Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.- Matthew 22:15-22
About a month ago I saw an interview on television that irked me. A reporter was interviewing different people about their thoughts on Barack Obama, and one woman said, “I don’t like Obama. He’s a Muslim, and this is a Christian nation.” Can you tell which part of that statement irked me? It wasn’t the part about Obama being a Muslim, although I am tired of people saying that. When people say that, it’s an ignorant statement on so many levels. First, because it’s not true. Second, because it’s a statement that’s prejudiced against Muslims, and I find that destructive. I’m also not saying that you should vote for Obama. I’m just pointing out the ignorance of saying he is a Muslim. Despite my disagreement with that part of her comment, it is her saying we are a Christian nation that bothers me.
Now, why would it bother me to hear someone say we’re a Christian nation? Shouldn’t I agree with her? After all, I am a pastor. The truth is that a lot of Christians would agree that we’re a Christian nation, and a quick look at American history seems to support this belief. The only problem is that you’d have to look at American history very quickly and very narrowly to support this belief. The truth is that the Founding Fathers never saw us as a Christian nation. In fact, they didn’t even think in categories of Christian/non-Christian at all. They thought in terms of denominations and whose version of Christianity was right. The people of the time saw their own denominations as being truly Christian, and all others as being false to one degree or another. To say that they saw us as a Christian nation is misleading because they didn’t see Christianity the same way we do now, as one religion with many difference expressions.
To understand the differences, you have to go back to understanding the colonization of North America. Most of those who migrated to the colonies, especially those who established the colonies, did so as a way of establishing a state where they would be free to pursue their own religion. For instance, the Puritans who settled in Massachusetts came from the east of England. These were Calvinists who believed that to truly be Christian meant to seek a way of purification during this life. They strove to overcome sin, and to create God’s kingdom on earth. They also saw all other Christians, and especially the Anglicans (whom today we call Episcopalians), as misguided and unchristian. They were especially against the Anglicans because it was officially the Church of England, and thus the state religion. What made it worse was that they had been persecuted at the hands of English Anglicans.
Meanwhile, those who settled in Virginia were mostly Anglicans. They saw the Church of England as the only true church, and all others as heretics. These folks came from the south of England and were part of the landed gentry class. They believed in a hierarchy in which God came first, then the king (or queen—Virginia was named after Elizabeth, the “virgin queen”), then the Lords, then everyone else. They believed that the bottom of this hierarchy, religiously, were the Roman Catholics because they were followers of the pope, whom they suspected of being the antichrist.
The Quakers settled into Pennsylvania as part of a great experiment by William Penn. Penn wanted to create a colony of tolerance, love, and peace (hence they name Philadelphia, or city of brotherly love). Pennsylvania was later settled by the Scots-Irish, the Lutherans, the Mennonites, and the Amish precisely because they were welcomed by the Quakers, even if they were somewhat distrusted.
The Scots-Irish originally came from the borderlands between Scotland and England, where they developed a fiercely independent brand of Christianity. It was a brand rooted in scripture, but only to the extent that scripture agreed with what they agreed with. They did not see people of any other denomination as Christians. These folks saw themselves as the only Christians, and they weren’t always convinced that each other were Christians.
Maryland was settled by Roman Catholics (hence the name Maryland, which venerated both the virgin Mary and Mary the Roman Catholic sister of Elizabeth). The Roman Catholics were universally disliked by all the other denominations. They were considered to be papists and followers of the fallen faith. Remember that the Reformation had taken place only 50 to 100 years before. Distrust and denigration of Roman Catholics was high among all the other colonies.
As the colonies matured, there may have been a tentative willingness to come together as colonies economically, but there was still as distrust of each others’ faith. Again, they did not see themselves as Christian. They saw themselves as whatever denomination they were.
