Christendom has protected us from the beginning. We, as American Christians, have never been the “minority” voice. The influence of Christendom (not necessarily Christianity) runs deep because this nation has roots deep in Christendom. That does not mean “this nation was founded as a Christian nation.” Those are not identical comments.
So, we feel “threatened”… and it’s embarrassing. It’s like we never read the New Testament. Jesus or Paul.
As one writer put it in an influential First Things essay, prior to 1994 the culture retained a positive view of Christianity. That view turned more neutral between 1994 and 2014, and since 2014 we’ve entered the “negative world,” where “being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the elite domains of society,” and “Christian morality is expressly repudiated and seen as a threat to the public good and the new public moral order.”
So, what do we want to do? Take our country back.
But this analysis is fundamentally wrong. It’s dangerously wrong. It’s wrong not because the present moment is particularly hospitable to the Christian faith, but because it fundamentally misunderstands both American history and American Christendom, and it fundamentally misunderstands the permanent countercultural reality of authentic Christianity.
Much more HERE.
We’ve done a lot of damage, as “conservative American Christians” to the gospel. It’s never time to “Make America Great Again.” It is always time to “make much of Jesus.”
1 Corinthians 2:2 (NIV)
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Apprentice 2 Jesus 