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A Useful Exploration of Truth about Christian Nationalism (Part Four)
Even though the Constitution protects against a state religion, it nevertheless projects a Christian nation. The God about which Jefferson referenced in the Declaration was the God of Christianity, who is the true God. The founders wrote a Constitution for a Christian nation. The Constitution envisions a Christian nation.
The Constitution limits the power of government based on the truth that rights come from God. Government does not give the rights that the Constitution protects. God does. This puts the true God, the God of Christianity, above the government of the United States. It also places the people of the United States under God, like the pledge reads: “one nation under God.”
The people or government of the United States cannot replace God with something else and succeed. The framework still stands and hinders a significant decline, but by replacing God the nation then essentially opposes itself. True believers will tell the truth about this, so not stay silent.
God blesses only nations whose God He is (Psalm 33:12). That is axiomatic. But I’m writing something here even more than that. The United States started as a Christian nation under the one and true God. To cease from that would make the United States a different nation than how and what it began. It would eliminate Americanism, the true nature of the nation according to its founding.
Declaration of Independence
Laws of Nature and Nature’s God
The United States declared its existence on the following self-evident truths. First,
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
This nation began with the dissolution of political bands to England. It declared that the laws of nature and nature’s God entitled it. This God is not some arbitrary God. In the context of the history of England and the United States, this was the Christian God.
All Men Are Created Equal and Endowed by their Creator with Certain Unalienable Rights
Second,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
This nation declared that England did not give their rights. It was endowed with those rights by their Creator, who is the Christian God. The United States could rightly abolish the former colonial government and institute a new government on the rights the Christian God gave. The Christian God possessed higher authority than England and the new nation under Whom it stood. He gave them these unalienable rights and the right of independence.
Gettysburg Address
Dedicated to the Proposition That All Men Are Created Equal
Unless the nation made a new declaration, the United States continues a Christian nation. The founding principle of the Declaration of Independence faced a challenge during the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863 and he attached that time to its founding with his words in that speech. First,
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
To start, he didn’t use the name, “God,” like Jefferson did and the Founders signed their John Hancocks. But he agreed that “our fathers” were “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” referring to the Declaration of Independence again. By saying, “created,” he alluded to the Creator, the same Christian God of 1776.
Nation Dedicated to a Proposition
If I were to choose a key word in Lincoln’s address, I would pick, “dedicate.” His speech had three paragraphs and he used the word “dedicate” as crucial in all three. This connected the following two paragraphs to the first. The founders dedicated themselves to the proposition that God created men equal, so God gave men their rights by His creation. Even if the United States did not live out that proposition, they remained dedicated to living out that proposition. Second,
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
Civil Laws and Rights
A civil action is a legal dispute based upon laws. Old Testament Israel functioned according to civil laws. Civil rights essentially means the rights God gave according to His laws, having created mankind. The term comes from the Latin, jus civis, “right of the citizen.” The North and the South fought over a disagreement about the rights of citizens.
Lincoln said the Civil War was a test to see if a nation, dedicated to the proposition that God created men equal and gave them their rights, could endure. A Christian nation cannot endure if it rejects the Christian God. I believe this nation is in another struggle right now of the same nature as 1863. Lincoln uses “dedicate” twice. Was the nation dedicated to the proposition that it received its rights from the Christian God? Lincoln expressed that the nation could live because of those who gave their lives, a very nice turn of phrase. He came to dedicate a portion of the former battlefield as their final resting place.
Paragraph Three of the Address
Abraham Lincoln memorialized the cemetery at Gettysburg, the most crucial battle and turning point in the Civil War, according to the nation’s dedication to the Christian God. Third (this is one paragraph in the speech, but I’m dividing it into two),
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Hallow or Sacred
In general, people today don’t use “dedicate,” “consecrate,” and “hallow.” “Hallow” is a form of “holiness.” Almost nothing is sacred anymore. No one wants hallowed ground. They don’t want to acknowledge anything as holy. More important are their own conveniences and privileges, living not for anything greater than themselves.
Lincoln would not use “consecrate” and “hallow” without reference to the Christian God. The ground at Gettysburg was not hallow because of a Lincoln speech. Hallow ground goes back to Exodus 3 and Moses’ encounter at the burning bush. The ground at Gettysburg was hallow because the reason that justified these men’s death. A great proposition, dedicated to the Christian God, hallowed their deaths. They didn’t die for self, for their own rights, but for rights vindicated by a biblical proposition. These were true rights that proceed first from Genesis 1 and God’s mandate.
