So now Thomas Nelson has come out with The American Patriot's Bible. (HT: Greg at The Holy Cause)
There is no other word for this but idolatry.
Richard Gamble at the American Conservative writes a scathing review here (HT: imonk on Twitter). I think he is spot on.
There was some discussion of this phenomenon in the comments on my previous blog post, "Authority in America." This new Bible promotes the myth of America as a "Christian nation". Here's a quote from Gamble's article summarizing this popular view:
The story … is straightforward and
reinforces the familiar Christian-America framework. This whole project
would collapse without that framework. America was founded on a
“Judeo-Christian ethic” drawn from the Bible. Until relatively
recently, principles taken from that ethic dominated America’s schools,
politics, and culture. Under assault by secularists who have obscured
the role of religion in American history and misappropriated the myth
of separation of church and state, the nation has declined morally. The
Bible must therefore be returned to its central place of authority in
American life in order to restore the nation’s moral fabric and reclaim
its special calling from God to defend freedom at home and abroad. The
phrase “one nation under God” best sums up what America once was and
what it will be again if enough concerned Christians rally to the call
for political action.
This is the story that I grew up with as an American evangelical, and which I didn't really question much until relatively recently when confronted with the facts about the matter. The church I used to attend (before I became a Lutheran) very much held to the "Christian America" framework as summarized above. American holidays were celebrated in church, where patriotic hymns would be sung and the choir would sing patriotic medleys applying 2 Chronicles 7:14 to America. The Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S.A. would sometimes be recited during these times. I remember a few Thanksgiving Eve Communion services where the Founding Fathers were probably quoted more than Scripture.
The story was that America was founded by Christians as a Christian
nation, and if only America would repent and return to that Christian golden age, everything would be wonderful. Never mind that many of the Founding Fathers were Deists who rejected miracles, the deity of Christ and the authority of Scripture. Never mind things like slavery, manifest destiny, and myriad other manifestations of the fact that America was hardly an example of moral purity before prayer and Bible reading were taken out of American public schools in the 1960's. And never mind the fact that simply being a nation of relatively moral people does not equal being a Christian nation.
The fact is, Americans tend to mix church and state in ways that people in other countries never dream of (and are often shocked by). We have Americanism in church services, and a religious component to our patriotism.
What would happen if America fell, like the Roman empire fell? Many American Christians have no category for this whatsoever. The only thing they can say is that with the end of America comes the end of the world. Neither do they have any category for potential persecution or government hostility toward Christians. That's for people in other countries, but not for Americans. He'll Rapture us out of here before anything bad happens to us. This is the attitude that is out there.
Would all these people who look at America as God's chosen nation still trust in God after such a scenario? Or would they find that they had been engaging in idolatry – worshiping a god of their own imagination, of their own imaginary and idealized history? I fear that the American Patriot's Bible can only fuel such idolatry.
Read Richard Gamble's article here.
Dawn,
Interestingly, there is one other modern nation that has developed its own mythpoeic story of itself as the last Christian nation on earth, Saviour of Christendom, complete with apocalyptic scenarios, etc.
Guess who?
Russia.
Something tells me the story of Russia vs. America is not over yet, either.
Another angle: I’m frankly disappointed that there is yet another study bible on the market. Thomas Nelson in particular seems to be one of the worst offenders. Fair enough, the phenomenon started out as notes on the text from a from a confessional perpective, but now it seems like every sub-culture must have its own study bible.
I suppose this merely reflects the fragmented state of the church. Sad, though, that publishers exploit it to make money.
Hi Dawn,
I’m afraid I don’t know of any links off-hand. “Russian Messianism” is something I’ve been interested in since reading Dostoevsky in my 20s. I’ve also known a few Russians, growing up in a city where “White Russians” (i.e. anti-Communist Russians who fought under a white flag in the post-Revolutionary war, as opposed to “Red Russians”) had a significant presence.
