Should the Government Declare the United States a Christian Nation?

Christians need to stop listening to the world and start listening to God, so that thinking Christian becomes as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. This is Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological conversations, Thinking Christian offers a mix of interviews and discussions that highlight the ways God is working in the lives of his people and question the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that keep the Church from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm back here with Aline Branslow, my friend and colleague, and we are going to be discussing the neighborly faith report one more time here with you. We've actually got two more episodes, so this will be the next to last time we do this. But today, what we wanted to look at was the statement that goes something like this. The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation. And again, on the neighborly faith study, those who are classified as Christian nationalist adherents strongly agreed with that statement that the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation far more than any other group on the survey. Even if I look again at the nationalist sympathizers, and I look at strongly agree, agree, and somewhat agree, it barely reaches the same intensity as the strongly agreeing Christian nationalists. And just to frame this out, you know, the reason, and we've mentioned this on previous podcasts, but the reason that we're doing these statements is because there are a disproportionate percentage of born-again Christians and evangelicals who are lumped into the Christian nationalist category. And so, in my estimation, that constitutes a threat to the Church. We are putting way too much stock in government. We are putting way too much stock in the political realm when we should be owning our own mission, owning our own presence in the world in a different way. And so that's why we're going through each one of these statements and trying to contextualize them a little bit biblically and theologically. So with that introduction, man, I just want to say hello. How are you doing? It's great to be back on this podcast. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. So, Ramy, you know, the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation. Now, I'll start out. I know you usually bring it up. And, you know, your background is so fascinating, right? Because I've grown up in the United States my entire life, right? So. But when you read this, I mean, coming from your context, you grew up in Romania under communism. And you hear someone agreeing that the federal government should declare anything. What's your gut feeling on it? I have significant amount of concerns. One thing that is difficult for people that live in America or really never left their state and they have a view of their own nationalism, not even Christian nationalism, the view of their own, like what America is, is they would never be able to understand the mistrust that ethnic people have in government. You come, so I come from a place where Romania, for example, Romania, my hometown is from the 1500s. So that should give you some, you know, we have chairs that are older than America. America has been founded for 250 years, right? My own, we still in the middle of my hometown, there's still the old city, the castle that was formed around from the 1500s. I went like in England, there's a building from the year 1000, right? There's there's some things that there's some history, but in Romania, communism killed 2 million people. The government decided that these people's belief, so it really lumped together all Christians. It didn't matter. You are an enemy of the state. They decided, so the Ceaușescu, the dictator, went to North Korea, visited North Korea, got inspired, came back to Romania and said, from now on, you're going to worship me. And because they had all authority as a government, as a form of leading and a form of government, there was nothing to stop them from actually moving from this belief to this belief. And now they enforce that. And all of a sudden you found yourself completely outside of the circle. That means you're a friend of the Republic. There's actually a really funny, there's a movie made about the Romanian communism and they imprison this very old lady. She's in prison. And so she goes and knocks at the guards and is like, dearly beloved, why am I here? You know, and the guard said, you are an enemy of the state. And the lady said, if the state is afraid of me, this state is in really bad trouble. If I am the enemy of the state, the state is afraid of me. This state is a big trouble. Right? But, but all of a sudden, so you realize that we come already with all ethnic people, people from China, people from Korea, people from North Korea, people from, from all former, from Poland, from all former communist countries. Yeah. They would come to, to, to this statement way differently than anybody else would come to this statement thinking you would like the government to put and to make something, to implement something that they could now enforce in a way that would leave other people around there. And now they're going to have to use their tools at their disposal to compel people to actually become this. Right. I find that problematic. I'll give one more example before we get into it. There's, there's a story that says that in, in Germany, they wanted to see how, how smart their officers were and they give them a box, they give them a box with shapes and they have to match the shape with the hole in the box. And they very quickly realized that some were smart and some were really strong. That's how I feel about. You're asking the government. Some were smart, but some were really strong, right? It didn't matter. What was the shape of the hole of the shape that they held in their hand? They made it work, right? Yeah. What are we really asking the government? And how is it that the Prince of peace, right, came on earth and, and launched this idea with 12 fishermen and it completely revolutionized the world. And now we're going back to the government to Rome and saying, Hey, can you do this for us? What is that massive trade off? We talked about, we talked about in the