THE MYTH OF A CHRISTIAN NATION

review by

Larry Shallenberger

THE MYTH OF A CHRISTIAN NATION: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church

by Gregory A. Boyd

(Zondervan)

Reader Appeal: Adult

Genre: Politics

Greg Boyd titled his introduction “How This Book Came to Be—and Why It May Irritate Some Readers." Boyd should know. This book was born out of a sermon series entitled “The Cross and the Sword.” At the end of the six weeks of preaching, Boyd had lost twenty percent of his five-thousand member church.

Boyd believes the church in America has forgotten who it is and has adopted “Kingdom of the World” tactics in its efforts to influence society. It’s the issue of two kingdoms that drives the arguments in this book. Boyd holds that all earthly governments, even though they are mandated by God (Romans 13), are hopelessly tainted with spiritual and systemic evil. The Kingdom of the World leads with coercion, power, and conflict. On the other hand, the Kingdom of God is advanced through love, servanthood, and grace. The Kingdom of the World is characterized by “power over” while the Kingdom of God serves through “power under.”

Armed with this central premise, Boyd effectively makes the case that the church is more comfortable with Kingdom of the World tactics than it is with the methodologies of Heaven outlined in the Sermon on the Mount. The church’s reliance on the culture wars and the political process (whether it’s of the left or the right) are, in Boyd's assessment, evidences of the church’s corrupt state.

Boyd sees the notion that America is a “Christian Nation” as a myth that both the church and the state use to rationalize power-laced tactics. If America was once a Christian Nation then the faithful must fight to "take America back for God.” And the win-lose, us-them battles are fought from the pulpits, the cable boxes, and at the polling places. Boyd masterfully transcends the tradition arguments over whether our founders were primarily Christian, or Deist, or a blend of each by re-framing the definition; Christian Nation would look like Jesus. Pastor Boyd reminds us of our history—the Three-Fifths Compromise, westward expansion and the displacement of the American Indians, slavery, McCarthyism—and challenges us to identify the precise years that America “looked like Jesus.”

Boyd deconstructs our conceit that America enjoys a divinely privileged status and makes it possible to see our inappropriate alliance to Washington’s power brokers. Boyd also offers Jesus as the positive solution. The Kingdom of God looks like Jesus, so Greg Boyd walks us through the Sermon on the Mount and the ministry of Jesus for examples of how Christians should relate to culture. We are to “bleed for” instead of “warring against” culture.

Boyd’s binary vision of power, one is either of the Kingdom of God or of the Kingdom of God, provides clarity when exploring the issue of how Christians are to relate to the political system and culture. His well-defined lines lead him to adopt a position of military pacifism. Chapter Nine, “Christians and Violence” might prove to become the most controversial in his book as Boyd is unable to reconcile the notion of a Christian serving in the armed forces. Critics may see this conclusion as evidence that Boyd oversimplified the argument from the beginning.

I’ve been aware of Greg Boyd for several years as we share the same denominational tribe. From afar I watched him weather a public debate with our seminary over the issue of Open Theology. The public responses to the two controversies seem disproportionate. When Boyd challenged the classically held doctrine that God is omniscient, the conflict was merely academic. However, when Boyd admonished his flock not to trust in political power, one thousand congregants abandoned the church. My point isn’t that Boyd should have been tarred and feathered over his doctrinal positions. My point is that there was more passion demonstrated over the church’s “right” to engage in the culture wars than there was over a debate about understanding God’s true nature. In my mind, this is evidence that The Myth of a Christian Nation is long over due.

FAMILYFANS RATING: A. The Myth of a Christian Nation is a powerful, clarifying book that should help the church overcome its current enmeshment of patriotism and piety.  

--LS