Welcome back to Weekend Insights, your LCI “President’s Corner” of miscellaneous articles, events, books, vids, and whatever else I’m thinking about…
In lieu of my “traditional” link post, I’d like to highlight something I saw in Christianity Today magazine this past week. I was pleased to see this headline emphasizing that the worship service is not meant for nationalism:
“America’s True Freedom Is To Sing About God, Not Country” is a good article. Never let us say, “In SCOTUS alone, our hope is found…” That would be crazy.
Yet in the recent past, it seems like even Christianity Today was singing a different tune. Take, for instance, 2018…
No joke, this was the article from the same date (June 29) just 3 years ago. Apparently, now we need to be concerned about being “In Christ Alone”, but when the favored candidate is in office for conservative Christians, let’s have that “Trump-inspired musical number”, that hymn-of-hymns for the ages, the one and only spiritual masterpiece “Make America Great Again”. I’m not kidding, this is actually a song sung in a church. I tried to watch it, couldn’t make it longer than 30 seconds. (It’s not even decent music.)
Or if we were perhaps questioning if maybe just maybe this weren’t appropriate following the ascendance of Trumpism, well CT made sure to address that in 2017:
Now, to be fair, in the two articles I’ve just moderately excoriated, even so there are a few good admissions of the danger of nationalism in the church, even an admission that the “Make America Great Again” song lyrics are “more patriotic than pietistic”. The 2017 article is not retched. And once again, this year’s article does ring true and I would urge Christians to take heed.
Nonetheless, how can one not see the past record of CT and wonder what the pipes would be playing this year had the Chosen One been reelected?
No Christian, libertarian or otherwise, should be a fairweather worshipper. My Christian brothers and sisters everywhere: we put not our hope in any prince, any state. Perhaps examining our deep motivations is in order.
Clearly, we can all be thankful for our place of origin. I’m happy to have been born in America, and to mark July 4 as something special. Nothing wrong with that. But this has zero to do with the State, and everything to do with principles.
And that’s all I have for today. You can make your own judgments. Enjoy your July 4.
As always, don’t forget to check out our book Faith Seeking Freedom! (You can get two copies by donating at least $20 via this link.)
Cheers, and have a great week!
The post Weekend Insights – America’s True Freedom? appeared first on Libertarian Christian Institute.
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