previous thing of actually doing. So those are some of the initial thoughts from an ethnic perspective. Well, you know, it's interesting. So I, you know, again, I grew up in America, but you know, we don't have a great concept even of our 250 year history, or at least I didn't. My son has a much better grasp of it. He wants to be a history major. And so he's like figuring all this stuff out. But I've done some research lately on, you know, American history. And one of the things you see is that even though we had the first amendment, so the prohibition about state establishment of religion and the free exercise clause, right? So freedom of religion. Even though we had those things from a federal level, individual states, because the federal government was so weak, individual states would actually establish state churches. And so even up till I believe Connecticut was 1818 before they decided to abolish or get rid of their state established church, the congregationalist church. And again, my understanding of it is that part of the reason they did it was there was growing Unitarian population in Connecticut. And so they're looking out at this and going, okay, well, we established the Christian congregationalist church, which the Baptists weren't happy about, right? This is the whole Danbury Baptist letter that, that they wrote to Thomas Jefferson. You know, the Danbury Baptist are holding up their hands and they're like, what the heck is happening here? Like, why are we supporting the congregationalists? So, I mean, you had these interdenominational problems, but you also had this sort of looming threat of what happens if the Unitarians get big enough and they just, they get enough people representing them. And so they put them in power and then all of a sudden, oops, the Unitarian church is now the state established church of Connecticut. We just need to get rid of this completely. And so that's what ended up happening. That was one of the dynamics that prompted it. But I think it's so fascinating to see how that doctrine was really negotiated throughout U.S. history because what it suggests is that we may be a little bit too pie in the sky about saying that we want the United States to declare itself a Christian nation. If we did that, it would almost open up the door to say it could be any other kind of nation. Right now, there's part of me that...

Never think that America would never do that because American civil religion is a really powerful thing. When his name, there was a gentleman named Rousseau, and he hypothesized that civil religion should basically be used by the state in order to produce good citizens and that any religious intolerance, in other words, exclusive claims by religions that would preclude citizens from becoming good citizens, should be abolished. And so he saw civil religion as sort of genericizing all the good parts about religion that would actually help a country move forward and that the state should not be run by the clerics, right, or the priests, right, but the state should have control and there should be a state religion that everybody agreed to, and then we're done. And you can practice your religions as long as they don't run up against the state civil religion. So I don't think the United States would get rid of their civil religion because it is a pretty powerful tool, right? But I think, number two, that state religion points to the real problem I see, right? Right now, we think we're fighting liberals, let's say, the left, the horrible left, and the woke people and all these other folks, right? The reality is that I think we've left open the possibility for the government to establish non-religious ideologies. Strong. Strong non-religious ideologies. Very strong. And, you know, the establishment, non-establishment clause in the Constitution, I don't think could have ever anticipated that. I don't think it would, you know, they're not going to sit there and like, well, what happens if one day, you know, a boy wants to be a girl? What are we going to do then? Like, they're not going to weave out all those hypotheses at that point. It's just not going to happen. Religion was the primary concern at the moment, so that's what they coded in. But I will just say this. The non-establishment doctrine, the prohibition of state-established churches or federal-established churches, either one, was advocated on both sides. In other words, the people who are running the church, people who are representing the church, did not want the state involved, by and large, because the church could not do the job it's supposed to do if it is beholden to the state. It can't be the church if it's being funded by tax dollars. And their argument was that the church needs to stand on its own and fall on its own. Like, it was to be something that was constituted by Christians to either thrive or fail based on the commitment of groups of individual Christians to a given congregation. And so while we tend to think of the establishment of religion as sort of like this sort of separation of church and state has gotten a little out of control, and I agree with that. It's gotten a little out of control. But the establishment clause, I think, is a really good thing for the church because it creates a hard boundary between the church and the state. It limits the church's reach into coercive power, which we've not been given. Right? Romans 13, the state has the sword. It's been given the sword to mete out justice and to keep the peace. The church doesn't have that. And so when I read a statement like this, that the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation, A, I don't really understand what that would prove. That's part of it. I think you'd have to bring back an awful lot of practices we've sort of teased and weeded out, like religious tests for serving in office. Right? All of that's been negotiated and renegotiated and sort of weeded out. And so I think there's a lot more you'd have to bring back. But I also just think it intermingles church and state in ways that dilute what the church is actually supposed to be doing. I'm curious if the people that have answered this, and they've made a clear statement about this, they're either doing it from a... because when they're saying they should declare this, that means it already is. It's just not