For your July 4 Weekend Sermon Fodder
REDISCOVERING AMERICA Mark 3:31-35 A distinguished professor of American Church History once expressed the relationship of the church to the nation in the following slogan. America, he wrote, was "a nation with the soul of a church." If we asked about the American church, though, we’d have to say, in my view, we have a "church with the soul of a nation." These two slogans mark the parameters of the dilemma American Christians face when they gather for worship on the Fourth of July weekend. For on this weekend in particular, the "church with the soul of a nation" lionizes the nation presumed to have "the soul of a church." Unfortunately, truth - the truth about this nation - and integrity - the integrity of the church - are almost completely obscured. Illusion and expediency are the primary hosts at this bash! "The nation with the soul of a church" is a fiction. (That is, unless you have a pretty debased notion of what a chur...