Shouldn't all Evangelicals want Christian Nationalism?

[lifepsyop]

1 Peter provides the field manual for how to operate as an ambassador of the Kingdom of Heaven assigned to an earthly nation.

Peter says to honor the king (not celebrate rebellion against the king)... pretty big strike against American founding.

Peter doesn't say anything about restricting governments from submitting to Jesus' authority. Nor do any of the apostles.

 

[lifepsyop]

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” -- John 18

A kingdom of the world can still bear witness to Jesus' authority over it. If a temporal man or a temporal household can submit to Jesus' rule, then there's no reason a temporal nation of households cannot do the same.

 

[RDKirk]

A kingdom of the world can still bear witness to Jesus' authority over it. If a temporal man or a temporal household can submit to Jesus' rule, then there's no reason a temporal nation of households cannot do the same.

Roger Williams (founder of the first Baptist congregation in America and founder of the colony of Rhode Island) published an extensive treatise on why disaster for Christians always happens when an earthly nation professes to be a Godly nation. He published his treaties not long after the Thirty Years War and just as England was heating up for its own religious civil war. It's a tough read because it's in King James' English (I haven't seen a modern English translation of it), but it's a seminal document leading to the US First Amendment: "The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience."

 

[RDKirk]

Peter says to honor the king (not celebrate rebellion against the king)... pretty big strike against American founding.

Peter doesn't say anything about restricting governments from submitting to Jesus' authority. Nor do any of the apostles.

See, that's the problem with civilians. Y'all don't know how to follow instructions. The commander tells you exactly what to do, and you want to run around doing everything the commander didn't specifically tell you not to do.

No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather works to please his commanding officer. -- 2 Timothy 2:4

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

Roger Williams (founder of the first Baptist congregation in America and founder of the colony of Rhode Island) published an extensive treatise on why disaster for Christians always happens when an earthly nation professes to be a Godly nation. He published his treaties not long after the Thirty Years War and just as England was heating up for its own religious civil war. It's a tough read because it's in King James' English (I haven't seen a modern English translation of it), but it's a seminal document leading to the US First Amendment: "The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience."

Did getting rid of religion in government get rid of violence? Did it prevent America being a nation of warmongers and warhawks for most of it's existence? Secularists have very little to offer if they think religion is cause of wars. Ww1 and ww2 proved secular ideologies cause even more death than religion did and for more petty reasons.

 

[RDKirk]

Did getting rid of religion in government get rid of violence? Did it prevent America being a nation of warmongers and warhawks for most of it's existence? Secularists have very little to offer if they think religion is cause of wars. Ww1 and ww2 proved secular ideologies cause even more death than religion did and for more petty reasons.

If you think "getting rid of violence" was the objection Roger Williams posed, you clearly haven't read his work. So, your dart has not only missed the target, it didn't even hit the wall.

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

If you think "getting rid of violence" was the objection Roger Williams posed, you clearly haven't read his work. So, your dart has not only missed the target, it didn't even hit the wall.

Was it to prevent conflict? Because I see conflict still present with us. Instead of it being about religious issues it's over stuff like whether boys can be girls.

What has getting rid of religion done except strengthen irreligion?

 

[RDKirk]

Was it to prevent conflict? Because I see conflict still present with us. Instead of it being about religious issues it's over stuff like whether boys can be girls.

What has getting rid of religion done except strengthen irreligion?

Dude...Google it. At least read the Wikipedia entry. Don't keep nattering on about something of which you clearly don't have the slightest clue.

 

[lifepsyop]

See, that's the problem with civilians. Y'all don't know how to follow instructions. The commander tells you exactly what to do, and you want to run around doing everything the commander didn't specifically tell you not to do.

No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather works to please his commanding officer. -- 2 Timothy 2:4

sounds like more of an argument against Christians getting involved in secular liberal democracy... when was the average Christian more wrapped up in civilian affairs than the 20th century onwards?

 

[didactics]

Peter says to honor the king (not celebrate rebellion against the king)... pretty big strike against American founding.

Peter doesn't say anything about restricting governments from submitting to Jesus' authority. Nor do any of the apostles.

Listening to this thread has made me want to learn more about Protestant resistance theory. There is a book about it I've heard such as, Slaying Leviathan: Limited Government and Resistance in the Christian Tradition by historian Glenn S. Sunshine. It's not about celebrating rebellion for the sake of rebellion. Who was really at fault here, the colonists or the king? I'm convinced it was an act of government overreach and the colonists were on the defense, not wanting to start a fight. The celebration is the strategy to successfully become independent and form their own government that's not perfect by any means but far closer to what we want in a Christian nation.

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

Dude...Google it. At least read the Wikipedia entry. Don't keep nattering on about something of which you clearly don't have the slightest clue.

