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Former Republican Senator John Danforth believes that his party has become an arm of the Christian Right. He is, of course, correct. There is nothing wrong with religion exerting and influence in the public sphere. Any religion which does not influence its members sufficiently to act in the public sphere is not worth its salt. But there is a serious problem when an American political party becomes a political tool of any religioius group. There is also a theological problem.

The Christian faith began in a context of opposition to what Paul called "the principalities and powers"(Col 2:15). Sadly, Christians since about the fifth century have often fallen into the trap of using the power of the state to further their own ends--but this is always a trap. It ultimately subverts the faith. When his disciples wanted him to exert his power and establish the Kingdom of God by physical might, Jesus rebuked them. He called on them to take up their cross and follow him.

The religious right now endorses the use of political and military coercion to accomplish its goals--and it does so in the name of the Christian faith. This requires not only political opposition, but it demands the repudiation of Christians who will not allow their faith to be co-opted and distorted in this way.

It's no surprise that mental disorders on the rise among returning veterans as reported yesterday in USA Today, but it should come as a terrible shock to the American people that this coincides with the continued underfunding of veterans health care and benefits. Veterans organizations have made very clear that the proposed budget will not only continue but will exascerbate the crisis in the VA system. Vietnam Veterans of America, one such organization lays it out very clearly.

The blatant hypocrisy of this administration and Congress with their cynical treatment of veterans is intolerable. We know that there is no longer a commitment of our government to ordinary working people. We know there is no concern for those who lack health care. We have long since learned they don't care about growing poverty, homelessness and hunger. In these matters they are consistent: they don't claim to care. But they do claim to "support our troops." These reports offer further evidence that they really don't care about the troops either.

The evolution vs. creationism debate goes on. Michael Shermer quite rightly states that intellilgent design is not science. He then opposes the notion of intelligent design to science and dismisses the latter. But there is more to it than that. Intelligent design as expounded by many of its proponents is indeed a replay of the old "god of the gaps" notion--bring in a god whenever you can't explain something. But intelligence at the root of the cosmos is a legitimate philosophical inference, using the same kind of reasoning that underlies science itself. Some thoughts follow--these were posted by me on a BBC website previously. Still relevant.

Belief and Inference

Assumptions and Inference

Science is based on certain assumptions which are held to be true but which can’t be “proven.” Among these assumptions is that the universe is knowable. Something is really "out there" and our internal subjective awareness--somehow and to some degree--corresponds to that which is external to ourselves. The universe is remarkably intelligible. The more we explore it, the more we realize that its motions are not only ascertainable but predictable as well. Quantum physics, chaos theory, Planck’s Constant, etc. are highly abstract extrapolations from observable reality but we "know" they are "true." This connection between the universe and the mind has fascinated every generation since Plato and the ancient Greeks. The fact that the connection between inner awareness and outer reality can be expressed mathematically is itself remarkable. Even more astonishing: we can now construct mathematical models and theories only to find that external reality indeed corresponds to these intellectual constructs. The amazing intelligibility of the universe and its correspondence to the human mind demands explanation.

We can infer that if cosmic reality is intelligible to our minds, which are themselves the evolutionary product of the cosmos itself (we are all some kind of star dust), then somehow the cosmos itself is rooted in intelligence. Intelligibility without foundational intelligence makes no sense. Chance, time and evolution have brought about human intelligence and the capacity for subjective awareness, of course, but we who ask "why questions" want some kind of explanation for this. Such an explanation would lie beyond the realm of any particular science, but we are not limited in our thinking by specific scientific modalities. Wider philosophical thinking is required in which roots of existent reality can be explored through inference.

The Anthropic Principle

We now know that the universe in its origins was characterized by constants so remarkably balanced that carbon-based life and human subjectivity were able to evolve. The universe from the first nano-second of its existence contained, among an infinite variety of other possibilities, precisely the fundamental constants necessary for our existence. This remarkable fact has been called by many scientists the "anthropic principle." The universe generates from within itself by its own inherent processes a being which is able to interrogate the very cosmos which gave it existence. Moreover this improbable and puny creature, from the depths of its own subjectivity seeks and discovers truth, searches for and creates meaning, discovers and articulates values.

