{"id":92,"date":"2010-05-03T19:44:30","date_gmt":"2010-05-03T19:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/roberthunt\/2010\/05\/03\/blogpost1\/"},"modified":"2015-03-13T20:09:10","modified_gmt":"2015-03-14T02:09:10","slug":"blogpost1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/roberthunt\/2010\/05\/blogpost1\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Identity in a Pluralistic World"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>\u201cHow can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The lament of the Israelites exiled to Babylon lies un-articulated behind the real anxiety that many American Christians feel, and the mistrust and even\u00a0hatred they express toward the raising of mosques and Hindu and <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/buddhism' target='_blank'>Buddhist<\/a> temples in communities that once took for granted a shared Christian identity. Is America becoming a\u00a0land foreign to Christianity? Should it be the last bastion of Christendom now that Europe has so decisively fallen to secularism and unbelief?\u00a0And most importantly,\u00a0can we be fully Christian if the national culture and even national law do not support our Christian values, if not our Christian beliefs?<\/p>\n<p>In this blog I\u2019ll be sharing some thoughts about Christian identity in a religiously plural world. I\u2019m going to suggest that being fully Christian in no way requires that we live in a Christian land. Nor indeed is living in a nominally Christian nation even particularly helpful to our Christian identity. In the next post I\u2019ll look at scripture \u2013 and the birth of the Christian community. For now let me simply remind us that\u00a0down through the ages a majority, or at least a large minority of Christians, have live in kingdoms and nations that were explicitly\u00a0pledged to non-Christian religions.\u00a0Were they, and for that matter the first\u00a0followers of Christ, living less than fully Christian lives?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The lament of the Israelites exiled to Babylon lies un-articulated behind the real anxiety that many American Christians feel, and the mistrust and even hatred they express toward the raising of mosques and Hindu and Buddhist temples in communities that once took for granted a shared Christian identity. Is America becoming a land foreign to Christianity? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":965,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-identity"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Christian Identity in a Pluralistic World<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&quot;How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?&quot; The lament of the Israelites exiled to Babylon lies un-articulated behind the real anxiety that many American Christians feel, and the mistrust and even hatred they express toward the raising of mosques and Hindu and Buddhist temples in communities that once took for granted a shared Christian identity. Is America becoming a land foreign to Christianity?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/roberthunt\/2010\/05\/blogpost1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christian Identity in a Pluralistic World\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&quot;How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?&quot; The lament of the Israelites exiled to Babylon lies un-articulated behind the real anxiety that many American Christians feel, and the mistrust and even hatred they express toward the raising of mosques and Hindu and Buddhist temples in communities that once took for granted a shared Christian identity. Is America becoming a land foreign to Christianity?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/roberthunt\/2010\/05\/blogpost1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Robert Hunt: Interfaith Encounters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-05-03T19:44:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-03-14T02:09:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Hunt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Robert Hunt\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/roberthunt\/2010\/05\/blogpost1\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/roberthunt\/2010\/05\/blogpost1\/\",\"name\":\"Christian Identity in a Pluralistic World\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/roberthunt\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-05-03T19:44:30+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-03-14T02:09:10+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/roberthunt\/#\/schema\/person\/164cc45db061fad8c46e2d4806bf1682\"},\"description\":\"\\\"How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?\\\" The lament of the Israelites exiled to Babylon lies un-articulated behind the real anxiety that many American Christians feel, and the mistrust and even hatred they express toward the raising of mosques and Hindu and Buddhist temples in communities that once took for granted a shared Christian identity. 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