There’s a recent book by Peter Duncan called Russian Messianism. It’s quite expensive and you probably wouldn’t want to buy it, but you can browse it on Amazon. It traces the origins and history of the Russian Messiah-complex through the country’s entire history, including the Soviet period, when it either went underground or was distorted into a secular version of itself.
The Table of Contents of that book will give you a basic timeline and a list of influential figures to follow up. Two of the most important idealogues of the modern phase of the movement are Alexei Khomiakov, Ivan Kireyevsky, both of whom were deeply committed to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Here’s a brief outline of Russian Messianism. One thing you need to be aware of is for this type of thinking: to be Russian is to be Orthodox, a Jew, a Muslim, or a Lutheran (and there are “Volga-Deutsch” Lutherans in the former Soviet Union) can never really be a Russian because they are not Orthodox, and vice versa.
The basic idea is that Russia alone has preserved a pure form of Christianity and has a destiny to convert (for convert read politically dominate or exert influence over)much of eastern Europe and the Asian continent which is its natural sphere of influence. Because of this destiny, Russians have special qualities – patriotism (love of soil and fatherland), natural piety, purity of soul, depth of feeling, “sobornost” (variously translated, but basically means “communal minded” rather than indicidualistic) and so on, qualities that other peoples lack.
This has always been an undercurrent of Russian thought, but under the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II (the last Tsar) a conservative “Return to the Soil” movement was almost the official ideology of the Russian state. This movement was not only fiercely nativist (extolling Russian culture and virtues over against Western ones) but also pan-Slavic (Russia as natural leader of the Slavic peoples) and tied the Russian Messiah-complex closely together with Russian Orthodoxy. Moscow, advocates said, was the “Third Rome”, and thus centre of Christendom, after the fall of the first Rome and then the second, Constantinople. Russia thus had a God-given destiny to establish an Orthodox Christian empire and protect the Orthodox lands and the Salvic peoples from contamination by decadent Western religious and political ideas. To this day the Russian Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow has pretensions that Greek Orthodox despise, and he would like to see himself as the leader of Orthodoxy.
The 1917 Revolution presented quite a problem for this analysis of Russia’s destiny, and Russian Messianism had to go underground, or be secularised. It survived in a pure form among the White Russian emigres, however.
Today Russian Messianism is basically a neo-Fascist movement, once again with nativist overtones and anti-Western tendencies, and it is closely tied, albeit unofficially, with the Russian Orthodox Church. This is why Putin, for e.g., is often photographed in church, crossing himself and venerating icons – whether he believes or not is not for me to judge, but this image certainly helps him maintain his popularity at home, and puts him in the line of pious Russian leaders going back to the Tsars. Putin is, of course, very much a political strong man who pursues his goals ruthlessly at home and abroad.
Finally, the more the US backs democratic movements and governments in places like the Ukraine and Georgia, the more it brings itself into potential conflict with Russia.
Only a thumbnail sketch, but that may be more than you ever wanted to know about the topic!
Hi Pr. Henderson,
I wasn’t aware of this about Russia. Very, very interesting…do you have any links to information about that? I would definitely like to learn more.
Yes, I’d agree with those differences, Dawn. Americans are pragmatic people, hence the attraction to moralism.
Russians are more mystically inclined, hence the attraction of Orthodoxy.
That’s my take on it, anyway.
Hmmm … “To be truly Russian is to be Orthodox” might have a parallel with the whole “Christian America” paradigm.
A big difference would be that in America it’s not so much a matter of denomination. American Christians in general are way too unconcerned with doctrine for that. They might draw the line with Mormons and other cults (case in point – how some Christians refused to vote for Mitt Romney in the primary election last year not because of the issues he stood for/against but because he is a Mormon) but other than that denomination is not an issue. I don’t think you would ever see any advocate of “Christian America” claiming that their denomination is the “pure form of Christianity.” Their main agenda is promoting “the Judeo-Christian ethic” – i.e., moralism. “Christian nation” really translates to “moral nation.” All of this really just distracts Christians from proclaiming the Gospel by getting them focused on changing people’s outward behavior.