I remember vividly the horrifying images of 9/11 as we saw them on television news. While the nature, scope and duration of the conflict of which the acts of terror of that day were part are matters of contention, there can be no doubt that some things changed decisively on that day. One of the things that did not significantly change on that day - and here I surrender my answer to the question in my title, up front - is the way in which, and the extent to which, America is a Christian nation.
Mapping the relationship between Christianity and America is important, in particular for Christians who are Americans, and who are trying to figure out how to live in a way that is faithful to both of these identities (if that is a possibility): being a citizen of America and being a citizen of the kingdom of God.
America is not a Christian nation in the sense that it belongs to God as a nation. God has made no unique covenant with America, similar to his covenant with the Old Testament offspring of Abraham. To be American does not equal being Christian. It does not exclude being Christian, but the two are not the same thing.
America is not a Christian nation in the sense that its founding, its constitution and the practices and purposes that shape its political life are decisively and comprehensively Christian. The character of this American nation as a political community has been irreversibly shaped by a history of words and deeds that include, decisively, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Christian convictions informed some of these words and deeds, and other convictions informed other words and deeds. America is an amalgam of worldviews and ways of life.
And yet, America is a Christian nation in the sense that this republic could not have come into existence or taken the shape that it has without the preceding and continuing influence of Christianity, both in terms of teachings and in terms of practices.
Also, America is a Christian nation in the sense that a significant majority of its citizens are professing Christians, at least in the sense that they would write “Christian” in the religion box of a questionnaire, and more importantly in the sense that a significant minority of its citizens intentionally seek to allow their lives to be shaped by the teachings of the Christian faith, centered in the gospel that Christ is risen.
The attacks of 9/11 did not change the fundamental reality that America is a nation before God, among all the nations as they are before God, with no privileged relationship to God, as a nation, and neither standing under some unique judgment from God, as a nation.
Neither did 9/11 increase or decrease the extent to which the character of America - as determined by its founding, its constitution and the sustained practices of its political life - has been defined by Christianity.
While for a time it appeared that Americans were engaged in a serious conversation about the character of this nation, as a result of 9/11, and while that conversation demanded attention to the enduring presence and influence of Christian practices and teachings, it does not appear that that conversation has brought about a significant shift in the extent to which Americans conceive of this nation as a “Christian nation.”
It also appeared for a time that Americans, responding to the events of 9/11, were turning to the reassurance, comfort and meaning found in Christian practices and teachings. While this turn has for many people resulted in an encounter with the gospel, it does not - at least, as yet - appear to have made a culturally observable difference in the effect of Christianity on mainstream American life.
9/11 changed many things, but it did not make America a more or less Christian nation. America is not the New Jerusalem. America is not the Whore Babylon. It is a nation among nations. Called, like all nations, to live its political life in pursuit of public justice. Mixed, like all nations, in the composition of its citizenry with regard to religious commitments and convictions.
For Christians, this means that we should not seek political hegemony in America, but that we should seek to live faithfully: proclaiming the gospel in word and deed, pursuing public justice and the common good alongside our neighbors who do not share our gospel faith. We can do this without hubris or panic, because we know that Christ is Lord. We must do it faithfully, because we know that Christ is Lord. When acts of war and terror are committed against our fellow citizens, we must offer them the solace of true gospel hope, and when needed work with them for a just peace by means of a just war.
We are citizens of the kingdom of God, first, and citizens of the United States of America, second. How we live the first shapes how we live the second. They are related, they are not mutually exclusive, but they are not the same thing. Were not before 9/11, are not now.
Gideon Strauss is a senior fellow with the Center for Public Justice, where he previously served as Chief Executive Officer and editor of Capital Commentary.
This is the first in a ThinkChristian series reflecting on the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In another installment, U.S. intelligence analyst Brian J. Auten wrote about a Biblical sense of security in the aftermath of 9/11.
(Illustration by Jerod Clark.)
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Comments (11)
You know, to be honest, I really didn't see this. I saw a lot of cowboy posturing, and a lot of "we're gonna get those bad guys," but not a lot of conversation about who we are as a people, what our character is as a nation.