declared. It's coming from the fact that it's saying, like, we really believe that's our history, even though it's a modern concept. It doesn't go from the 1800s. It's from the 1900s where it started becoming that we have... that America was founded as a Christian nation. That has never been supported by historical documentation necessarily. I mean, different people with various flavors of Christianity came from different places. And it's interesting that they came, most of them came from England where Anglicanism was actually fully established. They came from a church, right? And they're running from the government leading that church. Right. From the king saying, we established this rule. So to come here, to this country and saying, like, we were Christians for a while, we were fighting separation of church and state, and now saying, like, we want the king again. We want the government, right? For me, it's ludicrous, but it does speak from a bubble perspective to saying, we are already this. Might as well be the ones ruling. I was reminded of one of the funniest stories I have heard when I was in Chicago, and I have to share it on this podcast because I think it illustrates for me exactly what's happening. A church was in a competition with a different church for their Easter drama. And they would put up these really elaborate plays and all this. And they got to the point where they realized, like, these Christians are not really good actors. They're going to have to hire some professional like actors. But the problem is that the only professional actor they found for Jesus is one that actually was not really, is not a Christian. So here's Jesus on the cross in an Easter play. And the wannabe soldier, Roman soldier, poked Jesus a little too hard and actually pierced his skin with the thing while he was on the cross. And what the church had to observe on Easter day is Jesus on the cross starting to curse out in the worst way possible because he got injured. And then the cross actually fell and they hear this Jesus cursing out while he's falling with the cross right on his face. And then this is what happened. Jesus sued them. Jesus sued the church for injuries and for all this. What happens in the Christian nation when you have people in a government and a declared Christian nation, so only the Christians are allowed to be in the government to lead a Christian nation? Who are these actors that are going to be playing in there? Because that's what I think is actually underneath this. If you declare this as a Christian nation, that means exactly like an Islamic state. The law of the land should become the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Christians lead all conversations. All things are led through this perspective. And I find that that experiment has not worked in the Old Testament, New Testament or Islamic states. We are seeing significant abuse where people consider that their own interpretation of the law of God and their own angle on it, their own flavor of Christianity should rule this time. There's another highly problematic aspect of this in the fact that in America you have a four-year term. And as the Jewish people have learned in the land of Goshen, things change and they change fast. This king is like this, but the next king might be fundamentally different. Are we really comfortable putting our own faith and the faith and all this in the hands of a really passing government instead of just leaving it where it is in the hands of the almighty eternal God? I'd probably do that. I think that's where we want to pick this up. We want to take a quick break and then we'll pick it up after that because the way that there's part of me that we don't understand our history, but I think partly we don't understand our Old Testament. And so I want to kind of dig into that a little bit when we come back. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Hey, everybody, we're back this episode of Thinking Christian. And when we left off, you know, Aline, you sort of made the point that there's a four-year cycle here and that, you know, the pharaoh who knows not Joseph may rise up and be a problem. And that even if...

You declare, you know, the United States a Christian nation, even if we put certain boundaries in place, there's no guarantee that we are going to get the ruler we want. We're generally going to get the ruler we deserve. And so, part of what I've puzzled about as we look at this, even if we declared the United States a Christian nation, and even if we were trying to choose Christians every step of the way, there's an underlying assumption about what it means for America to be a Christian nation. And I don't get the impression that it's strictly moral. Right. Again, you know, because governments are to exercise authority under God, I think there's an appropriate way for Christians to be prophetic and to try to push the government and the governing authorities to do what is appropriate in accordance with God's order, right, to actually mete out true justice, to be peaceful, right, those kind of things. But I don't think that that is all that's being said here. My guess is what's being said here is that we know what we want, and we would like to have that, please. And so, we're just going to decide, hey, we're a Christian nation, and from there, we'll make all the decisions to thank you. The problem I have with that is that there is a tension then between our choice of who leads us and God's appointment of who leads us. So, Romans 13 again, you know, God grants or delegates authority to the governing authorities that he chooses. We see this in the Old Testament all the time. So, Jeremiah prophesies against Israel, right? And he's basically telling them that the Babylonians and Nebuchadnezzar are going to come in and rout them. God calls Nebuchadnezzar his servant multiple times in Jeremiah. Yes. Right? Primarily, the one I'm remembering is in chapter 25. But I'm guessing that if they just took a straw poll of Israelites at that moment and said, raise your hand if you want Nebuchadnezzar to be king over Israel. Raise your hand if you want Nebuchadnezzar to be your ruler. There's not a lot of Israelites who are raising their hands. But that's what God did. And so, you could argue that, you know, you're dealing with rebellious Israel, right? You