Cosmic evolution occurs therefore within an ordered framework circumscribed by what we know as laws or principles. Random events occur within this framework so it appears that evolution is a product of the interplay between a kind of law and chance. The immense duration of the universe allows for evolution to pursue a rich and enormous variety of options, notable most strikingly in the extravagant profusion of biological diversity.

The statistical probabilities of quantum mechanics which encompasses the entire universe and the innovation wrought by chance at the molecular level of DNA show the interplay of necessity and chance. The natural selection of biological evolution operates within a context which is both random and ordered. The biotic system through innovation and creativity produces a species that is able to grasp the principles operative throughout the entire universe. This species is also profoundly aware of its own subjectivity.

The human mind seeks ultimate answers and fundamental meanings, but does so completely within the brain’s physical/biological/chemical system. The search for answers and meaning cannot be completely requited within this system, however. Through the human act of understanding both external and inner reality the cosmos points beyond itself. A simple analogy has been used to explain this. Take a pencil and scribble a meaningless scrawl on it, then begin to write a coherent sentence. There is a continuity between the scrawl and the sentence which a physical/chemical analysis would demonstrate. But there is a radical discontinuity when the sentence begins. Our attention is transposed into a different key. Something very different is at stake both in writing and in analyzing the sentence at the level of meaning. A chemical analysis which showed the continuity and the similarity would be accurate but it would be unable to discern the truly innovative and creative activity of writing a coherent thought. Physical continuity remains but the formation of comprehensible words requires a different kind of analysis.

The analogy points to the fact that something is taking place within the universe which is not completely subject to a closed materialistic interpretation. It is at least highly probable that human subjectivity in all its facets, including comprehending and describing the cosmos points to an overarching subjectivity in which the universe itself is embedded.

Reductionism Insufficient

Reality is multi-dimensional and cannot be reduced entirely to the physical processes that are present in all the transactions of nature. The reason is that reality is demonstrably more comprehensive than these processes alone. There is also the fact that there are different levels within the exchanges of nature which are not reducible to each other.
Someone with a “bias” toward physics could make the argument that all processes in the cosmos are no more than wave/particle flow. In this view even biology and chemistry do not have their own realities because all is reducible to the quantum flux. The biologist and chemist would quite legitimately object to this as an absurdity, but such a stance is implicit within the logic of brute materialist reductionism.

Moving in the other direction but using the same logic, the biologist or the chemist could deny reality to the behaviors observed by the psychologist or sociologist. The truth is that the physical, biological and chemical components of nature are interrelated and interconnected but not reducible to each other.
Social reality is completely rooted in the above elements—nothing happens in society or in human relationships apart from these processes, but the totality is far more comprehensive than these mechanisms alone. Nothing in the cosmos happens apart from wave/particle flow or lies beyond the reach of gravity and quantum conditions.

On our planet—and presumably elsewhere as well—much of what takes place involves chemistry and biology. Physics is thus a necessary but insufficient cause of organic reality—necessary because nothing can take place apart from it, but insufficient because something new is involved in living things. Though all living beings have evolved from stardust, the big bang and its cosmic residue have become something new through the evolutionary process. Evolution moves in the direction of novelty, innovation, profusion and surprise. Reductionism is inadequate to describe what really takes place.
Atoms are contained within molecules, cells within organisms, organisms within ecosystems. There seems to be an 'overall ordering of entities' –atoms, molecules, genes, cells, etc. into intelligible forms or arrangements…something more is going on in nature and its evolution than simply brute exchanges along the matter-energy continuum.

Nature is a closed matter-energy continuum circumscribed by familiar processes and laws and yet it reconfigures itself in ways that escape the capacity of purely materialistic, mechanistic causality. This organizing principle resides in nature and is verifiable, but it is not completely reducible to a mechanistic explanation. There is more to evolution than reductionistic language can explain. The ancient Greeks, while they did not possess the science of evolution, had a notion of "teleology" or "final causality" as an organizing principle in nature. This is not a "mystical" or "supernatural" concept, but something like it is required to do justice to the comprehensive reality that is the evolutionary cosmos as we understand it today. When we enter the sphere of the human and the social, its poverty of explanation becomes readily apparent. A coherent and probable explanation for this is the existence of God.

Belief in God: The Best Inference

Thus faith in God rooted intellectually in a thorough and inclusive analysis of reality. It is a the most comprehensive intellectual position–one that many people, myself included think is the best inference that can be derived from nature itself.