When the President of the United States told the American people to respond to 9/11 not by thinking about what they could sacrifice in the service of their country, or by asking why there's a small but devoted group of people who are willing to sacrifice their lives in order to deal our country a blow, or by questioning what actions of ours might have brought people to the point where they despise our very existence, he just reinforced the status quo and told people what they wanted to hear: They hate us for our freedoms (some of which we're now going to take away), and your response to the attacks should be to go to the mall in defiance.
So we went to a series of wars that most Americans experienced as video games on the CNN or Fox News inset—both of which resulted in quagmires, and one of which was completely unrelated to 9/11 and started on the basis of allegations that later turned out not to be true. Instead of broadening military service, as we did in World War II, we asked a small minority of the American public to do 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, while the rest of us just have to put yellow ribbons on our cars and stand and applaud when they show the returned troops on the jumbotron at the ballgame. The wars that were started after 9/11 weren't paid for by increasing taxes, as previous wars like World War II had been, but by borrowing from our children and putting programs for seniors and the poor in jeopardy.
We didn't ask why the 2/3 of the world that walks along the edge of the knife of starvation, famine, and poverty might resent a nation that uses up a disproportionate amount of the world's resources, wastes more in a day than many countries use in a year, and flaunts its ostentatiousness all over the world via satellite. We didn't ask what effects our own way of life and our "American dream" has on those who mine the cobalt, have the oil pipeline pass through their land, or build our plastic products in overstuffed factories. We didn't ask, in Kennedy's words, what we could do for our country—we just asked whether our country would be able to keep doing stuff for us.
To be honest, I don't think we were much of a "Christian nation"—in any sense of the word—before 9/11, and I don't think 9/11 changed that. There are many good and positive things that are part of the American character—our resourcefulness, our work ethic, our optimism, our compassion, our sense of mission to the world. But I think the decades since 1980 in particular have really brought out the shadow side of the American psyche—our sense of individualism as more important than any responsibility to others, our selfishness, our willingness to ignore what is done in the name of our country and our lifestyle. And 9/11 only reinforced those values.
9/11 could have presented us with an opportunity to seriously think about who we are as a people, and what we could do to be better citizens and neighbors to those with whom we share this pale blue dot in the middle of a vast universe. It could have presented the Church with an opportunity to seriously consider what a prophetic witness looks like in the richest, most powerful nation in the world. It could have led us as a culture to ask what being a culturally "Christian nation" really means in terms of our responsibility to the other nations of the world. But instead, it was used as an excuse to go shopping, engage in pat and shallow thinking like "they hate us for our freedoms," and start two brutal, deadly, unpaid-for wars.
I saw faces of children raised to hate a man and a culture for an act that did not represent the teachings of their holy book. Christ said "Forgive". You can't turn the other cheek with your head bowed in submission certainly but I challenge you to define a "Just War" in Christian terms.I sat on my couch and cried for the damage this Kleos had done to a nation's soul.I also wrote this poem.WHAT OF PEACE?
My heart weeps for a soul, a life, spent in pursuit of hate.
Innocence lost, as a world stops turning to celebrate a dead man.
Because he is dead.
Cowboy justice. The American way!
One nation wrapped in revenge, bonded by blood.
Justice for a generation born in towering shadows of shattered trust.
A child of war.
The face of war, the face of death, the greater good.
Dancing in the streets.
And yet I weep.
For a soul shattered in the pursuit of revenge.
And now… What of PEACE?
PEACE to heal the shattered souls of two kindred faiths.
This is a nice interpretation of "in the world, but not of the world."
What America needed 10 years ago was a Winston Churchill. A king like David or King Soloman could have led America in a much more positive direction.
Instead of moving America on a peaceful road,the president went to war.
He picked a victim to invade that had nothing to do with 9/11. The country was Iraq,who has vast amounts of oil.Iraq`s leader was close to selling the rights of his oil to Russia,America`s old cold war enemy.
So,I would have to say that 9/11 moved America further away from being a Christian nation.
Greed and selfishness from America`s leadership at most critical times,sabotaged any Christian benefit possibility that could have come out of 9/11.
Some have talked about a 9/11 conspiracy. I will never know it all.
Only God knows and on judgment day the truth will be revealed.
The response was, in many ways, far from appropriate, but that's another question.
Did we really call on God for protection, though, as a nation? Sure, we said the words, but did our actions bear out that we were trusting in God for protection, rather than to our own understanding?