could argue that. But even after they go into exile in Babylon, who comes next? Cyrus. Yep. The Lord's anointed, right? Isaiah 45.1. Cyrus is called the Messiah. He is the Lord's anointed. Mashiach is the Hebrew word for it. So, it's Mashiach is transliterated into Messiah in English. And so, you have God choosing these different people to be in power in order to accomplish different things. We could even go back to the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. I mean, my goodness, it was Joseph. He was doing a lot right. Right? And under the Pharaoh that knew Joseph, everything was kind of cool. The Pharaoh there, he's like, these Israelites, they're great for business. So, we're going to keep them around. And then a Pharaoh rose who knew not Joseph. Well, who rose that Pharaoh up? God did. And he raised him up for a purpose that was completely different than anything any of us would be thinking. And so, when we're piddling around trying to figure out how our country should be run, what it means to be a Christian nation, who's best to sit on the throne and make it a Christian nation, who's best to be the president, who's best to be the representative, who's, who's, who's, how do we establish these criteria, right? Meanwhile, you have, even in the New Testament, after Judas betrays Christ and the apostles are going to replace him, what do they do? They whittle it down to two people and they cast lots. Yes. They're not picking. They're recognizing God's massive role in this whole thing. We just have a fundamental inability to take our hands off this wheel. Yes. And I think it's embedded in this statement, right? And again, I'm not arguing for non-participation. What I'm saying is, sometimes we have to recognize that when God says he's appointing the governing authorities, he's actually appointing the governing authorities. Yes. And that he doesn't need our vote to get that done. Not at all. He's going to put in place who he's going to put in place. And so, I remember reading these articles and seeing these pictures. One of them was of people holding up a banner that said, Trump is president, Christ is king. And I just remember thinking when I saw it, I'm like, true, right? But again, truth in service of politics. Because I don't get the impression that that same group of people went out when Biden got elected and had a banner that said, Biden is president, Christ is king. No, the Trump and Christ was just a little bit like, Trump was here and Jesus was like... I mean, yeah, I mean, it's a religious statement, a theological statement, tied into a political statement. Yes. And I think that's the real problematic with this kind of declaration that people are agreeing with. You know, let's have the federal government declare the United States a Christian nation. I think that is the real problem. It's a theological statement that is now joined to a political structure. And that doesn't work, really. It just doesn't work. You know, it would be interesting to ask follow-up questions for the ones that went for this statement. A few follow-up questions. Here's a few follow-up questions. Would you like America to love their neighbor? Sure. Like China or Russia or Iran, right? Somebody wrote a dissertation that was actually really funny. It was, love your neighbor unless they're really dangerous. After that, don't love, just stay away from them. Right? But would you like America to actually act as a Christian nation? So imagine the most Christian person that you know, right? And that the most loving, humble, like broken, you know, giving up their jacket and all this. Would you want America to be that in the world? Because if you don't want America to be that in the world, if you want America to be a Christian nation, and for Christianity to take the hit for whatever America is doing right now in the world, I feel like you really care more about America than Christianity and faith. Because America's hand in the world right now, it's really invisible for the American person that only watches either CNN or Fox. It doesn't matter which ones you watch. It would be interesting for Americans to watch Al Jazeera for like a month. Right? Even if, okay, that's from a different propaganda. I understand. Right? Different propaganda. Just watch it for a month. See a little bit of the flavor of like what's happening and see how people talk about America. I think it's America's involved in things that you wouldn't want to have in anywhere near your church. Anywhere near your hands in keeping with the fact that I also believe that some people that actually are Christians in this world are also very immature or maybe very naive on the level of evil that is happening in this world. The wickedness, the evilness. Right? I was able to watch Adolf Eichmann's trial and they coined the term the banality of evil. That somebody went to work from 8 to 5 and still defined and went to work from 8 to 5 to develop a solution to burn 10 million people. Right? You don't want somebody there in that fight that is actually going to act like the church. You want the church and you want the government. You want the government to go in there and fight a battle that you don't want the church to have anywhere near that. That's why I like Daniel chapter 2. He establishes the kings and the path of history. I like the continuation of that verse. Not only that God sets the kings, but he also sets the path of history because God knows that throughout history there will be evil rising on earth that we don't even want to speak about. Yeah, and I think it's a really important point. I referenced Nebuchadnezzar and in that same chapter, chapter 25, where he calls Nebuchadnezzar his servant, he also swings back around to Jeremiah and kind of says, listen, Babylon's going to be punished for this. And so what you really see is, you know, God is raising up and putting down. It's the beginning of Hannah's song after she has Samuel. You know, the Lord rises up and he brings people into the dust. And so this is very much in the hand of the Lord. And I think you're right. I think it's a really good point. I don't want it to get lost, is that if we start caring more about America than we do about Christianity, then what we start to lose is we start to lose a little bit of this perspective and why God is saying that.