In this context contemporary science: biological evolution, the operation of randomness, natural selection, quantum mechanics, relativity and chaos theory have all converged to provided a contemporary philosophical basis to rediscover the dynamic and creative aspects of biblical faith which has for too long been articulated in the static categories of western philosophy. In a very real sense contemporary science has enabled a renewal of the future-oriented biblical theology which has always been there, but has been submerged in recent centuries.
Suggested Reading

*Haught, John F. God After Darwin.Westview Press. Boulder, 2000.
*Jaki, Stanley L. God and the Cosmologists. Scottish Academic Press. 1989
*Peacocke, Arthur. Paths from Science Towards God. Oneworld Publications. Oxford, 2001
*Peacocke, Arthur. Theology for a Scientific Age.SCM Press, London, 1990
*Polkinghorne. The Faith of a Physicist. Fortress. Minneapolis, 1996
*Ward, Keith. God, Chance and Necessity.Oxford. 1996

The Twelve Steps of Spiritual recovery from combat related stress. This is part of a 28 page booklet written by VA Chaplain Bill Mahedy and a group of combat veterans. It is used in at least one VA facility and may be used by any veterans who wish. The full document will be available soon.

TWELVE STEPS TO SPIRITUAL RECOVERY (Twelve Activities of the Spiritual Boot Camp)

1. We admitted that we were powerless over the memories, emotions, attitudes, thoughts, bodily reactions and spiritual pain resulting from combat.

2. Having undergone a "conversion experience" into a world of violence, we came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to peace of soul, peace with others and peace with God as I understand him.

3. We made a decision to turn our anger, guilt, resentments, shame and fear over to God and to commit ourselves entirely to God’s loving care.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, including all we had done in combat, leaving out nothing we had done personally but not accepting responsibility for what we did not do personally.

5. Admitted to ourselves and to one other person the exact nature of our past wrongs and our present tendencies to do evil, asking God to forgive our past sins and remove our defects of character.

6. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and become willing to make amends to them all either directly or indirectly, insofar as this is possible without harming others or ourselves.

7. Having admitted our tendency to "play God" in our judgments of others and of ourselves, and now submitting our judgments to those of God, we now forgive all others any offenses they may have committed against us, we forgive ourselves and accept God’s forgiveness of us.

8. Having entered into a deeper spiritual state, we surrendered ourselves completely to God, letting go of our hidden hatreds and desires for revenge and also of our guilt over the unintended consequences of acts we performed in good faith or in ignorance.

9. We began to exercise a specific and detailed "discipline of trust," whereby we gradually came to trust ourselves, trust others and to trust that God would restore to us our power to rejoice, to give thanks, to praise and to enjoy.

10. We began to enter into the silence and the still waters of our souls in peace rather than in the isolation and loneliness of fear, spending time in quiet prayer–and in sharing what we have discovered within ourselves in prayer and worship together with others.

11. We committed ourselves to completing the final mission of a combat soldier: becoming bearers of peace, prayerfulness, happiness and rejoicing , resolving to go behind the "enemy lines" of fear, mistrust, selfishness, greed, hatreds which surround us in our culture, confident that, as warriors of peace, we will overcome these barriers using the weapons of peace, mercy and kindness which we have been given.

12. Where before we were infected with the contagion of violence, we will now spread to others the contagion of peace which we have received, planning our mission carefully, including all those within the ambit of our lives.

W. P. Mahedy

Sources: AA Literature; The Rise Program and other works by Madeline Gershwin et al.; Johnny’s Song by Steve Mason; Twelve Recovery Themes and Spiritual Steps by Joel Brende, MD,; Serenity: A Companion for Twelve Step Recovery by Robert Hemfelt & Richard Fowler; the works of Beverly Donovan, PhD, Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD; Janet Bernardi Waldo, John Ferguesson, VA Chaplains Richard Clewell & Michael Carr. Material from Out of the Night and other works by the present author.

The religious right has captivated not only the administration and the media, but they seem to have terrified Congress and intimidated many Americans. My problem with them is primarily theological. From a classical Christian perspective they seem to be quite unbiblical and nothing more than the latest manifestation of "American civil religion," which goes all the way back to the 17th century--though under Bush and company this phenomenon has become particularly virulent and toxic.

