I don’t think anyone who lives in the United States can say that our country is a “Christian” nation. Yes, the country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. This is hard to dispute (though many of the founding fathers were Deists). But to label the USA a Christian nation today is difficult to maintain.
Studies have shown that the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. The foundations of America’s “Christianized” culture is falling apart. The Northwest of the USA has traditionally been anti-religious and anti-Christian. But the anti-religious culture of the Northwest has moved to the East in recent years.
Al Mohler, who is regarded as a major leader of the “Christian Right” has gone on record saying, “The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture . . . Clearly, there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative, that is animating large portions of this society.”
I believe Mohler is correct. I spend a lot of time traveling and talking to nonChristians and Christians alike and those conversations underscore that we are now living in a post-Christian culture. Christendom as we know it is dead.
The reason, I believe, lies chiefly in three areas:
1. Christians in general have sanctified, anointed, and protected outdated traditions of church practice that are over 500 years old, refusing to come to terms with the fact that many of these traditions are not only irrelevant, and ineffective, but they are also unbiblical.
2. Christians by and large fall into two categories: legalists and libertines. “Christian” legalists are self-righteous, judgmental, harsh, and mean-spirited; “Christian” libertines live just like those who don’t follow Jesus live. In other words, libertines behave as if God doesn’t exist; legalists behave as if they were God. Both lack spiritual reality. Until we face this problem squarely, Christians will have little impact on the culture.
3. The horrific way that Christians treat each other and eat their own. This is perhaps the biggest problem of all. It’s why evangelical Christianity continues to fracture and lose members and influence.
It is going to take a major shaking of the Spirit of God to turn the tide on these three problems. Obedience, however, should never be delayed nor should it be contingent on waiting for the crowds to obey.
Each of us can choose to do business with our Lord in these areas and change course now.