establishes the church and the state. We can't trivialize the state. We tend maybe to demonize it, like it's not doing anything good, and that's probably not the case, but in a world where bad things happen, we need the state because the state is enacting justice. And we see this throughout the Old Testament too, like, you know, Israel fought wars as a nation, as a polity, right? The church is not that sort of polity. We're not that kind of nation, right? We are seen as lambs amongst wolves, right? And so we're not, but we're not a nation. We don't have a standing army. We don't have, you know, maybe the Salvation Army, but we don't have a standing army, right? But Israel was a nation and Israel would fight wars and have skirmishes and they had to worry about the nations. And it was much more of a national context. But after Christ, what you really have is you have the church as a people set apart to be and make disciples. And as I've talked about in previous talks, like, I think that we miss in the Great Commission, Matthew 28, we miss Christ's authority as the impetus for going and making disciples. Jesus says, I've been given authority over all heaven and earth, everything. Yes. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, which I take to being initiate them into a commitment by which they will follow me, right? And teach them to observe all I've commanded. In other words, help them understand what it means to sit under my authority. And so what we're doing in discipleship is we're instituting Christ's authority, expanding Christ's authority, extending Christ's authority through discipleship. And so that is our sort of political move, if you want to call it that, right? It is, you know, in the proclamation, Jesus is Lord, in saying, as we've talked about a lot, Romans 13, you know, God delegates that authority. That is a political statement. We're basically saying God is King, Jesus is Lord, everything sits underneath it, whether you want to recognize it or not, that's reality. And so, as we see this establishment of two entities, church and state, church has a role. Yes. State has a role. Yes. When those two work together, and this is something, this Baptist preacher early on, his name is Isaac Backus. He talked a lot about separation of church and state. He argued that when the church and state come together, neither of them do their job particularly well. Like you got to have them separate. They have to be distinct entities. Right. And so I just think we're not reckoning with the idea that the state has a role to play and that God will handle the state himself to a large degree. He's going to raise it up. He's going to make it prosper for a while and then he'll bring it low and there'll be different difficulties or whatever. But the church, our primary responsibility, right? I would say worship, point to and magnify the Lord Jesus Christ and make disciples of all nations. Be disciples, be trained such that whatever happens in the state, wherever we happen to sojourn within the world, we're now prepared and trained sufficient to point to and glorify Jesus Christ no matter what the context. Yeah. And we cannot downplay. I mean, I'll give the perfect example that I think it really illustrates what you're saying that is really powerful. When you look from the outside, I was given the massive blessing to travel through China, most of China, actually, for like we've been there three times. And I traveled through most areas of China. And the first trip I had was life changing, really. We went with a small group through various parts of China and we visited missionaries that were doing underground work there. And to see how are they approaching mission work throughout China. And it was so fascinating. I mean, it was from somebody teaching in the Tibetan mountains to somebody being an agricultural engineer. I was given a massive opportunity to see different approaches to mission work. But China, if you look from the outside, you're looking at this country and you're thinking it's impenetrable, it's actually like it's a fortress, it's a superpower. It is a superpower. It's all these things. Within, if you're looking and you walk in China, you realize that China is actually highly vulnerable. The highest point of vulnerability of any country around because of one reason. China is going to have more than 300 million people reach the age of retirement. China does not offer retirement, no 401ks, no retirement. And it doesn't have any layer of nonprofit work, support systems, anything inside. And the churches are not allowed to be the hands and feet of Christ to support that. So you're going to have 400 million people. And I have seen with my own eyes a lot of older people going through garbage and searching through it because they have no level of support from the moment they hit 60, 65. Imagine from 65 all the way to 90 and they live a long time because they exercise. Right. So imagine from that having no income. They have 300 to 350 million people coming there. And the first thing that the Chinese government is doing right now is to loosen up the persecution of the Christian church because the church is the only one that is taking care of the older people. You see, immediately the state realized we have a big problem and this problem is going to cripple our economy. It's actually disintegrating the largest superpower from within. And the only solution we have for that is a body within us that has an incentive within it to actually care for the marginalized. And we are stopping them, persecuting them, killing them. It's a really good point. I want to take one more break and then let's come back to that point and talk about why it is that the church needs to be the church in the midst of any nation so that we can really be there to support those who have no other means of support. So we'll take a little break and then we'll come right back. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Hey everybody, welcome back to Thinking Christian. In this episode, we left off Alimstall in this really compelling story about churches in China. So Alim, go ahead and continue thinking through how the Chinese churches are really showing themselves to be useful simply by being faithful. Just simply by, I mean, the underground Chinese church is more than 200 million people meeting in secret in houses. You have close to 350 million people coming to retirement age before 2030. And the Chinese government is now loosening up because it started, it's interesting if you think about state to state, God will use another state to correct another state, right? God will send, we've seen that in old Testament. America mitigated a lot for missionaries and for the missionaries in China to not be persecuted. It stopped doing that the moment we had economic interest with China and it's not interfering in China persecuting Christians, missionaries. I have heard personally from missionaries in China that are saying this is the worst persecution we've seen in many, many years. And so they're jailing them and nobody's actually finding them. It used to be that America would be very, very active speaking into saying, please leave these people alone. So now with no accountability, China's doing it and they're stopping and slowing down in doing that because they're realizing that the only truly people within China that are able to help the state really deal with the most amazing crisis that they're ever gonna face past 2030 is the church. They're the ones that are helping. Even when they don't have enough rice, they're gonna share their rice with somebody else. There's something within the church that number one is resilient. It's not destructive to the state. It's not involved in the state matters. They don't even care about the state matters and they will love their neighbor against all hope. Well, I think it's just really interesting to hear that story because what I find is in statements like what we're looking at, right? Let's declare the United States a Christian nation. There's a sense in which this assumes maybe that you need the political realm in order to institute or demonstrate some sort of Christian context. And I get this from the perspective of, look, God will use another state to correct another state, right? God will send, we've seen that in Old Testament. America mitigated a lot for missionaries and for the missionaries in China to not be persecuted. It stopped doing that the moment we had economic interest with China and it's not interfering in China persecuting Christians, missionaries. I have heard personally from missionaries in China that are saying this is the worst persecution we've seen in many, many years. And so they're jailing them and nobody's actually finding them. It used to be that America would be very, very active speaking into saying, please leave these people alone. So now with no accountability, China's doing it. And they're stopping and slowing down in doing that because they're realizing that

a million ideologies that I don't agree with. There's a lot of things that I wish would change. I think there's a lot of dehumanization going on. You know, I worry about the next generation. Like, all those things are happening. And so there's a sense in which I understand why people would want to have some level of control over the state, but that sort of discounts then the power of the church. And I think the story you're telling really reminds us that, look, the church just doing what it does, right? The church acting as it should, the church living faithfully in a moment, can be as powerful politically, can be as powerful socially, can be as powerful morally, but we have to do it as the church. We can't adopt a government, sort of dress it up in Christian garb, and go, okay, now we're Christian. Let's go do some stuff. It won't work because we need that sort of central animating, life-giving spirit. We need a God who is capable of overcoming any resource needs, any fear we might have. Like we need that central clear focus to just say, we can lean back always on God. We don't need to lean on these other systems. I was kind of reflecting on, you know, there's a passage in Isaiah where he talks about, you know, leaning on the broken reed that is Egypt, and having it pierce the hand of the nation that leans on it. And I think we're sort of in danger, at least some of us are in danger, of doing that again, is that it seems like the right way to go, right? Government seems powerful. It seems almost ubiquitous, like it's everywhere. We need it. And so let's lean in on it. But I think Isaiah's imagery is that eventually that is going to pierce our hands. It's gonna cut right through. It's not reliable. And in fact, it's gonna be real painful when we've depended on it so much that now it no longer works. And so we need to really think deeply about what we want to depend on here and recognize that the church really is enough and that faithfulness is the best strategy that we can ever implement. We don't need another political strategy. Our political strategy is to be the church. And, you know, again, I keep saying it because I think people are going to hear this wrong, right? Not telling Christians not to participate in politics. Not at all. Not saying that. But what I am saying is that for Christians to be able to participate in politics as Christians, the church has to be the church. Yes. Like we can't just be nominal Christians participating in politics. We actually have to be formed as disciples of Jesus Christ and then participate in politics. I do think, and I'm not saying completely transformed and perfect or whatever, but I'm saying there has to be a deeply rooted commitment to follow Christ and to be part of a body that is doing similar in order for us to have a real political effect. You know, I'm reminded of a couple that got into a car accident. You can see that I have preaching tendencies. I give examples. It helps me to give examples. And the wife was really hurt. The husband picked her up and they saw a sign that said doctors, in a window. And so he ran to the house and he knocked on the door and he said, Hey, I'm here. Like my wife is hurt. And he said, I'm sorry, I don't practice anymore because I'm retired. And the man said, You either going to heal her or take down your sign. Right? You're either going to do what you said when you signed