But there is some evidence that people are beginning to wake up and listen to other religious voices. This morning's edition of the Los Angeles Times reports on the increasing national attention given to Jim Wallis, the evangelical leader and writer who has been the "voice in the wilderness" for the poor and disenfranchised.

Not only are the Bush administration and the Congress shortchanging active duty military personnel in furnishing them with inadequate armor, abusing the deployment schedule, oppressing the National Guard and making of the Army Reserve a "broken force," but now we learn that banks, creditors and others are violating the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which is supposed to protect all active-duty military families from foreclosures, evictions and other financial consequences of military service.

The hypocrisy of the Bush administration and the Congress has long been evident as they wrap themselves in the flag and utter glowing statements about supporting our troops even as they shortchange the military through the budget and even as they continually underfund veterans benefits. One comes to expect from these people little more than this cut of behavior. So it really isn't too surprising that the business interests--of which the government has become a wholly owned subsidiary--now do the same. When will we wake up?

She was tough. She was gutsy--absolutely without fear. But she was depressed. She was shattered in ways she'd never been before. Even when her brother had died, it had been nothing like this. She knew she could never again be whole. Her life had been destroyed and she would not recover. She had sat at his feet and listened. She had been among his closest friends. She had seen Simon Peter and James and John and the others come to understand slowly who he was. She had watched the crowds fascinated by him. She had seen them come to belief. But her hopes and dreams had ebbed out of her and were mingled with his blood on the ground. Now she had nothing left.

Some thought he was the Messiah. So did she. But she believed there was more to him than that. She had seen him forgive sins, something only God could do, and she believed that somehow he had that power. She heard him tell the leaders of her people that he and the Father were one. That's why they decided to kill him, but she believed that he was right. Certainly being with the Master was somehow like being with God. If that is blasphemy, so be it. Let them kill her too. But they hadn't killed her or his mother or the other Mary or John. They let them stand near the cross while they taunted and tortured him.

She had seen crucifixions before. The Romans did it all the time. But she had never realized how horrible and brutal and monstrously evil they were. But that's the way life is. It's brutal and short and evil and then it's over. And we keep on waiting for a Messiah who will get the Romans off our backs, and they keep killing anyone who might be a leader. But Jesus had been different. His power was of another kind. And yet they had killed him too.

So, she'd come to the tomb--for one last visit. But the stone had been taken away. She ran to find Simon and the disciple Jesus loved the best. And they came and went in and they saw the cloths and returned home. But she couldn't leave just yet. What's this? Good Lord, two angels. "Why was she weeping?" Well, because they've taken his body away and she didn't know where they put it. Remarkable--angels--but so what. Angels appeared to other people too. A lot of good angels had done for the people of Israel. Enough of these angels. Where is he? Where did they put him? Now all of a sudden there's a man who wants to know why she's crying and who she's looking for. He must be the gardener. Maybe he knows. "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away."

And then it happened. Her life came back to her. She was healed. Her hopes and dreams were changed forever. And my God, the world had changed. One simple word turned everything upside down. He called her by her name: "Mary," and she recognized him. It was Jesus, the Lord, and had risen from the dead. "My teacher," she said and ran to him.

But he told her not to hold him for he was about to return his Father and her Father, his God and her God. But she was to go and tell the others what she had seen and heard and where he was going.

So she did what he told her to do. She turned as she cried and she began to laugh and she ran--for she was young and strong and fearless. She had been changed forever. And the news she had would change the world forever. She had seen him and he had called her by name.

No, she couldn't hold on to him. No one could contain him. The tight-knit little group of family and friends and disciples was gone forever. Now he belonged to all his people. Now he belonged to the world. For he was risen and he was Lord of all the world. And he had sent her to tell his friends that she had seen him. He had sent her on a mission that would change the world and that would alter forever the meaning of life and death.

So she ran away from the tomb, for it was empty, and she ran past the other graves, but they held no terrors, for they would someday be empty too. And she ran past Golgotha, that place of the skull, that place of brutality and evil and terror and death, the place where he had died, and she had died too. It was still there, but it had changed. Its power was gone, it had been defeated.

She ran past the Temple. Yes, it was still there too, but somehow it wasn't there at all. The real Temple, had been destroyed, but had already been rebuilt.

