I will confess to you that I honestly don’t have a clue what it even means to say, “Take America back to God”. I hear that a lot—all the time, more and more on the radio and television. And every time, something inside of me turns. I’m really wondering when the golden age of America was, when we were a nation under God—hallelujah—God was being glorified. Was that before, during, or after we loaded five to six million Africans on cargo ships, shipped them over here and the three million that survived we enslaved and beat for two-hundred years. Was that the golden age? I’m a little confused on this—someone help me out. When God was really being glorified… Was it before, during, or after we came over here, declared that this was our country, slaughtered twenty-million native Americans, stole/cheated their land, put them on reservations—as recently as 1906 we broke our last treaty taking back a part of Oklahoma we promised. Three decades later we write a play about it, “Oklahoma, land of the free!” Is this the golden age? Is this the good old days when God was reigning? I don’t get it. I do not get it. It’s not surprising to me that we don’t find a lot of native Americans reciting that slogan, and you don’t find a lot of African Americans reciting that slogan… The myth that this is a Christian nation, that it ever has been a Christian nation, and that if we just tweaked the laws a little bit more it will become a Christian nation is I think one of the most pernicious diabolical lies that the church has bought into because it completely diffuses the unique authority of the church.
Greg Boyd in the sermon “Taking America Back for God?” beginning at 33:40.
Fear that the nation is moving away from God and the idea that we can somehow “take America back for God” is a potent political motivator though, and one which has certainly been used to achieve political ends (as opposed to furthering God’s kingdom).
photo credit: US flag with cross instead of stars via photopin (license)
