Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: IVP
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
"America is a Christian nation.""All men are created equal.""We are the land of the free and the home of the brave."Except when we're not. These commonly held ideas break down in the light of hard realities, the study of Scripture, and faithful Christian witness. The president is not the messiah, the Constitution is not the Bible, and the United States is not a city on a hill or the hope for the world. The proclaimed hope of America rings most hollow for Native peoples, people of color, the rural poor, and other communities pressed to the margins.Jonathan Walton exposes the cultural myths and misconceptions about America's identity. Focusing on its manipulation of Scripture and the person of Jesus, he redirects us to the true promises found in the gospel. Walton identifies how American ideology and way of life has become a false religion, and shows that orienting our lives around American nationalism is idolatry. Our cultural notions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are at odds with the call to take up our cross and follow Jesus.Ultimately, our place in America is distinct from our place in the family of Jesus. Discover how the kingdom of God offers true freedom and justice for all.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 349
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
For
God, our Father
Pauline Allen, my Momma
Priscilla, my wife
Maia, my daughter
Thank you for
loving me for who I am,
not what I do for you.
OPENING PRAYER
May God bless you with discomfort at easy
answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression,
and exploitation of people and the planet that you
might work for justice, freedom, and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer
pain, rejection, hunger, and war that you might reach out
your hand to comfort them and turn their pain to joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness to
believe that you can make a difference in the world, that
you can do what others claim cannot be done. To bring
justice, kindness, and the gospel to every corner of
creation, especially among all children and the poor.
Amen.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
Greg Jao
I WISH I COULD CLAIM that I was not an expert liar. Of course, that would be a lie. I suspect we all are expert liars. We lie a lot. We begin lying as children. I remember my toddlers insisting that they did not take the candy from the jar, even though they were standing in a pile of crumpled candy wrappers. As children, our lies are simple and easily detected. When we enter our teens, our lies become more complex, and our alibis become more convincing. It takes an observant (or lucky) parent to catch us. By the time we become adults, we have become experts at telling lies. We tell them so smoothly that they often pass undetected. We construct stories, situations, and systems to support them. We tell new lies to reinforce old lies. We sever or sabotage relationships to defend them. Our lies can be so well entrenched after twenty or thirty years that it requires an enormous crisis to confront them. Bankruptcy. Rehab. The loss of a job. The end of a marriage.
If this is true for us as individuals, imagine how hard it is to confront the lies of a nearly 250-year-old nation. What crisis would be big enough, visible enough, destructive enough to shatter our defenses and force us to face the truth? I hope it is the crises we are currently living in—the crises that Jonathan describes so carefully and passionately in this book. The stories and statistics Jonathan has assembled challenge our self-deception. They invite us to honest reflection as individuals and communities. They point us to a better way forward, one defined by Scripture rather than by the Stars and Stripes. But I worry because there can be tremendous resistance to letting go of the lies. We are invested in them.
Why do we lie as individuals, institutions, and nations? As an experienced liar, I know I tell lies because I want people to believe I am more courageous, more diligent, more loving, more careful, more competent, more faithful, and more holy than I really am. I tell lies so that I do not have to admit to myself—or others—that I am scared, insecure, selfish, sloppy, and sinful. I do not want to confront the truth that I fail (frequently) and am a failure (comprehensively). I am reluctant to face myself honestly. And my reluctance should be shocking because I am a Christian.
Christians should be the quickest to admit we fail (and are failures). The words “We have sinned. Will you forgive us?” should come easily to our lips. After all, these are the words that we said when we became Christians. They are the words that we say regularly to the triune God—and should be saying regularly to each other. These are the words that should cause no surprise or shock at a church. (What hospital would be shocked if a patient said, “I am sick”? Of course they are! That is why they are here.) And yet, tragically, these are words that we are reluctant to say. About ourselves. About our institutions. And about our country. As a result, we reject the truth. We quench the Spirit. We cheat ourselves out of the hope of restoration, renewal, and renovation. We deny the power of the gospel.
But what if this were not so?
Over the past decade, I have watched Jonathan help thousands of college students confront lies. Lies about themselves. (I’m unforgiveable. Unredeemable. Unlovable.) Lies about Scripture. (It’s oppressive. Irrelevant. Untrue.) Lies about God. (He’s distant. Disinterested. Dangerous.) And lies about our country that he uncovers in the chapters that follow. What I love and respect about Jonathan is that he is not content to name the lies. Any journalist or pundit could do that. Any self-appointed “prophet” does that. Jonathan does more. He points past the lies to Jesus—he who is the Truth and the source of truths that can set us all free.
As an expert liar, I long to be free of the lies that bind me and define me. I want to face reality in my life, in my church, and in my country. I want to embrace the truth so that God’s truth can set me free. If you want the same, read this book. Rage over the stories. Grieve over the statistics. Wrestle with the ideas. Embrace the crisis it creates. Reject the lies. And seek the transforming truths that Jesus brings.
“LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS,” as defined by the founders of America, are different from the promises of the living God. In fact, white American folk religion places life in America as preferred, even superior to the abundant life offered by Jesus.