this or take down this sign. Right? Because the sign is the one that brought me to you. The sign is gave me hope. The sign is the one that resolved. I don't think there's anything more damaging on this earth than the ruler of the Eastern Orthodox church sitting next to Putin and telling the Russian people, God wants this war. Yeah. It gets really confusing really fast. Yeah. It blurs. You're either going to do what you said that God wants you to do, or you better take down that sign. Right. In advertising that you are now speaking on behalf of God, that God wants Putin to go into Ukraine. Right? It gets really messy really fast. This is where I don't think, I do believe I am really, I'm an optimist. I know in this podcast it doesn't come across like this, but I'm an optimist. I do. And I'm actually more in the hope against all hope. The Bible talks about a hope against all hope. And I think that's uniquely Christian. That is something that defines, doesn't matter in what context or circumstance, that Christian will actually believe there's something that is way bigger than this because there's a big God here. But I do believe that the church in America is going to come out of this. It's going through a crisis now. It's going through a really weird crisis of hanging on to whatever solution they think is going to work. And I don't think this is it. I don't think the government is the solution. It's going to come out stronger, more purified, and people will have a chance to see, like, I'm either going to stay with God in this, or I'm actually going to go with this false hope of power and culture and all that kind of stuff. But it becomes really messy if you now declare America, and I'm not saying it's going to happen, I'm saying if you declare America as a Christian nation, and now America is going to have to do what America does and get involved in all the wars and get involved in all this, and you're going to have a pastor sitting next to whoever the president is going to be saying, God wants us to do this. We are a Christian nation. It's a big problem. I agree, it is. And I think the illustration of the Greek Orthodox church sitting next to Putin is a great one. It just reminds us that at the end of the day, it's almost like we're playing two different games. You know, and if we start playing the game in a different way, number one, we're kind of telling Jesus, we're telling God, look, your way of playing the game just isn't expedient. It's too much of a long game for us. We're really sorry. We need to get some of this stuff fixed. Like, we get it. Yeah, be faithful. We understand, you know, your son suffered and died. But that suffering thing, it's not like as fun as he made it seem. And so we'd like to take care of it. We'd like to be comfortable. Thank you. We found an alternative. Right. And so, you know, if we can play this other game over here for a while and get ourselves comfortable and get ourselves to a point where we feel like, hey, we finally reached a pinnacle of morality that we think we can sustain. That's what we're going to do. And I think that it's the wrong game for us to play. And so our game is always discipleship. Our game is always worship of God. Our game involves patience and waiting and suffering and not giving false hope. I had a dude, I got my piece on the Harvard president's resignation published in the Wall Street Journal. And this one dude, he responded, made a comment about something like, I'm tired of these Christians who are winding around about, you know, the losses and taking on a loser's attitude and that kind of thing. And so I read it. I kind of shrugged it off. And I was thinking about it and I'm like, I was writing the piece thinking that we didn't ever get a win. I actually think trying to reform these institutions is always going to be a losing game. Like you're going to have course corrections, and I think that's appropriate, but the only way we win is by making those course corrections and remaining faithful at the same time. Like you have to do this as the church. You can't do it by being conservative. You can't do it by being liberal. You can't do it by, you know, electing the right person. Like we do it by being the church. That's how you win. And so if we, you know, accomplish a goal, right, through human means and human effort and human systems using human tactics, I'm going to question whether that's actually a win. And there's just a part of me that thinks that when we look at some of these things and we're saying, you know, the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation. We're trying to win in the wrong way. You know, we're really setting aside what is our primary vocation, setting aside the struggle not against flesh and blood, but against the powers and the principalities that exist in the heavenly realms. We're setting that aside to say, no, what we really need is the earthly power to come in and say we're Christian and then we're good. Yes. Yes. And we're just missing this sort of distinction between church and state. And so I think there is a way for Christians to respect, subject themselves, and even correct and speak to government, participate in government in that way, especially in the United States. But I think that because we've been given this idea of choice,

