April 28, 2018
In my lifetime I have seen Bible readings and prayer abolished in public schools, the Ten Commandments removed from public buildings, nativity scenes banned from public property, clergy participation outlawed in graduation ceremonies, religious-themed music no longer present in public schools’ choral music and references to Christian influence removed from history books. There are now more Arabs living within ten miles of my high school than any other place outside the Middle East, and a large percentage of them are Muslim.
Some schools have tried to prohibit students from carrying Bibles or even praying informally. Many businesses have disallowed employees to have religious symbols at their workstations. Cursing and vile language now spew from radios and televisions. Hate language against evangelical Christianity does not draw nearly as much condemnation as hate language against virtually any other group.
There is no doubt that Christian values, Christian symbols and Christian expression have suffered greatly in the arena of public practice and behavior in the last 60 or so years. The world we live in has changed drastically from the one my generation grew up in.
What I have been describing is a phenomenon called Civil Religion. In our society we don’t expect everybody to be a Christian or to believe in God. But we expect a tacit recognition that our nation was built on values delineated in the Bible and espoused by Christians. We expect respect to be shown for our history and the values of what we believe is a majority of Americans.
While these are indeed ominous signs in our society, the jury is still out on how it may affect the real work of Christ in America and around the world. After all, the Bible says very little, if anything, about civil religion. If people choose not to place their faith in Jesus Christ, and choose to live by their own ideas rather than the Bible’s teachings, their gestures of respect toward Christianity are worse than meaningless — they lead others to think that’s all the God requires of us.
In much of the Old Testament we have the record of life in Israel and Judah. These were theocracies, ordained by God Himself. Other religions were not tolerated, as Israel consisted of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, under a covenant with God to be His holy people. Intermarrying with the surrounding nations was forbidden, as were any violations of the laws set forth by Moses. God was the ruler and the king was His representative to maintain a godly order.
The theocracy ended with the captivity, nearly 600 years before Christ. Since that time the Jews, and now all of us, have lived under secular or pagan governments. Christianity was persecuted until Emperor Constantine gave it official recognition in 313 AD. Some time later it gained status as the official state religion of the empire. The Roman Church became dominant, and their ideas of Christianity were the law of the land. They saw no difference between civil religion and Christianity. Heresy was punishable by death, and the ultimate penalty was paid by many. But this was not a God-ordained theocracy as in the Old Testament.
In the 16th century the Reformation changed everything — a little. Throughout Europe millions of people became Lutherans or other forms of Protestants. However, most did not do so of their own free will, but as kings or other local or area leaders decreed, each little kingdom became Protestant or Catholic, with the following of that religion required by law. There was no freedom of religious practice or belief.
When the Anabaptists arose, they protested against the church-state thing and were persecuted for it. When they rebaptized people who had been baptized as infants, they were persecuted, and some were put to death (by drowning). They were seen as rejecting the law of the church and the law of the land, which saw salvation in infant baptism.
In the seventeenth century, a group of Congregationalists, persecuted by both the Catholic Church and the Church of England, came to the New World to practice their Christianity freely. They were followed by others — Baptists, Quakers, etc. Each set up their own colonies where their church teachings and expectations were enforced by law and supported by taxes.
By the late 1700s religious freedom had come to most of the colonies. So by the time of the leaders who formed our first government, our nation was set up as a secular democracy. Even the unbelievers recognized the place of religion in a just society, and that is obvious from the writings of these founders. There were deists, Unitarians, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians. Lutherans, Catholics and others. All had a great respect for God and for organized religion, but were careful in the Bill of Rights to protect the nation from a State-sponsored church.
It would not be right to call this a “Christian” nation, as there were only a select handful of Christian principles embodied in our society. Slavery was legal and rampant, duels were deemed an acceptable way of settling disputes, slaves, women and children had no rights. Since the early 1800s, the United States has had one of the highest homicide rates in the developed world. Women and children were abused in every possible way, with little or no legal recourse. In fact, elimination of the child-labor sweatshops did not fully occur until passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.
As the West was settled in the nineteenth century, the frontier was a terribly ungodly place. There was little or no law, few churches, and drunkenness, gambling, prostitution and violence of all kinds were the rule, rather than the exception.
It’s very difficult for me to call this a Christian nation through any of those years. Yes, there were laws against adultery and Sunday commerce, and nobody interfered with public expressions of Christianity — but society was anything but Christian.
In the time of Christ and the Apostles, the world was ruled by the Romans. They had a pantheon of gods and goddesses, which did not include the God of the Jews and the Christians. At the Jewish priests’ instigation, the Romans put Jesus Christ to death. They also put to death the Apostle Paul and most, if not all of the rest of the Apostles. When Rome burned, Emperor Nero blamed the Christians, causing an increase of their persecution. Yet the church not only survived — it thrived!
In 1949 the Communists expelled all Christian missionaries from China. Christianity was persecuted there from that point on. It was more than 30 years later that westerners were allowed into China to see what was going on there. Christianity has thrived since the persecution began. Today there may be as many born-again Christians in China as there are in the United States.
In general, when the Church has been persecuted it has grown, while the church in twentieth century America has grown cold and stale, virtually powerless for righteousness. We are, and always have been, a minority in this country. We have falsely assumed that everyone who celebrates Christmas, knows who Jesus was, and says they believe in God is a Christian.
On June 17, 1963 the United States Supreme Court decided that school-sponsored daily Bible reading in public schools was unconstitutional. When that ruling was announced I was director of Youth for Christ in Springfield, Illinois. The next week I spoke to a local Kiwanis Club. I remember saying to them, “It would be good for the children to have a reading from the Bible each day in school. However, I’m not sure that is really of much value, besides giving respect to the Bible as a worthwhile book. If parents do not teach their children the Bible at home and at church, they certainly should not expect the schools to do it. And if they teach it at home, the addition of a few moments of Bible reading at school is unnecessary.”
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a life-changing power. It is not particularly concerned with innocuous public displays of religion — it is concerned with the Holy Spirit of God living in people and making them Christlike, showing His love, sharing God’s love. The Gospel empowers us to reach out to the poor, the persecuted, the oppressed, the minorities. It commands us to love them with the love of Jesus and bring them into the family.
It is time for Christians in America to commit themselves to Christ in a deeper way than they ever have before and begin to shine out the love of Jesus. The darker the environment the brighter the light. When everybody liked public displays of religion nobody could tell the real Christians from the phonies. The more oppressive society becomes, the more power there is in our witness for Christ.
Bring it on!
by Ken McGarvey