By the time of the Founding Fathers, the different denominations still looked down at each other—a condition that really wasn’t overcome until the 20th century. Even when it came to signing the declaration, there was reluctance to join each other because of distrust until one particular Anglican clergyman stated that despite his distrust of Presbyterians and Congregationalists, he would sign the declaration for the benefit of the all. Again, they didn’t see themselves as Christians in the way we see ourselves as Christian. They saw themselves as Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Congregationalists, and even Methodists.
In addition, while many of the Founding Fathers were religious, they saw themselves more as learned men. Not all saw themselves as Christians, and some never even went to church. While basic Protestant theology influenced their beliefs, they were just as heavily influenced by the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, the tradition of Roman democracy, and the English parliamentary system since the signing of the Magna Carter. To say that they were Christians trying to found a Christian nation simply isn’t true. Christian ideals under girded part of their beliefs, but they would have been reluctant to identify themselves as Christians.
So, would Jesus promote any nation being a Christian nation? Not if you believe our passage for this morning. Our passage is one in which a trap is set for Jesus. The Pharisees and the Herodians (those charged with maintaining peace on behalf of the Romans) wanted to find a way to arrest Jesus. So they ask him a cleverly designed question: is it lawful to pay taxes. Here’s the trap. If Jesus said yes, then the Jews, who hated the Romans and saw paying taxes as a form of Caesar worship, would have rejected Jesus. Remember that in the Temple of Jerusalem, the whole problem of the money-changers existed because the Jews demanded that temple tax be paid in Jewish shekels, not Roman denarii. If Jesus supported paying taxes, he would have been seen as being in collusion with the Romans. The people would have rejected him and his message. If he had said that it wasn’t right to pay taxes, the Herodians, the government of the province, would have had him arrested for sedition. It was a pretty good trap. How did Jesus answer? He said that we should give to God what is God’s and to the Romans what is the Romans.
In essence, what he was saying is that there is a separation between the spiritual and the material realms, and that to confuse them meant giving to the world that which is due God. In other words, it’s okay to wrap yourself in the American flag, but don’t get confused in thinking that God is wrapped in an American flag. If we do, that becomes a problem because it assumes that God is God of this nation and no others. And Jesus already was telling the Jews, the “chosen people,” that God was ready to expand to all people as chosen people. This ideal of Jesus influenced the Founding Fathers, who recognized that there was an inherent separation between church and state.
So, does that mean that politics and religion shouldn’t mix? Not at all. The Founding Fathers all recognized the importance of religion. They believed that it should mix, but not in a state sanctioned way. What the Founding Fathers absolutely did not want was the institution of a European understanding of state and religion. At the time of the Revolution, the nations of Europe believed that the state should establish a state religion, and that religion should get preference above all others. So, in England the state religion has been the Anglican Church, or the Church of England, ever since Henry VIII. In Scotland the state religion is the Church of Scotland, or the Presbyterian Church. In Sweden and Norway it is the Lutheran Church. In France and Italy it is the Roman Catholic Church. Even today, in Italy there are roadblocks put up for Protestant churches because they are violating the state church. The Founding Fathers wanted our nation to be a place of religious freedom, not necessarily to be a place just for Christianity. In fact, the Founding Fathers were much more receptive to Muslims and Jews than they were to Roman Catholics. So for those promoting our country as a Christian nation to lump Romans Catholics in with other Christians today takes liberties with what the Founding Fathers believed.
I think that one of the basic issues that causes us to think that the Founding Fathers were all Christian is that so few understand their faith. People believe that they were Christian, but that’s not quite true. I saw fully how easy it is for people to misrepresent the Founding Fathers’ faith during a one-month sabbatical I took in 2003 to finish writing my book, Becoming a Blessed Church. During that month I visited several area churches on Sunday morning to see what they do. I visited one local church, a large, nondenominational church. on the 4th of July weekend. They started the service with a rousing version of “American the Beautiful” as power point screens on either side of the stage displayed an American flag flapping in the breeze. After each verse, they stopped the music, and someone dressed up as a founding father (or mother) in colonial garb walked forward to address the congregation. The message of each person—Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams, and Ben Franklin—was pretty much the same: “We founded this country on Christianity. We founded it on the words of scripture. This is the word that we trusted in, this is the word I believe in, and this is the word we follow!” There was only one problem. Two out of those three were not really Christians in the strict sense of the word.
