Marginal Christianity

By  Wes Granberg-Michaelson  02-03-201 Sen. Mark Hatfield Ever since President Dwight Eisenhower's administration, each president has attended the annual National Prayer Breakfast, drawing about 3,500 invited guests including members of Congress and government officials. There are readings, prayers, a main speaker, and remarks by the president. In 1973, as the nation was exiting the agony of the Vietnam War, and President Richard Nixon was just re-elected by a landslide — before Watergate unfolded — Sen. Mark O. Hatfield was invited to give some remarks. I served on his staff at the time. We consulted about what to say with Jim Wallis, a new friend in Chicago, publishing a small, upstart magazine called  The Post-American . After a lot of thought and prayer, Mark Hatfield rose to the podium, with President Nixon on his right and Billy Graham on his left, and delivered these words: My brothers and sisters: As we gather at this prayer breakfast let us bew...

  Civil Religion and the Fatherhood of God by Dale M. Coulter 6 . 17 . 14 A mericans just recently celebrated the important role of fathers in the upbringing of children. No doubt more than one sermon drew comparisons between divine fatherhood and human fatherhood, even though doing so is fraught with challenges for the American Christian given the historical connection to American civil religion. “The fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man” was a phrase that proponents like Shailer Mathews used to advocate the social gospel. For Mathews, life in the kingdom consisted of the ethical parameters governing human solidarity and kinship under the universal paternity of God. This laid the basis for translating the gospel into a social program that could supply a moral framework for the nation. It became a way to re-invigorate the Jeffersonian combination of non-sectarianism and the necessity of ethical virtue for the life of the nation. A virtual Protestant establish...