In times of great fear and anxiety, principles are more important than ever. In my reading I came across this thoughtful quote.

“Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in her final opinion on church–state matters: ‘Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?’”

Randall Balmer, AMERICA’S BEST IDEA:SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

The history of the efforts to have a union of the two are uniformly a history of oppression, violence, and the ruin of both church and state. The principles matter more than ever.

Christian Nationalism is nothing new. It has sought time and again to rewrite American and Christian history to gain cultural advantage. Balmer’s wonderful and readable book, done by a historian of merit, easily disposes of the current arguments for a Christian nation based on the Founders of our nation. They are the latest version of those who fear differences and long for uniformity of culture, thought, and mind by force of cultural control and law.

Ironically, Balmer argues, the First Amendment and Separation of church and state has resulted in the flourishing of religion in a marketplace of freedom, rather than the failed models of the past. Christian Nationalism, arguments about its theological errors, naïveté about the sinfulness of all things human including Christians themselves, and its distortions of history aside, would destroy the very principle that has permitted it to make its Lilliputian arguments.