Or you could actually explain it. What was worth the cost of becoming secular. You're relying on an old Protestant author to say why religion needs to be removed from public life. We actually live in the present and can see the results of such secular reasoning. To me, it doesn't seem worth it.

Has it made your country less violent? No, it regularly starts wars and funds foreign conflicts, not for religion but for secular liberalism. Has it made the social fabric stronger? We're more atomized and disconnected from each other than ever before. Has it made Christianity stronger? No, instead it's made churches conform to the dominant secular liberal ideology. I don't see how it was worth it.

 

[didactics]

Or you could actually explain it. What was worth the cost of becoming secular. You're relying on an old Protestant author to say why religion needs to be removed from public life. We actually live in the present and can see the results of such secular reasoning. To me, it doesn't seem worth it.

Has it made your country less violent? No, it regularly starts wars and funds foreign conflicts, not for religion but for secular liberalism. Has it made the social fabric stronger? We're more atomized and disconnected from each other than ever before. Has it made Christianity stronger? No, instead it's made churches conform to the dominant secular liberal ideology. I don't see how it was worth it.

Not that there is anything wrong with learning from old Protestant authors, but it does help to explain and summarize their views. For example, John Quincy Adams famously translated a work titled "The Origin and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution" by Friedrich Gentz, a German political theorist. Von Gentz was also a Protestant.

 

[RDKirk]

Or you could actually explain it. What was worth the cost of becoming secular. You're relying on an old Protestant author to say why religion needs to be removed from public life. We actually live in the present and can see the results of such secular reasoning. To me, it doesn't seem worth it.

Roger Williams was a staunch Calvinist with a deep believe in Election. He saw government-mandated or government-rewarded Church membership as putting the non-Elect into the pews, and because the non-Elect prophetically outnumber the Elect, that meant most Church "members" would thus be unbelievers. Worse, if the state conveys a social advantage to Church membership, the people who desired that social advantage would be the very people most apt to join the congregation.

Roger Williams examined the history of Church entanglement with the state from Constantine to the Thirty Years War, and also with an eye toward the then-current religion-based social unrest that would soon erupt into the English Civil War. He discovered that when earthly states mandated Church membership, or awarded social privilege to the Church, that it inevitably resulted in social conflict between Christians (or people professing to be Christians). It was always Christians who eventually suffered from state patronage of the Church.

Williams also saw that historically when the state became the patron of the Church, the Church became obliged to support state actions, unable to stand objectively indifferent. It's like being the chaplain of a cruise vessel. The chaplain has no say over what happens on the ship or where the ship is destined...but if there is a storm, they expect the chaplain to pray them through it. In Williams' view, the Church should never become the chaplain to the state. The problem, he saw, is that in this fallen world, this world of tooth and claw, it's impossible for the state to operate in a Godly manner. In order to maintain power in this fallen world, the state must use the weapons of the fallen world.

He believed that the best thing for the Church was for government to keep its hands off the Church, and for the Church to refrain from government entanglement. Williams founded the colony of Rhode Island as the first colony with total freedom of religion, including for atheists and Muslims, so that the members of the Church would be those brought into the pews by the power of the Holy Spirit, not the sheriff's gun.

It was from Williams' writings that Thomas Jefferson cribbed the line, "...wall of separation between Church and State," and it was Williams' Rhode Island philosophical descendants who blocked ratification of the American Constitution until the First Amendment was written and ratified. I know Down Under y'all don't care very much about the First Amendment, but it's an important thing for Americans...and its purpose was to preserve the purity of the Church.

Has it made your country less violent? No, it regularly starts wars and funds foreign conflicts, not for religion but for secular liberalism. Has it made the social fabric stronger? We're more atomized and disconnected from each other than ever before. Has it made Christianity stronger? No, instead it's made churches conform to the dominant secular liberal ideology. I don't see how it was worth it.

No, the problem in the US had been that the American state did eventually become the patron of the Church...and the Church did end up endorsing every unGodly act the American state has used to consolidate its power in the world.

When we observe the steadfastness of the Church in North Korea--which has grown 10-fold since the 1990s--it's obvious that the Church in America has never been subjected to a force that should have caused it to conform to American social pressure.

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

Roger Williams was a staunch Calvinist with a deep believe in Election. He saw government-mandated or government-rewarded Church membership as putting the non-Elect into the pews, and because the non-Elect prophetically outnumber the Elect, that meant most Church "members" would thus be unbelievers. Worse, if the state conveys a social advantage to Church membership, the people who desired that social advantage would be the very people most apt to join the congregation.

Roger Williams examined the history of Church entanglement with the state from Constantine to the Thirty Years War, and also with an eye toward the then-current religion-based social unrest that would soon erupt into the English Civil War. He discovered that when earthly states mandated Church membership, or awarded social privilege to the Church, that it inevitably resulted in social conflict between Christians (or people professing to be Christians). It was always Christians who eventually suffered from state patronage of the Church.

