Theological Journal – July 14 Lee Camp, Scandalous Witness (3)

PROPOSITION 3 American Hope Is a Bastard

America, despite poplar opinion, creates a bastard offspring whenever it forces itself upon Christian faith.

Ronald Reagan’s regular use if the Puritan John Winthrop’ image of the new world as a “city set on a hill” as a lens to (mis)interpret the Christian faith in an idolatrous way is a familiar example. This trope os nonpartisan being used on both the left and the right.

“For Paul, God entrusted a ministry of reconciliation to the church. The church, rather than grounding its identity in any form of ethnic superiority or nationalism, would in fact set aside the various mechanisms of power and hostility attached to particular identities. The church comprised people of every land, tribe, ethnicity, welcoming all. The church then was called to go forth and sow seeds of reconciliation. Hostility and partisanship were to be defeated through love of enemies and doing good for those who do us wrong.” (Kindle Loc.567)

“For Paul, it was the nonviolent baptized people of God who were to embody reconciled humanity. But for Reagan, it is now the United States of America, the shining city on a hill, projecting its global military might throughout the world, which is not ‘white or black, red or yellow.’ For Reagan, ‘they are not Jews or Christians; conservatives or liberals; or Democrats or Republicans.’ They are simply Americans.” (Kindle Loc.579)

Empires use strength and force to impose their will on others. In Revelation the martyrs are those who move history in the direction of reconciliation. 

“Clearly for Reagan history is not one damn meaningless thing after another. He refuses to spiritualize away the rhetoric of the New Testament. But he fundamentally changes the narrative. It is not the work of God in Christ evoking the end of history; it is not the people of God bearing humble, even suffering, witness to the work of God in Christ. Reagan has not merely redacted the story; he has changed the story. It is America, both agent of and witness to, the hope of the world.” (Kindle Loc.602)

When you make America the hero and hope of world history you bastardize Christian hope and irredeemably distort the gospel.

Why would Christians in American do this? Because they don’t realize they are liberals.

Liberalism

“Liberalism is a political theory and movement that focuses on the liberty of the individual over against various forms of authority or power.” (Kindle Loc.619)

This was a hallmark of the Enlightenment. Much that was old and traditional was left behind as people began to use their own minds to decide truth. Much of this new freedom and insight was welcome and helpful. Christianity even “contributed key philosophical resources needed in the rise of liberalism and democratic orders.” (Kindle Loc.631) This does not, of course, mean America is a Christian nation.

This emphasis on freedom if democratic choice rather than patriarchal or monarchical rule means that even as one protests on behalf of smaller government one does so as a good liberal.

A person should be free to determine their own economic future. “For an Enlightenment thinker like John Locke, the pursuit of happiness entailed the pursuit of the accumulation of property, the potential amassing of wealth according to an individual’s industry. Free-market capitalism, in other words, is liberalism made manifest in economic practice.” (Kindle Loc.642)

So also with religion. Everyone should be free to choose their own. No state church to coerce attendance, This too is liberalism.

Problem: “liberalism does not explicitly concern itself with a shared conception of the meaning of life, the purpose of life, or the end of history.” (Kindle Loc.648)

“It is, instead, seeking to hold together some loose collective in which peoples of diverse ultimate commitments may abide together. Not only does it refuse to give a principled answer to these sorts of questions, but it in fact also rejects the notion that commonly shared answers to many such questions should be addressed in our shared public life.” (Kindle Loc.653)

Liberalism privatizes our search for the good life but refuses to make that search a matter of public concern.

Ancient ethics, in distinction from Enlightenment ethics, began with the end or purpose of ethical inquiry in mind and then sought practices and principles commensurate with that end. The latter eschews such search for an end and leaves it to the individual.

Liberalism does require a minimal ethics for basic order in society. “But with the advent of liberalism, morality and rights are primarily seen as a restriction of human liberty, not the pathway to greater freedom. Morality becomes, under the purview of liberalism, a constraint to human freedom.” (Kindle Loc.676)

“One might summarize the similarities and differences between liberal liberals and conservative liberals this way: they both support liberal institutions such as constitutional democracy, maximizing individual liberties within certain parameters, the free exercise of religion within certain parameters, and the like. But they disagree about the parameters. They disagree about the places at which individual liberties should be limited.” (Kindle Loc.682)

Many of our debates are not about the Christian way to do things but the best liberal liberal or bests conservative liberal way to do them. A Christian take on all that would refuse to identify the Christian with the American so we don’t misunderstand Christianity or classical liberalism.

Otherwise we have been duped and allowed ourselves to be used.