Christian Nation
Consider again that Lincoln says, “we can not dedicate” and “to be dedicated here to the unfinished work” and “to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.” What is the increased devotion the living were to take from the dead’s last full measure of devotion? He implied the dead at Gettysburg would die in vain without dedication to the proposition of a nation under the Christian God. The Christian God gave everyone their rights.
For a government to protect the rights of the people and be a government for the people, it must submit to the highest authority: the Christian God. This nation as a whole loses its dedication when it denies that God. It rejects its purpose for existence. No principle holds it together. How does it do that? Many, many ways that every Christian at least should understand.
I hope I’m expressing a legitimate idea or concept of Christian nationalism, based upon natural laws ordained by God, scripture, and history. Christians should not apologize for these laws, scripture, and history. It is the truth about the United States. May the one and true God, the Christian God, be praised!
More to Come
Symbols and Identity
My wife and I worked hard for several months on various things without much of a break and we could get away for a day or so. Utah is a beautiful state. Little did Brigham Young know, when he said, “This is the place,” that it meant five national parks, two of which are thirty minutes apart, Arches and Canyonlands. They both deserve national park status.
Arches especially means hiking, because you’ve got to hike to see the greatest scenes. They laid these out with well done trails. My wife and I walked miles, people passing us, we passing people, people walking along side of us, and crowds of people together with us looking at amazing views.
I want to take this moment to announce a trigger warning. Trigger warning to women. I’m preparing to talk about women wearing skirts or dresses. In all of those hours, besides my wife, I never saw another skirt. Not a single other woman in the entire time we were at those two national parks did I see a woman in a skirt or a dress.
I did see many women in skin tight leggings or pants. Loose ones too. The temperatures were cool, so there weren’t so many shorts, but there were even some of those worn only by women, none by men.
A big occurrence this Sunday night before my wife and I left on our trip was the Academy Awards in Hollywood. My phone notified me that Will Smith punched Chris Rock. It came with an unedited video.
The comedian Chris Rock, who apparently hosted the show, added an ad lib joke about Smith’s wife, Jada, an actress sitting with Will Smith, who suffers from a hair loss disease. She’s essentially bald, and Rock sarcastically joked about her upcoming appearance in G. I. Jane, making fun of her hairless state. Some might call this joke, tasteless, because it made fun of a woman’s medical condition over which she has no control. In other words, it’s not funny to joke about that, or it shouldn’t be. It’s off limits.
Whether you think it was right for Smith to walk to slap Rock onstage in what some might think a chivalrous manner, it’s an issue of women’s hair length. Someone in Hollywood slapped someone else for making fun of a woman’s hair length. Being called a “G. I. Jane” was insulting. None of this means anything if hair length on a woman isn’t a symbol of identity, like a skirt or dress is a symbol of identity.
The Bible mentions visible symbols as they relate to identity. People know they matter. It’s why you see a transgender “woman,” biological male, wearing a dress. The dress is a symbol, as is hair. “Look at me, I’m a woman.”
The girl, who wants to be a boy or thinks of herself as a boy, wants to get rid of her breasts. Or she prevents them with hormone blockers. The boy, who wants to be a girl or thinks of himself as a girl, wants those breasts. Breasts are symbols, even if they don’t function except as a symbol. The Bible treats any kind of reversal of these symbols as an abomination and against nature. It’s also the view held by professing Christians through their entire history until very recently, and one never rescinded by God.
The symbols that speak of identity are not arbitrary symbols. They aren’t a social construct. They are the “laws of nature and nature’s God” of the Declaration of Independence. Writing about this in 1762, Abraham Williams of Boston said:
The law of nature (or those rules of behavior which the Nature God has given men, . . . fit and necessary to the welfare of mankind) is the law and will of the God of nature, which all men are obliged to obey. . . . The law of nature, which is the Constitution of the God of nature, is universally obliging. It varies not with men’s humors or interests, but is immutable as the relations of things.
Rebellion against the laws of nature is rebellion against God in a fundamental or root manner. The person violating these laws involves himself in a personal offense against the nature of God. In many of these instances, especially the ones I’m describing, they become an abomination to Him. You can deny that, but you’ll still face God.
Our world reacts to symbols. The Swastika. The Hammer and Sickle. The Gay Flag. Men wearing skirts. The symbols mark identity in an elemental way.
The downfall on identity began first with the abdication and then the repudiation of symbols. Identity confusion and chaos starts with renouncing the symbols. If you think they’re meaningless, then why do they trigger such strong reactions?
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