Earthly power is too corrupting

The cover story for this week's Newsweek is The End of Christian America by Jon Meacham. The magazine normally examines some aspect of Christian scholarship in their Easter issue. This topic is a bit of a departure. Yeah, we've seen (and written about) the decline of the percent of Christians in this country and the increase in those who claim no religion. That may be hard to take in the liberal Pacific Northwest, but when it starts to happen in the Northeast, home of the Puritans, by golly, conservative Christian leaders sit up and take notice.

Our nation was shaped by religious faith, Christian faith in particular, even with restrictions between Church and State. And Christianity flourished here because of that restriction. It is expected that faith will influence what a voter does at the ballot box and what issues a believer brings before their various representatives. The balance between the ethics of the believer and the nonbeliever has ebbed and flowed since European colonists first set foot on our shores. But the ban of mandatory school prayer and Roe v. Wade prompted some Christians to assert themselves.

That project has failed. Some now recognize that nations cannot be Christian, only people can (though you might have a hard time convincing a Dominionist of that). It doesn't work to push America to greater morality through politicians who can't impose morality on themselves. The Psalmist wrote, "Put not your faith in princes." And Jesus was put to death for refusing to lead a national government (or at least a national uprising against the Romans). Earthly power is too corrupting.

Now a few thoughts from myself. Not only has the Fundie attempt to take over the government failed, I believe the attempt itself has done great harm to the church. The church leaders, in their efforts to grow the church, have instead worked to shrink it. They'll holler that American has turned away from God, but they won't or can't see that they supplied a push.

I was originally going to comment that the Fundies have corrupted the true message of Christianity. Though that is correct, they certainly weren't the first or the worst. The message of Christ has been corrupted in one way or another (or several ways at once) for about as long as there have been Christians (St. Paul complained about some distortions).

So I'll say it a different way. In the last half century the true Christian message of love one another was distorted, then it got sidetracked into irrelevant cultural issues (prayer in school, gays), and then it failed to keep pace with changing society. Along the way, trying to play politics distorted the message some more -- the lies told on behalf of Christian political efforts have long been discussed here and elsewhere (the latest is a screed that blames recent mass murders on gay marriage). The result is the younger generations see a religion that either has no meaning for them or is so counter to their own ethics that it becomes abhorrent. An example is my own church where two-thirds of the members are over 70. We're shrinking from a self-inflicted wound.