Can an American be Christian?

This is a question that I have been struggling with throughout the life of this blog, it seems like – but the question became most acute to me during my time in Beijing, when I first dimly became aware of the Christianity of the Chinese social reformers whose perspective roots the work of Wang Hui and lends it a certain Grantian colour. I have since taken the opportunity to marvel that the Chinese who (quietly, often abashedly or seeming half-heartedly) embraced Christ – Jimmy Yen, Tao Xingzhi, even the half-agnostic Fei Xiaotong – were often far, far better at imitating Christ’s life in service to the poor, the downtrodden, the ‘least of these’ of St Matthew 25 than their American and British evangelical mentors were.

George Parkin Grant – along with his pupils John Milbank and Ron Dart – first confronted me with the problem that America, however loudly certain parts of it proclaim it to be a ‘Christian nation’, can be nothing of the kind. Our Christianity is too much Pilate and not enough Christ; and this is a problem rooted in our founding mythos. We are always jockeying like Cæsar and the princes of the world for global leadership and hankering after action when we need to be seeking the low places in humility and pursuing a less active policy. We are always extolling and applauding the great, rich and powerful – our Bill Gateses and Warren Buffets and Elon Musks – while we shame and exploit the widow with her mite.

This is not a problem of ‘right’ versus ‘left’. I have never been particularly convinced by the American right wing’s worship of markets and invisible hands – particularly when the hand becomes not-so-invisible. Even if it might occasionally be nice for folks to be able to trade in something other than kind, the golden calf idolatry of modern mainstream œconomics and its vulgar manifestations have never sat particularly well with me. (Don’t get me started on the American right wing’s disordered post-Charlottesville love of blood and soil.) Likewise, the increasing and accelerating Pelagian and Gnostic loopiness of the ‘woke’ American ‘progressives’ – with its utter contempt for the merely-human limitations imposed on us feeble mortals by basic biology, physics and common sense – is not endearing in the slightest to this leftist.

Moreover, this is not a problem of ‘modern’ interpretation of American institutions versus ‘original intent’. America’s very founding was deeply conceived in two interrelated heresies. Most of the élite Founding Fathers themselves – Jefferson, Franklin and Paine most openly; but probably also Madison and Washington as well – were Deists who disavowed the divinity of Christ. Most of the foot-soldiers on the ‘Patriot’ side of the War of Independence were, on the other hand, utopian Calvinists who believed themselves to be building the City of God. Neither of these factions had much use for the Prince of Peace, for the lowly Palestinian Jew and Incarnate God who came into the world not to conquer but to save. Even today there is not much use for Him, even among those who most loudly proclaim ‘Lord, Lord’.

As one who attempts to follow Christ, I find I am the child of a patria which is very difficult to love healthily or well from a 1 Corinthians 13 perspective. I don’t believe that the enabling stance that assures fellow Americans that we are the ‘greatest’ or the ‘indispensable’ nation is, in fact, love. I don’t think ‘support our troops’ while keeping them fighting abroad is love. I don’t think caging Central American migrants or shooting and gaoling black folks or drone-bombing Arabs or hating Iranians or Chinese or Russians is love. On the other hand, I don’t believe that the stance that conditions affection upon constant progress toward a disembodied Gnostic ideal is, in fact, love either. (Thank you, Berdyaev!) And unfortunately, on the fourth of July I see both kinds of disordered love displayed with a dismaying prominence in every public space and on every social media platform. On the fourth of July I all too often see ‘love’ which is not long-suffering or kind, and much less so all-bearing, all-believing, all-hoping or all-enduring. I all too often see ‘love’ which vaunts itself, which is puffed-up, which is unseemly, self-seeking, easily-provoked and which rejoices in iniquities. Many takes on what it means to be a ‘good American’ seem incompatible with a Christian understanding of love.

But does this mean America is unloveable? That’s a very different question, and I find myself incredibly loath to say ‘yes’: partly because that cedes way too much conceptual ground to the people who want us to kiss the Constitution, salute the flag and praise the greatness of the American Way. I believe Grant and Milbank are right, and I take it as a given, that you cannot love a piece of paper or an abstract idea as if it were family. But you can love your family (preferably with kisses more than with salutes). You can love your neighbours, too. You can love your backyard. In fact, go out on a limb and love your front yard, too – even and especially if you rent. Stretch out your toes in the grass and wave at the folks on the pavement. I love my parents and sister; I love my children; I love my parishes and their people; I love the tomatoes, peppers, basil, onions, fennel, dill, parsley, rhubarb and marigolds growing in my garden. I love the lakes and parks and rivers of my community, and want to keep them clean. I even love the creeping charlie and violets growing in the yard and the wild coney living under the shed. And if those are America, then yes – America can be loved, in the right way.