Hello my friends!

I hope this finds you well today. I really appreciate all the feedback I got from last week's news letter, Trading Jesus Christ for Jesus Barabbas. It was a connection I had been thinking about for a long while, so I am really glad it resonated with so many of you.

Some of you asked if I would share a bit more on the separation of church and state. I would love to dive deeper into this topic later on, but for now I want to leave you with just a few thoughts I recently posted about regarding the separation of church and state and the concept of a "Christian nation." I hope you find it helpful.

Before we get into that, I just want to share a few things that have me thinking this week.

RESOURCES TO DIG DEEPER

A recent article by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux called "How Much Power Do Christians Really Have?" explores recent statistics and cultural realities that bring both such needed perspective but also fascinating look at the state of American Christianity today. I highly recommend taking a look.

One of my favorite authors on Christian Nationalism recently published a fascinating article called "Why Are Some Christian Nationalist Leaders Opposed to Being Called Christian Nationalists?" It really does help to see the nuance, complexity, and disagreements within Christian Nationalism itself.

Okay, on with the newsletter!

What do you mean by "Christian?"

When someone says they want the United States to be a “Christian nation,” they are often referring to the nation needing to conform to their own preferred theology and interpretation of scripture, which ironically would exclude many, many Christians.

For example, As a Protestant, I wouldn’t want a Catholic controlled nation, nor would Catholics want a Protestant controlled nation.

As a Wesleyan, I wouldn’t want a Calvinist controlled nation, nor would Calvinists want a Wesleyan controlled nation.

The list could go on and on.

The reality is, there are more than 200 different Christian sects within the U.S. alone, all with their own theological beliefs, ecclesiology, and interpretations of scripture. Put simply, all of whom define what it means to be a "Christian."

So, who then determines what kind of “Christianity” the nation should uphold if it were to be a Christian nation?

It is interesting to note that among the U.S. founding fathers, not all of whom were even Christians, there were Anglicans, Quakers, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Dutch Reformed, and Roman Catholic. Add to this melting pot the pervasive influence of Deism, one is hard pressed to put them all within a specific kind of Christian orientation or another. In fact, when you study them at depth, you will find that they were very much reflections of their time period, where Christianity, along with everything else, was being deconstructed, questioned, and reinterpreted through the lenses of the Enlightenment, Individualism, and Deism.

What is most often meant by the phrase “Christian nation,” then, in my experience, is a neo-evangelical Christianity that’s tied to a fundamentalist interpretation of scripture, and is largely white.

This definition not only excludes so many other religions, but many other Christians as well. It is only representative of one sect of Christianity in our entire nation.

This is why I think the separation of church and state is so crucial. The separation of church and state not only allows all Americans to live according to their own religious and non-religious beliefs, but it also allows the church to maintain a prophetic witness.

When the church crawls into bed with political power, its voice not only becomes one with the state, but its Christian public witness simply becomes just another mouthpiece for the empire, rather than a witness of the gospel of Jesus and advocate for the most vulnerable. That’s what Christian nationalism looks like. A mouthpiece for a Christian empire.

This is why I often say, if Jesus wanted a “Christian nation” he would have founded one, but he didn’t. He established the church (Matt 16:18). We Christians are called to be the church (the body of Christ), maintaining our prophetic witness towards the world’s empires. We lose that prophetic power when our Christian witness becomes indistinguishable from the ways of the empire.

The Greek word for church, ekklésia, we find in scripture means a "called out community." We Christians can't be a called out community, the church, when we are one with the nationstate.

So, instead of pursuing a “Christian nation” then, which means different things to each person, we Christians should pursue being a “Christian church” and maintain our prophetic witness to the powers of this nation. From that identity, I think a more healthy and helpful political action will flow, even from those Christians who serve within governmental leadership.

The reality is, the only government that can guarantee freedom of religion is one that is free from religious control. As a Christian, I don’t want the nation controlled by a different sect of Christianity or a different religion. As an American, I want a democracy free from religious control so that those who don't look like me, live like me, or believe like I do can still be free!

In this way, the church is free to be the church and the state is free to be the state and we are free to be ourselves. May it be so.

As always, thanks for reading. I love hearing from you, so feel free to respond to this with your thoughts!

Please feel free to share this newsletter on social media or invite friends to join who you think would appreciate these conversations through this link:https://benjamin-cremer.ck.page/ ​

Talk to you soon!

Here are the previous three newsletters:

​When Absolute Truth Becomes An Idol​

​What does "taking a stand for Jesus" look like?​

​Do Christians Repent?​