I have no idea what Abigail Adams believed, but I do know what Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin believed. Thomas Jefferson was a deist, meaning that he believed in a remote, impersonal God. He did not believe that Jesus was anything more than a great teacher or prophet. In fact, the Bible bothered him so much that he created his own Bible by cutting out anything in the gospels he disagreed with (Jefferson didn’t have much use for any part of the Bible other than the gospels). He cut out the virgin birth, the resurrection, and any miracles. He kept Jesus’ teachings and parables. You can actually go out and buy a copy of Jefferson’s Bible. While Jefferson was technically an Episcopalian, he rarely went to church. Ben Franklin was a deist who bordered on atheist or agnostic. He didn’t believe much in God. He rarely went to church. And he lived a life that often ignored Christian principles or morality. He believed in human reason, rationality, philosophy, and science. For that particular church to have portrayed Jefferson and Franklin as bible-thumping Christians was just untrue. But people believed what the church said because they want this to be a Christian nation.
So in the face of all this, what should we believe? What do I believe? I believe that I follow the beliefs of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson. who was the one who coined the term “separation of church and state.” I believe as they did, which is that the state should not establish a religion. That being said, is there a role for religion in politics? Absolutely. The Founding Fathers believed that religion should mix, but in us. The church shouldn’t establish religion, but religion should influence politics. In essence, we should bring our faith into our voting. And our government officials should bring their faith into their decision-making, but not to the point of establishing one religion over another.
So what’s wrong with the state encouraging religion, say, in areas such as teaching a biblical view of creation? The problem is that if you bring creationism, or even intelligent design, into teaching, the state either has to choose one faith over another, or teach all faiths. Which version would we teach? I’ll be honest. I don’t want schools teaching about creation because invariably they won’t teach what we Presbyterians believe. We believe that God created everything, but that God has used evolution. When you are teaching creation in a school, what version do you use? The fundamentalist one? The Catholic one? The Muslim one? The Wiccan one? The Native American one? Do you teach all of them, and if so, how? And if you teach all of them, do you have time for teaching science? I would rather have schools stick to teaching science, and let us teach about creation, which is partly what we are doing right now in our adult education class, Science and Theology Shake Hands.
I also don’t want the state determining what faith to teach or encourage because invariably they won’t pick mine. Right now the evangelicals have more political power than we in the mainline churches do, and I’m not an evangelical. When people say we are a Christian nation, what they usually mean is that we are a nation founded upon evangelical Christian beliefs. That’s only not true, but if flies in the face of my beliefs because I’m not an evangelical. I don’t want to impose my beliefs on them, and I certainly don’t want them imposing their beliefs on me. I want the state to stay out of this.
So, again, how do politics and religion mix? Ultimately they mix in each one of us. I wrote about this in the Calvin Newsletter in August. I wrote then that I believe that we should bring our faith, and especially our prayer, into our voting. We should be asking questions such as, “which candidate is the one who seems most open to God’s will? Who will care about Christian issues, not only about abortion, but about the poor, the hungry, the hurting, the marginalized, and the struggling? Who will treat others in the most Christian way?” This is where religion and politics mix. This should be part of our voting.
I believe that the Founding Fathers wanted us to mix religion and politics in this way. That’s why the first amendment is so sacrosanct in our country. I defend the right of anyone to say that we are a Christian nation, even if they’re wrong. I defend it because even though I disagree with it, I recognize that even saying that brings faith into our politics. What I don’t want is for the state to agree with them and establish their religion as our state religion to the point at which we become so intolerant of other faith that my and our faith becomes diminished by the very people who are sworn to protect my rights to pursue my faith. And I believe that this is the faith that the Founding Fathers had.
Amen.