So she ran and she cried and she laughed and she ran on faster and faster. She couldn't see into the future. She couldn't see the horrors that were to come: the destruction of her own people, the persecutions of the disciples, plagues and diseases, religious wars, death camps, world wars, countless lesser wars, terrorism, massive destruction, and the billions of broken hearts and shattered lives and tragic deathbeds which were to come. She didn't have to see into the future, for now she knew the future. She had seen the future. It was Jesus, and he was risen from the dead. She had glimpsed the face of God.

So she ran for all of us and she ran to all of us. She ran past all the graves that would ever be dug. She ran past all the calvaries and places of destruction and temples and idolatries that the world would ever construct. And her shattered life, her broken heart was only the first of the billions He would heal.

The sin and suffering and the death of Calvary were not final for Jesus. Nor were they final for her, nor need they be final for anyone. He had shattered sin, overturned suffering and destroyed death. She had seen Jesus. He was risen and he was alive. And she was alive, really alive. She was bursting with the news that would burst open the world.

So she ran and then she found them in their sadness and in their despair. And through them she found us also in our time where we are mired in sin and fear and hopelessness. She found them and us broken and shattered and sitting in the shadow of death.

Her mission was complete, for now she could say what she knew. She could tell who it was that called her--and sent her on her way. Her task was finished, for now Jesus himself would call each of us by name--for he was alive. He was risen from the dead.

So then Mary Magdalene took her place at the center of history. She announced to the disciples and to all the world and to us:

"I have seen the Lord."

As Terri Schiavo approaches death, the right is galvanizing itself to make this tragic case fodder for intensifying the culture and religious war they have instigated. A sober assessment is required. Terri and her family are Catholics. Traditional Catholic theology has always held that "extraordinary means" are not required to sustain life. Clearly a feeding tube inserted in a woman who has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years is "extraordinary means."

Despite a statement last year by Pope John Paul II to the contrary, traditional Catholic teaching remains. Tim Rutten reports on this controversy. So from a clearly conservative Catholic perspective, the removal of the feeding tube is a morally legitimate option. Her husband has a right to make this decision without moral opprobrium.

Tom DeLay, who fomented much of the controversy, faced a similar sitution in the death of his own father and was involved in making a similar decision

Clearly, the agenda here is to agitate the religious right as a political base. But there is a huge inconsistency: apparently these supposedly and sincere Christian people have missed the meaning of Easter. Do they not share the hope of a blessed resurrection with Christ--the foundational belief of Christianity? How did they miss the meaning of Easter? Can they not let Terri, who has no possibility of even a shred of cognitive life, enter into that state where, as Scripture reminds us "we shall fully even as we are known?" Are our right-wing politicians capable of blindness even on this fundamental Christian perspective?

Bob Herbert, New York Times columnist, has it right when he says of the budget proposed by Bush and the Republicans in Congress:

"This is the era of entrenched exploitation. All sacrifices will be made by working people and the poor, and the vast bulk of the benefits will accrue to the rich... To slide backward now (hurting millions of people in the process) because of a desire to siphon funds from those programs and hand them over as tax cuts to the wealthiest members of our society, is obscene."

How did a nation which once came together to survive a horrendous global depression and then shared the sacrifices of World War II, emerging to create the infrastructure for the most prosperous, inclusive and expansive society in history come to such a sorry pass? How is it that a nation which once prided itself on inventiveness and a work ethic which enabled ordinary working people to enjoy the benefits of prosperity, is now governed by an elite which despises ordinary working people?

One simple answer is that greed is now in the driver's seat but then greed is always with us so what is different now? Well, there is an ebb and flow to history. Sometimes social values and the common good prevail, providing a check to rampant individualism and unbridled greed as in the 1930s-40s; at other times end of the 19th century and the 1920s. There is a kind of pendulum effect in the social dynamics of history. Tragically, this is a time when the common good has been almost completely trashed by the corporate powers that seem to own the government (and much of the media) lock, stock and barrel. But this isn't just a political problem or economic oppression though it is both of those.

There is a profound moral sickness in the land which allows this to happen. From the classical Christian perspective the situation has become one of widespread, idolatrous worship of money and power, resembling very little the biblical faith as it has been understood for centuries. The religious right, which endorses Bush and his programs, has little taste for the Hebrew prophets and their concern for the poor and for justice. It is almost as if they have never read Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. So, Bob Herbert is right on target and there is a frightening moral and religious underpinning to the Bush budget.

