Monday, July 23, 2018
610 - Founding Faith
Spirituality Column #610
July 24, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Founding Faith
By Bob Walters
"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith provides perseverance." - James 1:2-3
Last week I wrote of my profound
skepticism that Christianity in America is in as bad a shape as the media and
academia would have us believe.
I believe America
remains blessed, fortunate … downright lucky.
Christians here complain about assorted secular social lunacies. Non-believers chortle at what they perceive
to be hypocrisies and foolishness of Christian faith. And nobody dies at trial.
The Persecuted Church is alive and
suffering in many corners of the world – the Middle East, central Africa, south
Asia, and China to name just a few. Christianity
is arguably healthier in those areas than it is in sophisticated Europe where it
is nearly dead of pompous neglect. The civil
challenges to faith American Christians meet here at home give us a necessary
taste of perseverance-producing intellectual trials without the savagery and
abandonment of physical brutality and total agnostic arrogance.
The Bible
promises that faith in the love of Christ will give us joy and persecution. When
I consider the modern robustness of American churches – seriously, look at the
churches, not the media – and the general calmness and civility of domestic religious
dialog – even non-church goers say “Thank God!” when something goes their way –
it brings to mind a foundational question: Why is America so different?
I think I
found the answer in the 2008 book Founding
Faith by Steven Waldman.
This deeply
researched, thoroughly footnoted, painstakingly cited, and elegantly succinct
work focuses on the development of American religious freedom from the
Jamestown settlement in 1607 onward through the early years of the
republic. There is Reformation, British,
and Enlightenment church history. There is also the “theology” and pragmatism
of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Ben Franklin, James Madison
and other founding fathers that I was thoroughly unprepared to read.
Waldman’s book is different because
it does not try to bludgeon a “Christian” or “Non-Christian” creation of
America. Instead it reveals the reality of
the true awfulness of inter-Christian persecution and colonial sectarian separatism
and how that conflict developed into a union perpetuating and insisting on
liberty – a miracle, if you ask me.
Anglicans, Puritans, Lutherans,
Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Catholics, Evangelicals, Methodists,
Baptists, Reformed, and others arrived on North American shores and promptly,
vigorously, and legally discriminated against each other. Colonies were settled by sect. Puritans harassed Baptists; Quakers were
distrusted; Catholics were shunned; priests were often suspect. Few folks actually attended church yet most had
a moral connection to Jesus while harboring suspicions of and violent aversion
to competing Christian doctrines. Militarily,
the Revolutionary War required Christian religious pluralism to fight robustly
against the tyranny of the Crown’s Anglican Church.
Refreshingly, Waldman’s treatment
is not exclusively Enlightenment agnosticism, Sunday school sanitation,
patriotic jingoism, or anti-colonial screed. It is a thoughtful, illuminating, and
surprising look at the American union of civil and religious freedom.
The founders’ faith and perseverance
made it look easy. It was far from it.
Walters
(rlwcom@aol.com) more fully appreciates how good we have it
… now.
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