I know this now, but I didn’t know it in 2004. I arrived at Columbia University in the fall of 2004 from Brodnax, a small town in south-central Virginia. It lacked a stoplight, bank, and we had no supermarket —but there were a lot of churches. When I arrived at college, I was asked by friends if I was “Reformed” and had no idea what those in the “Christian Fellowship” were talking about. John Piper, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, TobyMac, and Dispatch had nothing to do with my Christianity. The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, and C. S. Lewis were not on my reading list. I had never been on a mission trip, visited a Young Life camp, or attended a church that used PowerPoint. I knew the Soul Stirrers and John P. Kee, and sang from hymnals to beats made by clapping hands and patting feet. InterVarsity, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and many Christian spaces I sat in showed me a different Jesus from the one I grew up with. Over time, I started to believe that the Jesus introduced to me at Meherrin Baptist Church in Brodnax was less than ideal at best and heretical at worst. The pastors who baptized and discipled me changed in my mind from committed men of God to liberation theologians, prosperity preachers, and motivational speakers who were light on doctrine. The women who taught from the pulpit went from prophetic leaders to disobedient females.1
Of course, not everything I was taught in Sunday school was biblical, but I had never felt less than another believer, and that’s what I felt sitting in InterVarsity’s weekly worship service at Columbia. Black preachers were rare, the songs familiar to me were never sung, and inductive Bible study was a prized method for engaging Scripture. I came to believe that it wasn’t that I worshiped differently, but that I worshiped incorrectly. The songs they sang were how we are supposed to sing. The way they prayed was how Christians are supposed to pray. “They,” in this story, are my white American brothers and sisters, and the mostly international Chinese students that stood beside them. Being in a majority-white American and Chinese crowd, I felt alone, isolated, and demoralized, but I did my best to assimilate. There was one other non-Asian-specific campus ministry, so with only two choices, I went all-in. I behaved similarly in my classes but experienced a similar separateness. In a theater class there was an option to learn and perform “black preaching.” Not only was the teaching I sat under as a child unbiblical, but also in this new culture it was entertainment.
Through my years at Columbia, issues of race and ethnicity boiled underneath the surface of our campus Christian fellowship. But at a retreat during my junior year, our campus minister invited a speaker to share God’s vision for multiethnicity and invited us to lament, confess, repent, and practice genuine reconciliation with Christ at the center.
During a response time to the teaching that was presented, my best friend and I were made to sit on opposite sides of the room. We were reminded that in America we have racial assignments. In the United States I am black and he is white. Instead of being two people made in the image of God, navigating difference as best we can, we were thrust back into our boxes. This black-and-white divide was highlighted on campus but never this blatant. We were given the biblical mandate and social invitation to engage, which was the beginning of long nights and dialogues between us that continue to this day.
I’m grateful for the speaker’s leadership, specifically her ability to guide all ethnic backgrounds through this tension and not over or around it. While I was having this hard but liberating experience, one of my white brothers was profoundly uncomfortable and openly asked for it to stop. I felt heartbroken and afraid of being pushed back to the margins. Thankfully, some continued to press in. I carry sadness to this day about the dissonance that experience caused in my heart and in the lives of those around me. There was a clear break between us, and we reflected the chasm between the two groups in our fellowship. There were those who embraced the privilege of moving on and those whose skin color and personal experience didn’t afford them the same opportunity. Jesus came to break down the dividing walls of hostility, and he commissioned us to walk in that ministry. Some decided not to follow him that day. That disengagement is a part of WAFR.
Lament, confession, repentance, and reconciliation are clearly parts of Jesus’ gospel and the disciples’ lives, but they are not part of American Christian culture. What many practice and promote in America passes for genuine faith in Christ, but 80 percent of Christians don’t read the Bible daily. Furthermore, only 1 percent of Christians in America believe we are doing discipleship well, as reported by the Barna Group.2
When we don’t meet Christ in Scripture and are not regularly being discipled by or discipling others, it is impossible to discern what being a Christian means or to cultivate a relationship with God. This lack of intimacy with Jesus and his people doesn’t take into account those who claim to be Christians but see justice, reconciliation, and compassion as optional Christian activities. Nor does it capture the number of those who believe in Jesus’ divinity or status as a “great teacher” but not exclusively as the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). Scripture, however, makes it clear that all of these are essential to the faith.
The first lie that holds America captive is that the United States is a Christian nation. This is false for many reasons. Chief among them is that people who practice WAFR live incompatibly with biblical Christianity because WAFR is not rooted in a relationship with Jesus, compromises genuine witness to Jesus, and is void of faith in Christ. Moreover, WAFR requires the exchange of the kingdom of God for the United States of America. Jesus didn’t come to earth to establish any nation as Christian—including the United States (Acts 1).
WHAT IS WHITE AMERICAN FOLK RELIGION (WAFR)?
By white I mean the system created to claim that those of darker skin color are inherently inferior. Over time, white included components of family, national background, or class. At its core, whiteness was created solely to subjugate one group of people and elevate the other. In Europe and the Americas, it is the subjugation of indigenous people, those descended from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as women, the materially poor, and social outcasts. America is the context where this ideology reigns most strongly. And folk religion is the common set of popular beliefs and practices under the guise of true religion but outside of the faith’s official doctrines and practices. WAFR claims to be biblical Christianity.
