Objection:
America is a Christian nation and, therefore, should have the right to legislate a national day of worship consistent with its core beliefs.
Answer:
The above statement, and others like it, are gaining prominence once again in the United States of America. These beliefs are not new in this country but are rather a resurgence of fanatical ideologies. Therefore, it is important to revisit the cases of the past that supported such un-American views and the events surrounding such ideas, as they will guide us today in opposing similar sentiments.
National Reform and Sunday Legislation
In America, one of the premises on which Sunday law advocates build is that this is a Christian nation. Therefore, Sunday legislation is not only defensible but imperative if Christian standards are to be reflected in the activities of the government. At first, the argument in support of the Christian-nation claim was rather vague and of this order: Christian people founded the country, some of them coming here for religious reasons. The moral principles of Christianity are woven into our customs and laws. The oath is administered in the name of God. Sunday is excluded from the count of days in determining certain judicial matters, and cognizance is thus taken from its distinctive character.
These and similar reasons were initially offered as proof that this is a Christian nation and, hence, should protect Sunday with legislation. Then came the decision of the United States Supreme Court in 1892, in what is known as the Holy Trinity Church case, in which the statement is made that “this is a Christian nation.” That case dealt with the right of that church to import a minister from abroad. Lower courts had ruled that this violated a law forbidding the import of foreign labor.
Supreme Court’s Reasoning in 1892
The Supreme Court reasoned that the legislators never intended to include religious groups or individuals in the restrictive law and supported this reasoning by showing that from the earliest days, the people of this country had acknowledged God as supreme and had sought to do His will. After citing declarations as far back as the commission of Ferdinand and Isabella to Columbus, the Court declared:
“These, and many other matters, which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.” – 143 U.S., 457.
How far the justices intended the logic of their statement to be carried is not evident from that decision. They there invoked the “Christian Nation” claim only to create a reasonable presumption that the legislators never intended to include ministers in their law against foreign labor. Thus, strictly speaking, the reasoning that climaxed in the conclusion that this is a Christian nation is really not the court’s decision but is, in legal parlance, an obiter dictum, a kind of parenthetical observation. The court did not rule on whether this was or was not a Christian nation but on whether the Church of the Holy Trinity had violated labor law.
Sunday-law Reformers Comment on Court’s Words
However, Sunday-law reformers did not trouble themselves over legal niceties. They had their own convictions as to the implications of the Christian-nation statement. In the organ of the National Reform Association appeared this exuberant comment:
“This is a Christian nation. That means Christian government, Christian laws, Christian institutions, Christian practices, Christian citizenship. And this is not an outburst of popular passion or prejudice. Christ did not lay His guiding hand there, but upon the calm, dispassionate, supreme judicial tribunal of our government. It is the weightiest, the noblest, the most tremendously far-reaching in its consequences of all the utterances of that sovereign tribunal. And that utterance is for Christianity, for Christ. ‘A Christian nation!’ Then this nation is Christ’s nation, for nothing can be Christian that does not belong to Him. Then His word is its sovereign law. Then the nation is Christ’s servant. Then it ought to, and must, confess, love, and obey Christ.” – The Christian Statesman, Nov. 19, 1892.
This quotation reveals how far-reaching the conclusions the reformers drew from the words of the Supreme Court were. Of course, these reformers were chiefly and immediately concerned about finding support for Sunday laws. Charity toward them requires us to believe they did not truly see what their bubbling rhetoric could lead to. Zealots and reformers are rarely given to dispassionate, calm, and logical analysis. They are inclined, instead, to seize with fervor whatever appears to support their cause without troubling to inquire whether it may prove to be a broken reed that will pierce them.
Our Analysis of the Reformers’ Position
The National Reformers, in reasoning as they did, logically gave the state a religious character and caused its statutes to appear as springing from the mind of God and a holy people. Hence, to rebel against the state or any of its laws would be equivalent to rebelling against God’s will. But if that be so, it is pointless for a citizen to set up his conscience against any state mandate. Is it not presumptuous for anyone to say that God, speaking to him through his conscience, forbids him to obey the law of a Christian nation? Does God contradict Himself?