We keep making mistakes along the way because we think we're determining the fate of the nation when we cast our vote. And I just don't believe that that's true. Sort of at the core of me, I don't believe that's true. I really agree with you, James. I can't shake off the imagery from the book of Hebrews, which I think is so powerful because I'm pretty sure Apostle Paul knew what he was doing when he spoke in terms of our citizenship is in heaven. Yeah, yeah. I really love that imagery because I'm pretty sure he knew what he was doing, right? I mean, he was a Roman citizen, right? He only used that once because he was like, man, I'm sick and tired of getting whooped every chance. Every time I open my mouth, the Jewish people beat me up. The Romans beat me up. You know, I'm a Roman citizen. That's right. That's it, you know? So he was like, you know what? If I say this, I actually can evangelize Caesar. So might as well. You know, like, take me to Caesar, right? But he did. And then the imagery of, and I really, really love that, is that our kingdom is unshakable. Yeah. Right? And you would actually rather side with a very shakeable. I'm talking about like from one, and America's feeling this right now, right? From one election year to another four-year election year, like, it's shakeable. I mean, it shakes to the core. And I don't think America is used to the tectonic shifts that just an election can do, but now it's feeling it in a really, but you're seeing it shakeable, and yet you're still deciding to be like, nah, this is a good bet. This is a, I'll go with this, right? Instead of my citizenship, my first citizenship, I'm a dual citizen, right? But I do believe that some people, if I were to be in the government, and if I were to be in the U.S. military, if I were actually to be an official of the thing, I have to give up my Romanian citizenship. America does it in such a way that if you are to serve in those areas, you cannot have dual citizenship, right? It's very strict with that kind of stuff. So in my mind, our faith is the same. You can't have dual citizenship. We have dual citizenship, yeah. If you are a professing Christian, right, our citizenship, our main citizenship is in heaven, and yet the Bible talks really powerfully about pray for your city. The peace of the city, it depends on how your family is going to be, your kids going to school, how it really is important. You need to be really connected to the healthiness and the prosperity of your city. Yes, be connected to that. But your citizenship, your actual first citizenship is in an unshakable kingdom. How powerful thing it is for us to give that up. Even if we look at that, so Philippians 3 where Paul talks about the citizenship being in heaven, right? These people are anticipating that their king, Jesus, is going to come back, right? So he pictures it like they're in this colonial outpost, right? And there's warring nations all around, and there's opposition that they're just sort of hoping to escape. But what they're waiting for is the Lord. They're waiting for the Lord to come back. That is the hope. And so all of these other things, if we elevate them too high, they become false hopes. If we give them the authority that God has given them and no more, right, and we ask them to exercise that authority, we challenge them to exercise that authority, we confront them when they're not exercising that authority, but we have them only exercise the authority that God has given them and no more. Christians do not let them overreach. I think we're doing our job. But I think right now, sometimes, and especially with some of these statements we've looked at in the Neighborly Faith study, I think we're allowing the government and the governing authorities more authority than God has delegated to them. And that, I think, is where we're losing, muddling the church and the state. Yes. We're creating a problem there that doesn't actually need to exist, and in the process, we're losing our ability to testify to the triune God and all that he could do through a church that is wholly devoted to him. Yes. You know, I think there is a reaction. I could understand and I could actually have a filter by which I can see or a lens by which I can see somebody doing it. The sons of Korah in a psalm, they say something very profound. They said, When I saw the wicked prospering, I started slipping. I started, like, losing my own footing when I saw that the wicked prosper. They do wicked and they prosper. And I do think that it's a form of reaction, but it's a poor reaction. When I see that there's agendas or there are things and they're happening around, our thing is to say, You know what? That's it. We're taking over. We're going to fix this. Right? When I see the wicked people prosper, I lost my own footing because it really questioned, Where's your foundation? Who do you trust in? Right. And do you want to fix this? Because you were like, I can't believe that they're doing this. I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this. And you see people, people siding with different psychologists. I'm not going to mention them here. And really being excited that they're taking their own fight and be like, yes, tell them, suck it to them. Right. I'm like, Yeah, that's a really good Christian attitude. Suck it to them. Just tell them, fight for us. Like God is losing. And I'm like, Ah, you know what? Maybe wait a little bit. Yeah. Let this play out a little bit. Yeah. I think he's okay. You know, I think God's going to make it. I think God's going to make it without us. Yeah, I think he'll be okay. You know, and I think the more that we try to get God to act on our terms, or the more we assume that God is going to act on our terms, the worse off we're going to be. And so we need to get on his page. He doesn't need to get on ours. That's kind of the way I see this. And so why don't we end it there? This has been a great discussion. Again, we're going through the Neighborly Faith statements. We got one more we're going to do next time. This one, actually, we're going to switch gears a little bit. This is the one that Christian nationalism, those who were identified as Christian nationalist adherents, most strongly disagreed with. And so we're going to check that statement out next time. But thanks, old friend, for being here. Thanks, everybody, for watching. And we will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care, everybody. Through calm, thoughtful theological conversations, Thinking Christian offers a mix of interviews and discussions that highlight the ways God is working in the lives of his people and question the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that keep the church from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. I want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you will find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Hey there, it's Nicole Yunus, host of the How to Study the Bible podcast, where every single week we join together to encounter God through his word. You can subscribe at lifeaudio.com.