In WAFR, early American leaders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are moved from mere leaders to forefathers, as if to make all Americans their descendants. Instead of being made in the image of God, we live in the shadow of the images on Mount Rushmore. The men are transformed into mythical figures. Our freedom then was not afforded by the blood of Jesus but by the blood of soldiers who took and defended our right to liberty. Our Father is not Yahweh but a nonspecific Creator, and the Bible is replaced by the Constitution. Instead of the Ten Commandments, we have the first ten Amendments, known as the Bill of Rights. The law and our leaders, not the Messiah, will set us free because we trust in our representatives and equate the president with our Savior. This narrative isn’t just false, it’s idolatrous; we center our identities on the accomplishments of men, not God and his will for all creation.
HOW TO PRACTICE WHITE AMERICAN FOLK RELIGION
WAFR not only deifies its leaders, but like every false ideology, it has a method of worship, praise, and sacrifice that reveal its followers’ membership and level of dedication. WAFR has three key practices:
1. the regular tithe of time, money, and talent to pursue personal comfort and selfish ambition
2. covert and overt efforts to uphold a race-, gender-, and class-based hierarchy
3. corporate orientation and accountability around pleasure-seeking and consumption
These three tenets are implied in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” are promised by America and by God. But they are not the same in origin, practice, or motive. The goals and intentions of the Declaration of Independence sit in opposition to the gospel of Christ. The totality of Scripture does not endorse the marriage of God and country or the establishment, development, or practices of any country in the name of Jesus. The United States cannot be a Christian nation, because God’s plan for redemption does not include a nation-state, and the beliefs and practices of WAFR are opposed to the arc of Scripture.
JESUS AND THE KU KLUX KLAN
Romans 12:1 states, “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (NIV). And in Romans 13 we see that Jesus’ followers are to remain subject to civil laws and ordinances, respecting leaders and officers. There is an inherent tension between the kingdom of God and the disorder of the world.
The early church exemplifies what it looks like to bear witness within this tension. In Acts 6, when Greek widows were overlooked in the daily distribution of food because of their ethnic/cultural identity (not Hebrew), class (widow, poor), and gender (female), the disciples went against the patterns of the day and did not judge them by the world’s standards. The apostles appointed seven Greek men full of the Spirit and wisdom to take over the daily food distribution. Culturally, these powerful male leaders had every right to overlook and even cast out these widowed and impoverished Greek women, who had few, if any, rights. But according to the way of Christ, there is no basis to favor the wealthy and connected (James 2:1-13). Scripture mandates that Christians prioritize the poor and remain always in their company in loving service (Matthew 25:31-46; 26:11).
Moreover, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 is a crucial part of the apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth. This letter, like other narratives of the Acts church, sets up a system in opposition to the way their present world works. Paul says that followers of Christ are no longer to make assumptions and judgments based on the outward appearances of people and the standards of this world. Therefore, the founders of this country should not have sanctioned, promoted, and practiced slavery. They should not have ordained, participated in, or defended genocide and land theft. But that is precisely what happened. This heresy was not just practiced by authors of the Constitution but also by white pastors and leaders who filled the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan:
The goal of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is to unite White Christians through the bond of brotherhood and aid their awareness of the problems facing our country. We will show you how and when to take action (in a non violent way). The United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a patriotic, fraternal and law abiding organization. We uphold Christian values this country was founded on. We protect these values from those who seek to remove them from our society. Our ideology is simple, self preservation and the advancement of White Christian America.3
Genesis 1:26-27 boldly states that every person is made in the image of God. And the two creation accounts in Genesis 1–2 expound on humanity’s mandate to flourish, work, rule, and create. Yet leaders of the United States, instead of being rooted in the patterns of God, instituted a pattern of life oriented around the Protestant work ethic—the view that a person’s duty is to achieve success through hard work and thrift, with such success being a sign that one has received salvation.4 This system, which linked human worthiness to productivity alongside a race- and class-based social hierarchy, became the measure of a person’s worth in our society. We internalize this value system and pass it on to those around us. And so it reigns to this day in the hearts of men and women, and in the institutions in which we operate and lead.
THE IDOLATRY OF WHITE AMERICAN FOLK RELIGION
The three key practices of WAFR mentioned earlier make it incompatible with biblical Christianity. These are not fringe practices or beliefs held only by a small group of people. George W. Bush famously invited Americans not to pray, give, or volunteer after the attacks on September 11, 2001, but to shop.5 Barack Obama, on the day of his inauguration, January 20, 2009, stated that “we will not change our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense.”6 These are not invitations to radical generosity and selflessness, but affirmations that we will do things the way we have always done them. The idols of materialism, militarism, racism, and sexuality will not be destroyed by the passing of time or the hard work of a few because the race-based meritocracy at work in America is central to our way of life; held together by taking Scripture out of context and applying it with no regard for what Jesus actually preached, practiced, and called us to be.
The most infamous example of this proof texting or text-jacking is