In other words, the logic of the Christian Nation premise leads inevitably to a revival of the medieval doctrine that the king can do no wrong. How plausibly, in bygone centuries, that claim was made! Did not God set up the king? Does not the Bible declare that he is the minister of God? The peasant in those days of the divine right of kings could not hope to make a case in court by arguing that his conscience forbade him from obeying the king’s law. The argument had no standing.
The Supreme Court Speaks in 1931
Bible believers have often wondered whether the Supreme Court might someday interpret its own words and reveal what the logical conclusions that follow from the loose, though sweeping, observation that “This is a Christian nation” are. The Holy Trinity Church case was decided in 1892. In 1931, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in the case of Dr. Douglas Clyde MacIntosh, who had applied for citizenship but had a reservation regarding bearing arms. Dr. MacIntosh reserved the right to let his conscience tell him whether he ought to bear arms in a particular war that might be fought. In ruling against his application, the court reasoned in the following manner:
“When he speaks of putting his allegiance to the will of God above his allegiance to the Government, it is evident, in the light of his entire statement, that he means to make his own interpretation of the will of God the decisive test which shall conclude the Government and stay its hand. We are a Christian people (Holy Trinity Church Vs. United States, 143 U.S. 457, 470, 471), according to one another the equal right of religious freedom, and acknowledging with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God.
“But, also, we are a nation with the duty to survive. A nation whose Constitution contemplates war as well as peace; whose Government must go forward upon the assumption, and safely can proceed upon no other, that unqualified allegiance to the nation and submission and obedience to the laws of the land, as well those made for war as those made for peace, are not inconsistent with the will of God.”
Reformers Comment on Court’s Decision
The same Christian Statesman that in 1892 had given such fulsome praise to the Supreme Court for its declaration that this is a Christian nation joined the chorus of the religious press in rebuke of the court in 1931 with these scathing words:
“Just now the American people have been rudely awakened to the fact that this liberty of the conscience for the individual citizen is threatened at least, by making its surrender one of the conditions for becoming a citizen by naturalization. . . .
“In this case the Federal Government has officially declared that it has the power to decide when and in what circumstances it may, under the plea of necessity, override the conscience of the individual citizen. Carried into the realm of actual citizenship, this would abolish the right of the individual to judge of the righteousness of the acts of the government he has helped to create and of his own active participation in them. It requires but logic and the ruthlessness born of excitement, to march from this premise straight to all the conclusions of the state sovereignty of Soviet Russia.” – The Christian Statesman, July-August, 1931.
Nowhere in this vigorous defense of the individual conscience does The Christian Statesman reveal that it is aware that the court had used the National Reformers’ favorite Christian-nation phrase as the basis for its decision against MacIntosh. The reformers observed that the court’s decision gave the government the “power” to “override the conscience of the individual citizen.” But the court contended not only that the state has the power but also the right and that this right rests upon the premise that “unqualified allegiance to the nation and submission and obedience to the laws of the land… are not inconsistent with the will of’ God.” That is but another way of saying that the laws of the land are not inconsistent with the will of God. And, of course, this leads to the far-reaching but inevitable conclusion that the citizen is to discover God’s will for him, not by searching his heart and conscience, but by examining the laws and statute books of the state.
Reasoning Valid if Premise Correct
And why may not the court thus reason if it believes that this is a “Christian people”? If this or any other nation is genuinely Christian, if, as a state, it possesses not only a political but a religious character, the Christian religion at that, then it may plausibly be argued that the laws of the land are not inconsistent with the will of God. Indeed, only on the premise that this is a Christian nation, and thus guiding its course by the standards of Heaven, could it possibly be contended that the laws of the land are not inconsistent with the will of God.
The National Reformers were happy to declare that the Supreme Court acted under the guiding hand of Christ when it said in the Holy Trinity Church case that this is a Christian nation. In fact, they declared at the time that the court’s statement in that case actually established that this is a Christian nation. But when this same supreme tribunal later quoted the Trinity Church case and went on to reason that citizens should give unquestioning obedience to the laws of the state, the reformers were ready to pillory the court. But how did the reformers know that Christ guided the court in the first instance but not in the second? Are the National Reformers better able to decide the ultimate conclusions that may logically be drawn from a statement of the Supreme Court than the court itself?
