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Weimar University

Don Mackintosh

Christian Patriotism and its Focus

God bless us today as we talk about Christian liberty, Christian patriotism, in an age of great polarity.

Well, we're gonna study our Bibles today.

So, if you don't have a Bible, you're gonna be lost.

Someone told me last week at my house that I went too fast last week.

But I'm trying to put everything on the screen so you can see the text in advance today, okay?

When asked, surveyed, people were asked, which is the best country in the world?

The Philippines, 15% of them said that, so you're an outlier.

Most of the people in that country don't say that.

India, 35% say, this is the best country.

But United States tops the list of thinking that their country is the best country in the world.

41% of Americans believe that their country is the best in the world.

How many of you Americans do believe your country is the best in the world?

All right, have you happened to go anywhere else?

Okay, Maybe that's because you went other places.

I'm not sure And White evangelicals are considered the most patriotic according to a poll White evangelicals 61% of them are seen as very patriotic.

I mean, they really think their country's great.

Now that number goes down if you ask them if they're willing to die for their country.

No, they're not willing to die for their country, most of them.

The people that are most willing to die for their country are other countries.

White evangelicals, however, are also more likely than any other religious group surveyed to believe that God has granted the United States a special role in history.

And in fact, half of Americans say the Bible should influence US laws, including 28% who favor it over the will of the people.

The Bible says something and you don't agree with it?

And by the way, I might just say that's very un-American, but that's what they believe.

A couple years back in an election cycle, Mike Huckabee was running for president.

His daughter just won a governorship this last year in Arkansas or this last month or last week or whenever it was.

I don't know if this is going to work, but let's see.

I know he was speaking yesterday about human life and the definition of marriage.

Mika, I want you to listen to me because I think you'll appreciate the way- Hold on, hold on.

Because after Mika hears this, we're going to be going for a walk.

Let's talk about God and the Constitution, Mika.

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution.

But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God.

And that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

And the other concerning statistic that I read this last week, most white evangelicals don't want to live in a religiously diverse country.

57% say they'd prefer not to have other religious groups around.

I don't know if that shocked you, but that kind of shocked me.

I'm just letting the statistics speak for themselves here.

So there is this belief in what we would call not Christian patriotism necessarily, but Christian nationalism.

That the nation, the hostile forces are assailing a once Christian nation, and Christians are therefore called to battle these forces to regrain the lost territory of faith not through persuasion but through legislation and then you know force The widespread belief among Puritan settlers in the 1600s was that they had a special covenant with God and that they were called to be an example of the world.

So way back when the Puritans came over, they said, we're going to purify things.

We're separating from England, we're separatists, and we're going to go to a new country and we're going to make it pure.

So when they got there, they said, we want to have a city set on a hill.

Now sometimes we talk about our church on a hill, or we talk about different things.

Interesting book that I read a number of years ago, Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land, Edwin Gostin.

It's a great book, You can't get it now except for a lot of money unless you borrow mine.

During this time period, that is 1600 to 1791, that is really the Puritan time period, you might say.

This is the time period before the Bill of Rights, before the Establishment Clause, before, you know, you had the Declaration of Independence and you had the Constitution, but The states did not unite until the Bill of Rights.

They would not unite until the Bill of Rights.

But before that time is the time that these folks are hearkening back to when America was great.

In other words, it wasn't so great when there was freedom of religion for everybody, according to them.

Well, what was happening during the Puritan time period?

It's been a couple years since this happened.

9 of the 13 original colonies had established official state religions.

Example, Virginia, named after the Virgin Queen Elizabeth, were Anglicans.

They all had to worship like the Church of England because they were from England.

If you decided not to worship like the Virgin Queen, you're in trouble.

And by the way, the place where religion is most disregarded in the world today is Europe.

And this is where there were all kinds of established state religions.

In fact, when the king was a certain religion you had to become a certain religion, or the queen was a certain religion, you had to become a certain religion.

And when they'd switch, you had to switch back.

And so people would have to leave the country, come back to the country, back and forth.

And you might get killed by the Catholic monarch if you were a Protestant, and back and forth.

And so they had these frequent flyer miles, or I guess frequent ship miles back then.

Here I'm going, I'm heading out to France for a while, I'll be back.

And they had the underground and they had all, yeah.

But In the United States, before it was united, in America, the same thing was going on.

Settlers would attend morning and evening prayer every day and those who shall often or willfully absence themselves from these divine services would be punished according to the law.

So they had a state religion and you had to go to church.

From the first offense, settlers already living on the edge of starvation would lose a day's provision of rations.

No meal tickets at the cafeteria that day, no.

For a second offense, they would be whipped, And for a third, they would be sentenced to serve in the ocean-going galleys for 6 months.

Jails, fines, flogging, sentences of exile, or death were commonplace before federal guarantees of religious liberty began to take effect.

In other words, before 1791, this is what was going on in America.

Christian Patriotism and its Focus

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