From time to time, the claim will be made or debated that America is a Christian nation. I thought of this again when I read elsewhere that we Americans need to pray that Russia returns to the Gospel. Of course much of Russia’s history has been defined by the Gospel. Russians have had the Gospel for at least 1000 years. Communism in Russia lasted fewer than 100 years and even then the Orthodox Church was still present in Russia, albeit persecuted. Of course the Polish Church was similarly persecuted during communism, but we don’t hear people claim the Gospel needs to be brought to Poland.
This wouldn’t be all that interesting except for the lack of reflection of the people who make these claims. People like to speak of the Christian founding of this nation, but the god more often was created in these men’s own images. One could have quite a long debate over the founders and to what extent they were religious or irreligious. If we take a step back and look at the religion of the nation, we have no central religion adhering the people together. We certainly aren’t talking about something so strong as to have the State submit to it. And as we move further a long in history, we find the religions at the founding have a real lack of persistence. Two of the major groups at the founding, the Quakers and Universalists, are nearly extinct. America has also been home to the founding of various religious groups: Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Pentecostals, and Fundamentals (a distinct Baptist movement) to give some examples. These religious groups now make up major sects in this country. Additionally, many American religious groups have broken organizationally with their Reformation era European founders. Much of it happened near the Civil War, but we have more recent witness in TEC being all but disassociated with the wider Anglican communion. Folks will argue that these are mostly or all Christian groups, but that is like arguing that Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans are all Easterners. The unity is only true at the most superficial level.
In the end, I think the argument that America is a Christian nation is very weak. In fairness, America as a people has its own difficulties. For example, Texas and the Great Lakes region have separate identities and the differences aren’t trivial. People’s conception of America is its government though. Whereas a place like France has had over a half dozen governments over the past 200 years, our country has had 1 government during that period, at least us in the North. It would simply be odd to hear a Frenchman claim his identity was tied with the Fifth Republic. He has a culture that includes religious practice that precedes the Fifth Republic. We on the other hand will often call the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution creedal documents. The very essence of being an American is tied up in those documents. The Russians baptized their culture in the Orthodox Church, and even communism couldn’t change that, despite its attempts at replacing it.
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