Christian America???  

     Is "Christian America" the same thing as the Body of Christ?

     Over the next few days, we provide insights from Michael Horton, a professor in California, who has researched these matters beginning with our founders. We hope you find this as fascinating as we do.

     Horton: "Christ is the head of a new creation. It's all about him, as he delivers himself to sinners through preaching and teaching, baptism and Communion. That's the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20).

     "Any church that loses interest in Jesus' commission fades away, just part of the desert again. Liberal Protestants still wear the shirt but are playing a different game. Evangelicalism seems precariously close behind.

     "Many feel they are playing the 'Christian Nation' game in a heated tournament with the 'Progressive Agenda' team. Churches that just wear the shirt become part of the political right or left...something other than Martin Luther's A Mighty Fortress is Our God ... a word above all earthly powers. 

     "At both political extremes one discerns a deeply religious vision...but is not Christian. It's object of worship is not the triune God but America. Christian nationalism is not merely a white phenomenon. Sixty-five percent of African Americans support Christain nationalism. Hispanics are split evenly, as are whites overall."

Tomorrow: Is Christian Nationalism Biblical?

 

 What is an American? 

by Janie Cheaney

     American history has been a minefield of reinterpretation. The Stars and Stripes triggers anxiety. The Fourth of July calls for dirges. It's a civil war of words, testing whether any nation that debates its own existence can long endure. 

     A Frenchman wrote in 1782: "What then is an American, this new man? An American is heir to European arts and sciences but freed from European traditions and obligations. He is a man of property, entitled to the fruits of his labor."

     "He is a free agent in a classless society, owing no allegiance to a king or a church. Here, individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will cause great change in the world."

     He left to Americans to discover for ourselves who we are. We haven't figured it out yet. 

     Americans might be defined as individuals freed to act out their human nature. Human nature is complicated, as is American history. 

     Another Frenchman wrote the "glory and garbage of the universe" turned loose on a largely empty continent, will do glorious and garbagy things. Glorious are the innovations, material prosperity, and the opportunity to follow up on a good idea. Less so is the freedom to exercise greed and prejudice. 

     Americans aren't uniquely good or evil; we've just been uniquely unfettered. That's why John Adams said our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. We the people still believe that. The disagreement is over whose morality and what religion.

 

 This is Different

     Three major banks - Silicon Valley, First Republic and Signature - failed earlier this year. Collectively they were worth $532 billion. 

     Several U.S. senators have introduced legislation that would stiffen repercussions for leaders of failing banks. The measures would empower the FDIC to seize profits made by executives in the form of salaries, bonuses and other compensation. 

     Sen. Elizabeth Warren's bill would seize the executives' profits made five years prior to a bank's failure. A bill introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown and Sen. Tim Scott calls for a two-year window. 

     Supporters of the bills think raising the stakes for failure would incentivize bank executives to make more careful decisions. 

     

Strong Delusion 

     After the Supreme Court's final decision on June 30, CNN's home page headline read: "Conservatives are on a roll to remake America through the courts." 

     Actually, the reconfiguring began in 1916 when President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, nominated liberal Louis Brandeis to the high court, leading to the first confirmation fight in U.S. history.

     Wilson and other progressives saw the courts as launching pads for social reform. Legal academics began turning law schools into incubators for lawyers who would practice "sociological jurisprudence" - making social and economic arguments instead of arguing the law. 

     Paul wrote to believers at Thessalonica that in the last days the "lawless" one would deceive "those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore, God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false."

     We seem to have crossed from reinventing truth to an outright rejection of reality. 

     Killing unborn babies is healthcare. Child mutilation promotes mental health. Helping people commit suicide is compassionate, as is euthanizing the sick and disabled. These and other insane positions are now mainstream. Tens of millions are living in a miasma (oppressive atmosphere) of lies. 

     People may think they are really doing the right thing. 

     It's also heartbreaking when a holy God gives people what they insist they want.

Lynn Vincent, WORLD magazine

Will Our Pillars Stand? 

     You have seen photos of ancient cities in Turkey, Italy and Greece. Pillars of once-important buildings are all that's left of their former glory. 