It is evident that the only way to escape the conclusion reached by the Court in the MacIntosh case is to set down the counter view that “unqualified allegiance to the nation and submission and obedience to the laws of the land” may, in certain instances, be wholly “inconsistent with the will of God.” But to maintain this position, we must surrender the view that the nation is Christian. That dilemma has confronted the National Reformers since the Supreme Court’s decision in the MacIntosh case.
Other Fallacies in Reformers’ Claims
Turning aside, now, from this devastating Supreme Court commentary on the famous Christian-nation phrase, let us further explore the statements made by the National Reformers in their historic pronouncement of 1892. We shall see that their reasoning contains other fallacies than those exposed by the Supreme Court decision in the MacIntosh case. In 1892, they came to the sweeping conclusion that because this is a Christian nation, “this nation is Christ’s nation, for nothing can be Christian that does not belong to Him. Then His word is its sovereign law. Then the nation is Christ’s servant. Then it ought to, and must, confess, love, and obey Christ.”
The National Reformers have made this statement to protect themselves against the question that clamors for expression: Why call this country Christian when its citizenry in general are anything but Christian? Let us examine the statement. If we say to a man, “You are now a Christian, therefore, you ‘ought to, and must, confess, love, and obey Christ,'” our words would need explaining to avoid the most severe error. If we meant simply that the man was to continue such a relationship with Christ, well and good. But if we suggested that because he had been pronounced a Christian, he must, therefore, begin to relate himself thus to Christ, we would be guilty of turning the Christian program upside down. Because a man confesses, loves, and is willing to obey Christ, he becomes a Christian.
The National Reformers could not say that, in 1892, the nation could be pronounced “Christian” because it had been confessing, loving, and obeying Christ. So they were obliged to work from the opposite end, affirming that the nation is Christian and then telling it that it “ought to, and must,” act Christian.
What Will They Say Today?
The reformers made that statement more than a century ago. Will they contend that the nation has, during those years, changed its ways as ‘It ought to” and justified the pronouncement as to its national Christianity? I hardly think they would have the hardihood to attempt to prove this. The increasing problem of crime and disregard for the law on the part of the citizenry at large is too generally known. Those who sought to give spiritual guidance to millions of men in two world wars declare that the nation is mainly pagan.
If, after half a century, the nation has failed to conform to Christianity as “it ought to” but instead has become only worse, is it not about time that all those who genuinely love the name Christian protest against the hypocrisy of the phrase “Christian nation”? The magic of the famous phrase has not improved the nation. Indeed, the beautiful word “Christian” has received no added richness of meaning from being combined with “nation.”
But perhaps the National Reformers, aka Christian Nationalists, may contend that although national conditions have indeed become only worse during the years, nevertheless the title “Christian nation” should still be retained because, as a result of reforms that they will launch, the nation will finally do what “it ought to.” In reply, the title never should have been given in the first place, not only because the nation is not Christian in its conduct but because the state cannot properly have a religious character. Nevertheless, let us consider this final argument in defense of the notable phrase. Can the Christian Nationalists point to any nation that has been nationally reformed? We read much of the decline and fall of empires, morally and politically, but scarcely a word of their reformation.
And if, after a century and more of active endeavor by the National Reformers, the country has gone only downward morally, what reason can they offer as to why we should believe they can reform it throughout in the future? Can they do what earnest contenders for Christian principles have been unable to do in any other nation or century?
Indeed, history does not warrant the belief that the nation will ever do what “it ought to.” Should we, nevertheless, continue to describe it as “Christian” solely because “it ought to” do that which it never has and never may be expected to do as a nation? If so, then words have lost their distinctive meaning, and we can properly call a man “Christian” who has steadily sunk lower morally–not because we believe he is confessing, loving, and obeying Christ, but because we believe he “ought to.”
