Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
In recent year Secularists have gotten a lot of mileage in the media out of warning of the threat to the United States of a home grown Christian version of Islamic theocracy. This would be perpetrated against the nation by those who are politically and theologically conservative. Some of these pundits just muse darkly about the ramifications of too many Bible-believing Christians in government. Others, with less restraint and far less reason, have gone so far as to brand those political activists who believe in biblical principles as the “American Taliban.” What these individuals do not realize is that the vast majority of biblical Christians in this country have no love for the idea of the church and the state somehow becoming one either. Our reasons for not wanting such a change in the nature of American government are quite different from theirs’ but the fact remains that, outside of a few people on the extreme fringe, we mostly would prefer to leave our political system the way it is.
A strong argument can be made that true Christianity functions better in a pluralistic society with guaranteed religious freedoms and a nominal separation of church and state than in perhaps any other political construct in human history. Such a society took root in America largely as a result of the founding fathers of our nation knowing about the government-backed religious intolerance their immediate ancestors experienced in Europe. Because of this many of them wanted to create a society in which freedom of conscience was safeguarded by the government, not eliminated by it. The Establishment Clause in the U.S. Constitution was far more likely designed to protect the church from the state than vice-versa; something that is often forgotten by both sides in the current debate.
One of the reasons Christianity remains a vibrant part of the contemporary American scene is because all of its branches have, in a sense, been “watered” by a political system that was not designed to promote one branch at the expense of another. Historically when a government and a particular church become fused into something resembling a theocracy the result is the suppression of all the other churches. This is not desirable for Christians who agree on theological essentials, but not on all particulars (and that represents most of us under the biblical Christian banner).
Beyond that, history also shows that when a particular church becomes a “state church” it usually dies. Look at the official churches of countries all over Western Europe. Truly practicing Christians are today a very small minority in most of these nations. The Church is inevitably compromised when it becomes too intertwined with the state. This has actually been evident ever since the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the late Roman Empire by Constantine in the Fourth Century. It is not unreasonable to propose that much of the remaining purity of the early church then proceeded to die along with Rome.
Christians in the United States do not want to live under the politically correct thumb of Radical Secularism, but most of us also have no desire to have any one denomination tell us how to live out an authentic religious life; with the sword of government providing that denomination with the power to do so. Such an arrangement would indeed smack of life under something like Sharia law, a reality Christians want to avoid just as much as Secularists do (though, again, for different reasons.)
Ill-advised pronouncements from the extreme Left about “Christianists” wanting to make America into some kind of religious dictatorship do not hold up under any kind of serious scrutiny of earnest followers of Christ in this country. That such scrutiny of the facts is not a priority for people who have already made up their minds about biblical Christians should not come as a big surprise. Those who have declared man the measure of all things tend to instinctively dislike those who hold to a biblical worldview, and generally despise the idea of people with such convictions having any kind of political influence whatsoever. We are, by nature, offensive to them.
But perhaps a few Secularists will pursue the truth (with the open mind they so often accuse Christians of not having) and learn that they have far more to fear today from Radical Islam then from us.