Mohler: "America is not a Christian country"

Albert Mohler has agreed with President Obama in his description of the United States as not being a Christian country. The president made this statement recently,

One of the great strengths of the United States is … we have a very large Christian population — we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

Mohler, asked to comment, said this. I have exerpted his writing and encourage readers to read Mohler for the full context.

Unlike New Testament Christianity, Islam is essentially a territorial religion that seeks to bring all lands under submission to the rule of the Qur’an.  

 ...Turkey is a Muslim nation with a secular government, but its secular character would not be seen as anything close to secular on an American model. 

     In this light, President Obama’s statement that America is not a Christian country is also both accurate and helpful, though he is being criticized by many conservative Christians for making the claim. His clarification, offered in Muslim Turkey, establishes as a matter of public fact the reality that our American constitutional system is very different from what is found in the Muslim world — and even in Turkey itself.

I appreciate Mohler's reflective and informed explanation here.  He continues:

     Beyond any historical doubt, the United States was established by founders whose worldview was shaped, in most cases quite self-consciously, by the Christian faith. The founding principles of this nation flow from a biblical logic and have been sustained by the fact that most Americans have considered themselves to be Christians and have operated out of a basically Christian frame of moral reference. America is a nation whose citizens are overwhelmingly identified as Christians and the American experiment is inconceivable without the foundation established by Christian moral assumptions.
     But America is not, by definition, a Christian nation in any helpful sense. The secularists and enemies of the faith make this argument for any number of hostile and antagonistic reasons, and they offer many false arguments as well. But this should not prompt American Christians to make bad arguments of our own.

 While we might be adamant about America being a Christian country, but in doing so there are so many caveats, exceptions, and qualifications it renders the statement almost meaningless.

SBC pastors are hoplessly schizophrenic in this matter. They seek to declare the U. S. a Christian nation, "one nation under God" while sputtering and complaining about how America has lost her moral foundations.

Mohler has it right. I commend his words on the matter.

We might better spend our energies on making disciples, Christians, in America rather than defending America as Christian.

Fear and loathing at patriotic church services

I have had a number of serious, highly committed lay Christians tell me that they either have or have considered just skipping the old standby patriotic worship services at church.

Why?

A recent experience provided me with some possible reasons.

• A church service devoid of the Gospel, where the life-changing Good News is not found in any recognizable form.
• A worship service where some of our revered historical figures of highly questionable Christian character and commitment are used to tout the faith of our founders. Jefferson and Franklin are secure in their deservedly high standing in regards to our national origins but are hardly good examples of faith and morality.
• A church service where historical quotations about God, civil religion at its best, are provided in quantity but where the Word of God is barely heard, not read, not preached upon, and not used in worship.
• A church service with virtually every known cliche about America returning to God, every tired complaint about the moral state of our nation, and all that without the one thing that can help our country - individual redemption by the blood of Christ.
• A service where Jesus makes only a cameo appearance.
• A church service where an invitation is extended to be saved but with the jaw-dropping phrase added that listeners may become like our Founding Fathers.

Our nation has some challenges but they will not be met by sacrificing our Christian birthright for a mess of civil religious pottage.

...I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God                that brings salvation to everyone who believes...