity?

Absolutely.

But that does not make them Christians.

(2)   Now I say /thankfully/ there desire never was to set up a “Christian Nation” because my friends, what it seems the majority of Christians in America have forgotten, is the horrible evils that have historically been associated with any nation that takes religion on as a function of the government; that has, a State Church.

Ask the myriads of Protestants, like you and I, who were burned at the stake under the heavy hand of Queen Mary as she restored Roman Catholicism as the state church in England and Ireland.

We as Baptists, above all people, should understand the horrors of such a concept as we were heavily persecuted even by our protestant brothers, in places where Presbyterianism and the necessity of infant baptism remained a part of the governmental structure.

(3)   My friends, if the radical right wing Christian fundamentalists ever get their way and America becomes a “Christian Nation” then I’m making sure my passport is up to date and I’m leaving.

Who is going to decide which doctrines are right and which are wrong?