This Puritan
view is essentially the project of the Christian Right. From Peter Marshall to
David Barton, to Francis Schaeffer and Jerry Falwell, from Pat Robertson to
Albert Mohler, the basic goal is the same. They believe that by Christianizing
society we can somehow bring the blessings of God on America. Somehow America will
please Him... as if America were the apple of His eye, the nation which somehow
bears the 'blessing' which was in truth applied to Israel because it pictured
Christ's Kingdom. To expect this blessing for America is to establish another
messiah... a false god with a false gospel.
Blind to the
sins and crimes of America their hearts have been hardened. They see the sins
of the lost so clearly but in their romanticization and mythologization of
American history they fail to see the host of sins they have approved of, participated
in and celebrate. America is an empire and all empires are predicated upon
theft and murder. That's what empires are and that's what they do. There have
been worse empires than America and there have been better. Just because one
thief or murderer isn't as heinous as another doesn't suddenly make him
virtuous.
But
spiritually speaking (which is how we are to think) America occupies a special
place. All too often she has claimed to have God on her side and that God has
sanctioned her deeds. The Christian church has largely been part of the
imperial project, blessed it and prayed for it. This means that spiritually
speaking America and its older cousin the British Empire as Protestant versions
of this phenomenon are actually far worse than most of the evil empires of
history. Spiritually speaking the American empire does more harm to the Church
than the Mongols or the Soviets ever could.
America has
always been schizophrenic and it's showing in our own day. The founders crafted
documents to create the first explicitly non-Christian nation in the
post-Constantinian era. That was remarkable and yet a large portion of the
population has always resisted this. The battle goes on.
Mohler and
others decry the secularization of our society. While we lament the sinful
state of this Sodom and are vexed by it, Sacralization or Christianization does
nothing to help the lost. Forcing lost women to stay with their husbands,
forcing people to be hypocrites, forcing them to speak a certain way, forcing
the arts to conform to a code does not help their hearts. It simply forces them
into hypocrisy. They are still profane.
I think it
engenders bitterness and I believe we are feeling the backlash. Eventually all
the unbelievers will realize they outnumber their Christian masters and begin
to revolt. It's been happening for decades. It didn't suddenly come out of
nowhere in the 1960's. This idea that some kind of surreptitious Leftist plot
suddenly became manifest in the 1960's is pure fiction and demonstrates an
ignorance of American social history and its repeated pendulum swings. The
present swing is a vicious one.
The Puritan
experiment failed...thankfully! Thought not a Baptist I too would have suffered
at the hands of the Puritans as I would have been among those who denounced
their deeds and the heretical Constantinianism they espoused.
Today their
land is under judgment and has become the Northeastern Sodom. In some ways it
is very fitting.
We decry the
sin that besets our society but secularization (like post-modernism) are in
some ways blessings in disguise. It simply means we are reverting to a
different social model, frankly a more honest one and one in which the Church
can be the Church and witness to the lost and glorify God through witness and suffering.
Rather than fight back with the lawsuit or build arsenals (which are forms of
apostasy) we need to be prepared to suffer the cost.
If the
Church would band together and actually live as a community, without class
division and American/worldly economic thinking and social values... we would
find ourselves to be quite resilient. But alas, the time for this (if it is to
come at all) has not yet come for the Church in the West. There are those in
other lands who I believe are already learning this lesson but they are also in
grave peril. The cancer of Dominionism is spreading quickly and polluting the
pure fonts of many young Christian communities.
The
Sacralists will not accept the Biblical order and pattern for the Church and
they continue to fight the battle for Babylon and their desire to build a
pseudo-temple on its idolatrous hills. They will bring suffering upon us.
Spiritually speaking they represent the greater enemy. They cross sea and land
to make proselytes but instead make them the children of hell. Their converts
care more about Tea Party politics and the latest handgun models than they do
about Justification or the Kingdom of God. Instead of helping others die to
self and wage spiritual warfare they think serving God is to kill Muslims,
politic and scream at Sodomites.
Let the dead
bury their dead but for us the great enemy is the wolves who pervert the gospel
and proffer a false kingdom and call it Zion.
Returning to
John Cotton statement:
"You think
to compel men in matter of worship is to make them sin. If the worship be
lawful in itself, the magistrate compelling him to come to it, compelleth him
not to sin, but the sin is in his will that needs to be compelled to a
Christian duty. If it do make men hypocrites, yet better be hypocrites than
profane persons. Hypocrites give God part of his due, the outward man, but the
profane person giveth God neither outward nor inward man."
This
statement is grossly unbiblical. He's assuming that everyone in the society is
somehow covenanted and Christian and that by utilizing magisterial force they
are simply exercising Church discipline. This is Judaizing. This is a form of
Christian Zionism. I'm not referring to Dispensational Christian Zionism and
support for the Middle Eastern state. This is another way of expressing
Christendom the idea that a nation, group of nations or civilization are
somehow Christian or covenanted. This is a grave error and a Kingdom heresy.
Do you see
what it leads to? This is the ghost of Theodosius in Puritan New England.
The problem
here is not the Invisible/Visible Church distinction or the doctrine of Infant
Baptism. These notions were held by Medieval Dissenters who categorically
rejected Constantinianism. The Bohemian Petr Chelcicky would be the most
explicit example of this that I would cite. While Augustine is not above
critique his ideas were not wholly erroneous. In fact he's rather balanced and
though not worshipped by Chelcicky, the Waldenses or Lollards, he was
appreciated. Remember Rome has largely rejected the teaching of Augustine and
continues to do so. The Eastern Orthodox Church loathes him and always has. To
simply dismiss him as a Neo-Platonist is an injustice both to Augustine and the
doctrines of the New Testament.
The problem
is not the Visible/Invisible distinction, but an abuse and distortion of the
doctrine of the Visible Church. It's the equation of the Visible Church with
Christendom, the very same error Rome made and the very error that led
thousands of protestors to their deaths.
This is the
error of the Christian Right and it needs to protested and loudly. The lines
are being drawn. Our weapons are Word, truth and prayer. Are we willing to be
put out of congregations? To suffer poverty? While I do not relish a powerful
state trying to force conformity, the visions of Santorum are hardly different
and theologically far worse because his evil would be stamped with the label
'Christian'.
My own hope
is that the idol of America will break and the power of the state will fail and
the idolatrous vision of both the Left and Right and especially the Christian
Right will collapse and turn to dust.
But at the
same time the destruction of an empire always leads to bloodshed and
destruction and so I pray for the peace of Babylon but I do pray the quest to
make hypocrites dies the death. We're at a critical juncture. If they don't
capture the next generation their vision will be dead soon enough.
The Remnant
Church will be by definition small but no longer distracted it can function as
the Church does in many other societies... it can focus on the Kingdom of Jesus
Christ.
Puritan New
England reminds us that even if the Christian Right took over, it wouldn't be
long before the different factions started in on each other. You would have
Baptist towns seeking to suppress Catholics and vice versa. The struggle would
not end.
It's ironic
though how so many Evangelicals most of whom are Baptist have misread their own
history. Their spiritual forefathers condemn them.