America Is Not The Hero of God’s Story
In this video, we cover one reason Christians can start to think that if we're gonna get involved in politics, then our goal has to be taking over the government and reshaping it into our own image. Another way of describing this impulse might be to call it "promised land" thinking—the idea that we have a right to live in a place that is ordered according to our faith, and so anything we do to set one up is justified.
Transcript
Promised Land Thinking in US Rhetoric
Rick Barry: There are usually a few different ways Christians in the US end up adopting this posture. Today I just want to talk about one. The idea that America has a unique place in God's work in the world.
Now, this is an idea that has a long history. It's there in the rhetoric that encouraged the pilgrims to get onto the ships that brought them to the US in the first place. Winthrop's famous "city on a hill" sermon traded in imagery of America as the new Israel, and made the people traveling here feel like they had a new, unique place in God's work in the world.
But Winthrop wasn’t the only colonial-era Christian influencer to talk like this, and the colonial era wasn’t the last time we’d hear it. That kind of language, that kind of allusion to America being the new Israel or having some kind of special place in God’s story that other countries don’t, comes up over and over again in American politics.
It got even more prevalent during the Cold War, when it became a convenient way to differentiate the American brand from the Soviet brand. They’re the atheistic communists. We’re the godly capitalists. They’re the force of darkness. We’re the Shining City on a Hill. Yeah, 350 years after Winthrop used Jesus’ “City on a Hill” metaphor to describe coming to America, Reagan used it to describe America’s role in geopolitical history.
And it got another shot in the arm after 9/11.
Even when it isn’t being said outright, this idea that the US has a special role to play in the world as far as God is concerned is still an under-current in our political speeches, and even in some of our preaching.
Why This Message Works—And Is Wrong
And that makes sense. It’s great messaging. It gets people excited. It makes us feel like we’re in on some kind of bigger mission together. It gets us committed.
But it’s borderline illiterate theology.
Dr. Vince Bacote, who is on our advisory council, put it really well when he said, America only exists in scripture in the verses that address “all the nations.”
“Anyone who thinks that the United States is mentioned in the Bible ... is missing what the Bible talks about, because the Western Hemisphere isn’t mentioned except for ‘all the Earth’ and ‘the nations,’ perhaps. That’s about the only coverage that we’re getting. So for us to be a special nation appointed by God would seem to require a certain kind of special revelation ... that the Bible does not seem to suggest was coming down the road, especially after the time of Christ.”
Scripture says that on this side of the cross, God has people set apart for himself FROM every nation, WITHIN *every* nation.
It doesn’t say that God is calling his people from around the world TO a specific earthly kingdom, or to ALLY with a specific earthly kingdom, or that the HEAVENLY kingdom is going to enter this world THROUGH an earthly kingdom.
Christians don’t get to derive spiritual or existential pride from what country we live in.
Laying Crowns At Jesus’ Feet
When God’s throne arrives, Revelation 4 tells us that the kings of the world will bring their crowns to HIM and put them down at his feet. Together. As peers.
Every nation’s glory is going to be less than God’s glory, and less than it in pretty much equal ways.
There’s a lot in our history and in our culture in the United States that is worth repenting of, just like every other country. Stuff that we’re going to see clearly and powerfully condemned when the kingdom comes and every secret is revealed.
But those crowns that get laid down at Jesus’ feet? He WILL accept them. There WILL BE some things about every culture that DO end up getting praised when the kingdom comes, that end up enduring——albeit in a perfected, glorified way.
A Crown That Will Be Accepted
And I would argue that one of those good things about life in America today also gives those of us here who are Christian an opportunity that most other Christians throughout church history haven’t really had. It’s not something that gives America special dispensation to lead other nations spiritually or anything like that. But it IS something that Christians should think is worth celebrating and taking advantage of.
It’s how America deals——or at least tries to deal——with the authority, identity and legitimacy of the state.
Most Christians throughout most of church history have practiced their faith in countries where the identity of the state comes from either a specific individual exercising their will to power to hold disparate groups of people together, or else where the identity of the state comes from some kind of shared ethnic, tribal, familial or cultural history.
To some degree, even constitutional monarchies, or monarchies that have become democracies over time, still look at themselves that way. It’s why some European countries have had such a hard time figuring out how to welcome immigrants and refugees over the last couple of decades.
But the U.S. is deliberately set up to be a people bound together by an idea, not an ethnic or tribal identity, and not by dedication to a specific individual or family.
For Christians, for people who KNOW that we are heading toward a kingdom where people from every tribe, who speak every tongue, will be standing shoulder-to-shoulder and gladly sharing a table together…
…being in a situation like this, being in a nation of immigrants bound together as peers, is a really great chance to get a taste of what “every tribe and tongue” really means.
We have a chance here to practice being a community that can welcome people from every tribe, without demanding that they all speak the same cultural tongue.
The resources to do that are there in the gospel. And we have space to flex them here that a lot of our brothers and sisters throughout history have never had.
That’s not something that gives Christians here the freedom to unilaterally create a new national covenant with God or anything like that, but it is something about life here that reflects the Bible’s promises, so I think it’s something worth being grateful for, and I really do think it’s something we’re gonna see somehow glorified when the kingdom comes.
Reflection
How difficult is it to remember that your country is not the same thing as God's country?