     Will Christian influence, common law, private property and a free economy continue to mark the U.S.A. in our lifetimes? Not if Marxists and oligarchs have their way.  

     When American settlers began to expand, the fastest mode was by horse. There were no elementary schools for decades, and all but one of the eastern colleges was Christian oriented. 

     No one was wealthy. Later, there was slavery mostly in the South.  Settlers in the Midwest ignored the rules, and it paid off with "squatters rights," celebrated today by U. of Oklahoma "Sooners." 

    We read that President Thomas Jefferson worked alone in the White House during the Lewis & Clark expedition. It was Jefferson who wanted all territory placed in private hands. Didn't happen.

     To sum up - no electricity, radio, TV, phones, drilled oil, autos, airplanes, rubber, steel, satellites and little medicine. George Washington was a reluctant president. Now, we get 20 or more candidates wanting to rule the roost. Many departments were added since World War II. Everything we invented can be used against us. Lying is expected.  

     Many in Congress are there to gain wealth and power. Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond, South Carolina, who opposed civil rights, focused on his voters. In 2003, then a Republican, as he - mentally gone - neared his goal of "serving" until age 100, guess who encouraged him most: Democratic Senator Joe Biden. 

     In Rome, only the elite mattered. Will our pillars survive?

              Jimmy

      

PILLAR #4 

Free market economy

     Both Jamestown and Plymouth began with a form of socialist economy. Each had common lands to be cultivated. Each had common grain storage. Both failed.

     They call 1609-1610 the "starving time" in Jamestown. William Bradford lamented that perhaps he and his fellow colonists had thought themselves wiser than God. 

     Plymouth didn't suffer as deeply. Gov. Carver divided up the land and seed. Within one planting season they enjoyed abundance. That led Bradford to proclaim a day of Thanksgiving. 

     Adam Smith, concerned with finding the most moral system of economics, developed what is considered the theory of capitalism in 1776. But this was well after Plymouth. By 1630, Plymouth's colonists had so many crops coming in they needed a full-time miller. In one of the first "divisions of labor," they agreed to pay a miller (with crops) for milling their grains. 

     In both Jamestown and Plymouth there were two of the pillars - common law and private property with written titles and deeds. Only in Plymouth did a bottom-up Protestant religion take root. And it was Plymouth that had the first free-market economy. Virginia had top-down Anglicanism and Presbyterianism. 

     No other nation in the world has all four pillars, and only Plymouth, not Jamestown, had all four. American exceptionalism was born in Plymouth, with a bottom-up religious structure that stressed local control, participation by everyone, private property and a free market economy. 

     Those four pillars, not the Declaration or Constitution, make us exceptional. Those two amazing documents merely placed into the written record what Americans had already known for more than 150 years. 

Next: What to make of it today?

PILLAR #3 

Private property with written titles and deeds

     Private property in Europe was reinforced in 1215 by the Magna Carta. The key was written titles and deeds. 

     Much of the world practiced an oral tradition that today's progressive (Democrat) scholars find desirable. It was not. Spoken words came down to "might makes right." 

     Into the 1700s, English and colonial government could seize property for almost any reason. The need: Written titles and deeds would provide security and leverage to obtain loans. Without clear proof ownership, land could not be transferred or used as collateral for loans. 

     Our founders codified written titles and deeds into law even before the U.S. Constitution. He writes, "I often argue that the Land Ordinance of 1785 was the most important law in American history. It set up a system of surveys and sales of public lands." Thomas Jefferson wanted all government land moved into private hands as soon as possible. Didn't happen. 

     Pioneers' general attitude was, "No one's gonna tell me where I kin settle." This was a challenge to the founders, because pillar #2 said, in essence, "The people know what they are doing." Founders decided to accommodate those who settled outside the survey through a new law best known as "squatter's rights." 

     The second most important law in American history also came before the Constitution, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. It created territories now comprising Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. It provided gradual growth leading to requests for entering the Union.

     Slavery was prohibited in the Northwest Territory. Since the words slave or slavery did not appear in the U.S. Constitution drafted two years later, it presumed that all future U.S. territorial expansion would be free. 

Last: PILLAR #4, Free market economy.