I would suggest that our actions didn't reflect those words. A person or nation that trusts in God for protection will do what God commands, will act in accordance with the good things in their character, regardless of whether or not it will make them more vulnerable—because they have faith in God's promises of protection.
Did we hold to the good things in our national character?
Let's take a couple of examples: First, did we hold to our tradition of neighborliness and community? Interpersonally, within the country, the answer is a bit of a mixed bag; while there were lots of instances where people came together and risked or sacrificed their lives and livelihoods to help other people and times when it felt like we were all brothers and sisters, there were also some seriously despicable and shameful things said and done to American Muslims (or even those who people thought looked like Muslims, like the Sikh man who was killed).
Internationally, we started two wars—one of which had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11—and engaged in other shameful acts like imprisoning foreign-born people for indefinite periods of time without cause and without charges, subjecting our prisoners to all kinds of unnecessary humiliations, and perhaps the most despicable and un-neighborly of all acts, the torture of other human beings. And all of these were done in the name of "protecting the country." If we truly trusted in God for protection, would we have done these things which, before 9/11, virtually all of us would have agreed were wicked, to supposedly keep America safe?
Second, did we hold to our nation's tradition of coming together to sacrifice in times of our nation's need? During World War II, most of the nation was devoted to the effort to take down Hitler and the Japanese; most men who could serve in the military served, those who couldn't worked stateside in the war effort, and women took many men's places in the factories. Families tried to conserve every resource, knowing that every bit of waste hurt the war effort. The wealthy paid up to 94% of their income in taxes to fund the war.
What happened after 9/11? A small subset of our population were sent off to tour after tour in Iraq and Afghanistan, suffering bodily and mentally if they lived through the ordeal at all, and subjecting their families to incredible stress during and after their deployment—a sacrifice that was distant from far too many of us. There was no major effort to call the young men and women of the middle or upper classes to sacrifice to serve the nation; our military was, and is, comprised mostly of people from working-class backgrounds. Despite the fact that the attackers and their ideological allies drew impetus and funding from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, there was no widespread effort to get Americans to drive less, to use mass transit, or to conserve energy in any meaningful way. And the tax cuts put in place shortly before 9/11—which brought our nation's tax rates to record lows—were kept in place, thus adding the cost of these wars to our deficit and debt, which not only left the cost to the next generation but also put us in the mess we're in now, where budget deficits make it highly probable that even our meager social safety net for the elderly and poor will be cut (because of course we can't raise taxes on the rich). Was our unwillingness to sacrifice, our unwillingness to trust that any changes we made to our lives were for the greater benefit of our nation, a sign that we were looking to God for protection—or a sign that we didn't trust that our sacrifices for the good of the whole would be honored?
Those are just a couple of examples... but as a whole, I think that while our politicians said a lot of the right words, we didn't truly call out for God's protection, by which I mean acting in accordance with our ideals out of faith that God would protect us. And that, I think, should cause those who suggest that our nation is "Christian" to seriously search their souls.
Now, post 9/11, I watch American newscasts and the situation is considerably changed. There is a world beyond the shores of the US and the greater mass of Americans are much more aware of it. Gone is the complete introspection of American news media - an introspection that was the US's achilles heel. Now as I watch American news networks I am struck by something else brought about by this realisation of 'another world out there'. Some, notably those deemed liberal, want to embrace this altered state and interact with the rest of humanity. Others, on the right, seem to take the view that, suddenly, there are barbarians at the gate. This last, from the perspective of a 'not American christian' is the most worrying for in this viewpoint, to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God and the US is one and the same thing.
I was also impressed a few years ago with an article in the Wittenburg Door examining the cynical argument that "you just can't run a country" in accordance with the Beatitudes. The bottom line response was, I'm not saying you can run a country that way, I'm just pointing out, that's what Jesus said. So, if we can't run a country according to the Beatitudes, let's stop pretending that this is a "Christian nation," even if a lot of Christian lived here, and some of the founders were arguably Christian, and there is profound theological content in Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.
Lincoln had this down well -- he knew that God could not answer in full the prayers of both loyal American citizens and those in rebellion, and candidly admitted that God might have his own purposes, different from both.
In that light, why should an event like 9-11-2001 make us any more or less a Christian nation than we already aren't?