Published: April 12, 2009 06:36 am      

America is not a Christian nation?

President Obama, now and when a candidate, has made a point to proclaim that America is not a Christian nation (or “no longer” a Christian nation, or not “just” a Christian nation, or what have you), the latest proclamation being made in Turkey, of all places, while representing our country overseas.

I have some grave concerns about what he keeps saying and what possible motivation he must have for saying it.

Let’s begin with the second concern: his motivation. If President Obama’s desire is to announce that America enjoys freedom of religion, then, surely, there are better ways to say it. The United States, from its inception, has led the way among other governments in freedom of religion. We continue to be a voice for that freedom, although we probably do not exert the influence that we could or should to promote it around the world. And, incidentally, this guarantee of religious freedom was pushed for and obtained, largely, by Christians.

If his motivation is to reassure his listeners that Christians are not the only citizens of the United States, that is hardly news, since it has always been the case. And again, there are better ways to express that we are religiously pluralistic.

If he is proclaiming that the United States does not require its citizens to be Christians, which is just another perspective on religious freedom and pluralism, that is nothing new, and there could hardly be any real misunderstandings among his listeners that he is correcting.

But what is inescapable in what he keeps saying is the emphasis that the United States is not Christian. Not Christian. Not Christian. Any point he is attempting to make could be better said in other ways, ways that might even give Christians some credit for the political and religious freedoms he is citing.

There is no warrant and no need for the President of the United States to feel that he somehow needs to “distance” the country from Christianity. But that is exactly what he seems to feel it is important for him to do.

And now for the first concern, a concern for the statements themselves and their accuracy.

If President Obama is going to say that the United States is not a Christian country, one is within reason to question what he means by that.

Does he mean that every citizen is not a Christian? Is that the standard? Let’s apply it elsewhere. Would anyone object to referring to Iran as a Muslim country? Or to Saudi Arabia as a Muslim country? Hardly—including their own governments. But every person in Iran or in Saudi Arabia is not a Muslim. In fact, I do not know of a country on earth in which it can be guaranteed that every single citizen of that country practices one religion. So, universal and absolute adherence to a single religion is not and cannot be the standard necessary to refer to a country as Muslim, or Christian, or by any other religion.

Does he mean then, when he says that America is not a Christian nation, that Christians and Christianity have had no more influence upon America’s laws and culture than Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism has had? He surely cannot mean that, because the president is an educated man, and to state such a thing as that would be the pretensions of a total ignoramus.

One would be hard-pressed to describe exactly how Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism have helped to shape America and its laws and culture. On the other hand, it would be impossible to extricate the influence of Christianity from the history, life, laws, and character of the United States.

Does he mean that the United States does not support a state church — that we have separation of church and state? In that case, why not just say so? And if that is the case, he would then need to refer to, say, Germany or England as “Christian” countries because they do have national churches.

But surely he does not mean that those countries and others with national churches are “Christian” and we are not.

So what does he mean? And why does he keep saying it? Perhaps the president has a very specialized meaning and some particular motives for making this a recurring theme that I just cannot perceive.

But if the president continues to repeat his “non-Christian” religious characterizations of the United States, I hope he will clear it all up.