A Christian Nation

People commonly speak of nations in terms of their apparent religious heritage. Thus, people may speak of Greece as a Christian nation because of the prevalence of Christian Orthodoxy, or of its neighbor, Turkey, as a Muslim nation for equivalent reasons. Or Myanmar as Buddhist. This religious identification ostensibly comes from either the perception that a majority of a nation's citizens adheres to particular religious sensibilities, or perhaps that a nation's foundation documents subscribe explicitly to a specific religion's tenets, Iran an outstanding example of such.

The United States has been perceived as a Christian nation both because the majority of its citizens at least claims to follow some form of Christianity and because much of the political rhetoric makes claims to the fundamental document of Christianity, the Bible. Indeed, much of the myth of America, invoked through the Pilgrims' experience, speaks of this nation "under God" to embody principles and laws that draw from the Ten Commandments. How much more Christian can a nation get than that? (Now, discussion in some quarters lately concerns America's fall from grace, but such discussion only serves to underscore the nation's failure to meet its perceived Christian standard.)

Though we humans may define nations along religious lines, the matter posed here concerns biblical teaching itself: Does the Bible speak of any such nation at all being a Christian nation? The answer resounds, No!

First, the Ten Commandments, for all their commendation, do not stand as a fundamentally Christian document. The biblical witness without intelligent question, rather, shows the Ten Commandments to have root and soul in the formation of the ancient Hebrew nation, Israel, some millenium and a half before Jesus, the founder of the church of Christ, was born.

Second, by witness of the collection of writings usually called the New Testament, Jesus spoke clearly of a people he planned to engender by means of their faith in him as a savior from the ravages of rotten experiences and as the master of their lives. He would earn their respect and devotion through his evidenced deep love for them and his remarkable obedience to God. He planned to foster a people characterized by his teachings, exemplified notably in the so-called Beatitudes.

Third, this was a community without borders. He directed his earliest followers to proclaim his message of good news from where they were to the farthest reaches of the earth, to make followers in every ethnicity/culture/nation.

And indeed, there is a people without geographical boundaries on Earth, without political agenda on Earth, without a capital on Earth, without a ruler on Earth. In this sense only may one find a nation beyond nations, comprised of persons from every nation, every tribe, every cultural group, every language. That "nation" is chosen from some Iranians, from some Israelis, from some Maori, from some Chinese, from some Filipinos, from some Africans, from some Europeans, from some Americans, from some Argentinians, from some Uzbekistanis, from some Tibetans, from some Mexicans, from some Tlingit, from some Koreans, from some etc., ad infinitum, clear to the ends of Earth. These gather, joyfully bound together in a communion belonging to the one who created them and loves them for ever, world without end.