Because this is July 4, we will reflect this morning on patriotism and our Christian faith. Sometimes the two are mistakenly viewed as equivalent to each other, but they are not.

Scripture tells us that civil authority is established by God (Rom 13). We are told to obey civil authority. And Jesus, famously tells us to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." (Lk 20:19-26). Early Christians paid their taxes and as commanded by the Lord, they obeyed civil authority, but they did not speak highly of it. In fact the Book of Revelation describes the civil authority of the time as follows: "And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads; and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names" (Rev. 13: 1).

They also had a statement that was considered by Roman authorities to be not only unpatriotic, but downright dangerous, subversive, and unacceptable. The early Christians said that "Jesus is Lord." This was intolerable to Roman authorities because if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not. And this is still the heart of the matter. Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not.

Patriotism is simply the love of one's tribe, or city or state or nation. It is legitimate and necessary for any society to survive. As Americans we have every right to rejoice in our form of government, our way of life and in our historic role in the world, Truly the song has it right "America the Beautiful." We celebrate as Americans, but we also remember who is Lord.

Jesus deeply loved his people, but he placed loyalty to himself above allegiance to family and nation. By placing himself above the Temple, Jesus relativized the significance of even that most sacred of places. Because "the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us", the entire earth and all its people have been raised to a new dignity and status. We must never forget this even on July 4th.

When I reported to duty as a chaplain with an infantry unit in Vietnam I met the chaplain I was replacing as he was getting out of his jeep. He was carrying an M-16 rifle, had a pistol strapped onto his belt and a bandolier of ammunition around his shoulder. His first words to me: "you had better get a .30 caliber on this jeep, because this is a hot a.o," I replied that if I had wanted to be a grunt, I would have joined the infantry.

When I met the battalion doctor, he told me that this chaplain had caused a lot of harm to the soldiers by encouraging them to kill for religious reasons. The troops, former acolytes and Sunday school students, knew about the prohibition of killing. They had learned the beatitudes and "love your neighbor", and "turn the other cheek." So they knew that "Kill a Commie for Christ" made no sense. When asked the same question, the only answer I ever gave was: "You may kill others because they are trying to kill you." This is an act of simple, elemental self defense. There is a huge moral and religious difference between these two answers.

In my years of work with veterans after the war, I found that many had a rage against religion because they believed their Christian faith had endorsed and encouraged what happened in combat. Without any theological training they knew that one can sometimes perform an act that is the "lesser of two evils." such as killing enemy soldiers in combat. But they had been scandalized in the biblical sense by a version of Christianity that said this killing was God's own work. As a result of this confusion, thousands of them lost their faith. As one former Marine put it: "When I went to Vietnam I believed in Jesus Christ and John Wayne, and in Vietnam both went down the tubes." This is a great metaphor for what scholars call "American civil religion." One writer called it "muscular Christianity." It is a hybrid form of superpatriotism undergirded by the misuse of Old Testament Scripture. It is not authentic patriotism. It is a caricature of biblical faith. Not only is it still with us today, but it now threatens to engulf us.

This is an old problem. When the Emperor Constantine freed the Church from persecution in the 4th Century, he soon made it the established religion. From that moment on Christians began to use the power of the state for religious reasons, sometimes fighting crusades and wars in the name of Christ. This is a long standing aberration which continues to plague us. The immediate roots of American civil religion can be traced to John Calvin who established the city of Geneva as a theocracy in the 16th Century. English Calvinists were convinced that they could establish the biblical "city on the hill" in England. For eleven years they ran the country as a fierce and ruthless theocracy. They exported their ideas to New England and set the tone for all subsequent American history.

In 1630, in Boston, John Winthrop gave the speech that still resounds "[We] must consider that we shall be as a City set upon a Hill, the [eyes] of all people are [upon] us." In that moment the myth was born: America was to be a chosen people among the nations of the earth. It was to be a moral example to the rest of the world. The corollary was also implied by Winthrop: the rest of the world must keep its eyes upon us and follow our lead, for "the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory..."