Williams also saw that historically when the state became the patron of the Church, the Church became obliged to support state actions, unable to stand objectively indifferent. It's like being the chaplain of a cruise vessel. The chaplain has no say over what happens on the ship or where the ship is destined...but if there is a storm, they expect the chaplain to pray them through it. In Williams' view, the Church should never become the chaplain to the state. The problem, he saw, is that in this fallen world, this world of tooth and claw, it's impossible for the state to operate in a Godly manner. In order to maintain power in this fallen world, the state must use the weapons of the fallen world.

He believed that the best thing for the Church was for government to keep its hands off the Church, and for the Church to refrain from government entanglement. Williams founded the colony of Rhode Island as the first colony with total freedom of religion, including for atheists and Muslims, so that the members of the Church would be those brought into the pews by the power of the Holy Spirit, not the sheriff's gun.

It was from Williams' writings that Thomas Jefferson cribbed the line, "...wall of separation between Church and State," and it was Williams' Rhode Island philosophical descendants who blocked ratification of the American Constitution until the First Amendment was written and ratified. I know Down Under y'all don't care very much about the First Amendment, but it's an important thing for Americans...and its purpose was to preserve the purity of the Church.

And has seperating the Church utterly from public life lead to a revival and flourishing of Christianity? Or are we seeing it's marked decline, the more you separate Christianity from law, from civic virtue and public morals in general?

All good if you want to preserve the purity of the Church but you won't do that if your Church is attaching itself to the predominant values of the day. This is why the only Churches which are successful are those which consider the predominant society as the enemy or the other, something to keep a distance from.

Also New Zealand isn't Australia (very American) and I reject the first amendment because I see complete freedom of speech as an impossibility and that society needs taboos and things you don't say in order to have some kind of order. If you value liberty over the sacred, I can understand why you have said belief. Americans tend to put God last.

 

[RDKirk]

And has seperating the Church utterly from public life lead to a revival and flourishing of Christianity? Or are we seeing it's marked decline, the more you separate Christianity from law, from civic virtue and public morals in general?

All good if you want to preserve the purity of the Church but you won't do that if your Church is attaching itself to the predominant values of the day. This is why the only Churches which are successful are those which consider the predominant society as the enemy or the other, something to keep a distance from.

The Church is not in decline. Jesus is not losing His battle. But the Church in America can definitely stand and needs the winnowing it's getting.

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

The Church is not in decline. Jesus is not losing His battle. But the Church in America can definitely stand and needs the winnowing it's getting.

Christianity is on the decline, in terms of the number of Christians, in terms of the influence of Christianity on public life, in terms of combating the forces which would undermine it. This distinctly American liberal Idea of doing nothing and expecting different results is pointless because adhering the old model which is failing will not result in success.

But am I talking to someone who actually wants tangible success of Christianity in public life? So many Christians have more or less resigned themselves to decline and think the worse sin is to actually address it. I kind of think these are the kinds of Christians that would have eagerly sacrificed Incense to Caesar, because they are so committed to the current regime they cannot imagine anything different.

 

[didactics]

It was from Williams' writings that Thomas Jefferson cribbed the line, "...wall of separation between Church and State," and it was Williams' Rhode Island philosophical descendants who blocked ratification of the American Constitution until the First Amendment was written and ratified. I know Down Under y'all don't care very much about the First Amendment, but it's an important thing for Americans...and its purpose was to preserve the purity of the Church.

Wait, down under?* wasn't it the southerners who were largely democratic-republican aka the Jeffersonian Republican Party whereas the northerners were Federalist Republicans. That means Jefferson was an anti-federalist, a southerner, who primarily wrote the first draft of the Declaration.


*but yeah, you were kind of referring to the southern hemisphere, not the south

 

[RDKirk]

Wait, down under?* wasn't it the southerners who were largely democratic-republican aka the Jeffersonian Republican Party whereas the northerners were Federalist Republicans. That means Jefferson was an anti-federalist, a southerner, who primarily wrote the first draft of the Declaration.


*but yeah, you were kind of referring to the southern hemisphere, not the south

Jefferson was also a Deist who preferred his own version of Jesus rather than that of the Anglican Church, and liked the idea of religious liberty.

 

[okay]

Christianity is on the decline, in terms of the number of Christians

Christianity is growing. There are around 2.5 Billion of us

8 Encouraging Trends in Global Christianity for 2024 - Lifeway Research

The 2024 Status of Global Christianity report provides at least eight positive trends that paint a picture of a healthy, growing church.

research.lifeway.com

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

Christianity is growing. There are around 2.5 Billion of us

8 Encouraging Trends in Global Christianity for 2024 - Lifeway Research

The 2024 Status of Global Christianity report provides at least eight positive trends that paint a picture of a healthy, growing church.

research.lifeway.com

Christianity in the western world is declining. Promoting total secularism is not going to reverse that.