The Lord's people, the colonists, believed they could depend on the God of Israel even in the face of overpowering odds. God is the true leader on whom the small settlement on the edge of a fearful wilderness was to rely. Their enemies were His enemies; their friends, His friends. From that day to this, whenever Americans have taken up the sword and gone into battle, they have carried with them their primal myth of origin.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the myth was thoroughly secularized, divorced from whatever connection with biblical religion it may have had originally. Though the notion of God and humankind's relationship to God has been largely lost in the public culture, the myth of a chosen people and a city on the hill remains unabated.

Every tribe, people, and nation has some sort of civil religion. What distinguishes the American version from others is its dependence on the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures for its language and concepts. Though the United States owes its cultural origins as much to the philosophy, laws, and ideas of ancient Greece and Rome as it does to biblical religion, we have never acknowledged this fact. We prefer to express our self-understanding in terms of the traditional biblical faiths. Civil religion in America seems to resemble biblical religion, but in fact it is very different. The most significant areas of divergence between the two faiths lie in their respective notions of God.

Civil religion creates in America "a nation with the soul of a church." The nation is convinced that transcendent goals lie at the heart of its own political processes. It inverts religion and constructs a model of God based on its own policy. Our political categories--law, justice, democracy, sovereignty--take on the characteristics of ultimate reality. The trouble with this is "when we relate American politics to God's sovereignty we also relate God's sovereignty to American politics."
Civil religion is, of course, a form of idolatry. It is a thinly disguised worship of the state. It always lurks below the surface in American life, but in times of war it becomes particularly virulent. Never more so than at the present time, when we imagine that we, completely innocent and shrouded in virtue are engaged in the climactic battle against evil. Certainly terrorists and suicide bombers are evildoers. But our faith teaches us that we are all evildoers. We all need redemption from the evil that lurks in our hearts and causes us all to do evil things.

The problem with idolatrous civil religion is that it masks from the people, not only the evil performed by the state, but the evil that lies in their own hearts. Ancient peoples with their national gods, also had a host of other gods running lose: the god of war, the goddess of love, tricksters and thinly disguised gods of the self. That’s still a problem, especially when the god of war is in the ascendancy. As anyone who has ever been in a combat zone knows, lust is never far from violence and corruption abounds. Violence, rampant sex and pervasive corruption characterize a military theater during a time of war. Lying and deception also abound.

In our era of instant communication and virtual reality, all these gods are once again on the march, not just in the war zone, but in the entire culture. Corruption, lust, sex and violence, greed, corruption, war-profiteering, lies, deceptions and denials are all on the march with little opposition today. The false god at the top has turned lose all the minions of idolatry and they now surround us.

When the President of the United States dares to paraphrase John's Gospel, by saying that the United States is the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it, then we have fallen into blasphemy as well. The "muscular god," of our civil religion, John Wayne has blended with Jesus Christ and we seem not to know the difference. Religious conservatives seem to endorse this view, though the national evangelical association is now waking up to the problem. Religious liberals, having little theology left, seem not to recognize it either. As did the beast described in Revelation, this Beast too has "blasphemous names inscribed on its heads."

Both genuine biblical faith and authentic patriotism, real love of country would find this condition intolerable, but political leaders are insensitive to it and church leaders are otherwise occupied, especially at this moment in the Episcopal Church are we totally self-focused. But we need not look to our inept leadership, for we must find within ourselves, the grace of God to withstand this idolatry and blasphemy. As early Christians loved their lands and places, so should we, but as they proclaimed that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not, so must we.

So today, we will quite rightly with genuine love of our country sing with power and enthusiasm "America the Beautiful," but we shall also sing from the heart that "Jesus is Lord," and we shall ascribe to Him alone all power, dominion and glory, for He reigns over all of us in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Endnotes

Regarding the quotes: both are from Out of the Night. The footnotes read as follows:

ANation with the soul of a church@

The term "nation with the soul of a church" was coined by G.K. Chesterton. The term is also used by Sydney E. Mead as a title: Chesterton. The term is also used by Sydney E. Mead as a title: "The Nation with the Soul of a Church," first published in Church History, vol.36, no.3, and reprinted in Richey, American Civil Religion.
Richey, Russell, and Jones, Donald G. American Civil Religion. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.

The second passage in quotes right after that one is:@

"when we relate American politics to God's sovereignty we also relate God's sovereignty to American politics."

Its source is also:

Herbert Richardson, "Civil Religion in Theological Perspective," in Richey, Russell, and Jones, Donald G. American Civil Religion. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.