Dean Jones Columns

THE CHRISTIAN STATE
PART 1

by Dean Jones

Stephen Sondheim's lyrics from "West Side Story" express the cry of millions: "There's a place for us, somewhere a place for us. Peace and quiet and open air...wait for us somewhere."

Theodor Herzl did as great a service for his people as Moses, when in 1896 he published "Der Judenstaat", -- "The Jewish State" Thirty-seven years before Adolf Hitler came to power, he called for the restoration of a Jewish homeland. Had international diplomacy, and the Jews themselves, been ready to accept his idea, millions of lives could have been saved. Tragically, it took the horror of the Holocaust to open Palestine's doors to God's ancient people.

Today, Christians are the targets of choice. Two hundred million of our brothers and sisters live under daily threat of torture, imprisonment and death. America did not welcome Jews in 1939. Will we turn Christians away today?

It was persecution that brought the United States into being. Christians came to a new land, seeking religious liberty. We built a nation based upon rights "endowed by our Creator". The wording which prohibited the establishment of a state religion was very carefully constructed. No government would be able to tell us how to worship God. And by insuring freedom for ourselves, we extended it to others.

The religion of Christ made possible the United States of America. New Testament teachings of equality caused our Christian Founders to insure freedom to all, not just a royal elite. They firmly believed: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 3:28) Today, the Constitutional construction protecting our rights has been corrupted, placing religious freedom in jeopardy. America's courts have turned from protection of religion to rejection of religion. Our obsession with separation of Church and State has led us to believe freedom, tranquility, and civility can survive without godliness. We even attempt the export of Democracy without the underlying foundations of faith upon which its effective functioning depends. All over the world we incite chaos by preaching individual rights without moral accountability. Now, with unprecedented religious persecution breaking out around the globe, Christians are pleading with a once-Christian America to provide a place of safety.

How will America respond?

Many American Christians look around their neighborhoods and want to opt out of an increasingly corrupt culture. They want to escape, find a place of safety themselves, a Christian village where their hopes and beliefs can flourish. Many have changed locations only to find the culture pursuing and overtaking them. Perhaps we are too preoccupied with our own search for tranquility to welcome Believers from thousands of miles away. One poll shows that only 25% of Americans feel a responsibility for persecuted people. Yet, people of faith overseas are murdered, raped, and tortured in unprecedented numbers, and here at home shown increasing intolerance, mockery and repression.

If America has renounced the spiritual foundations our Christian forbears clearly recognized as necessary in order for democracy to function...If we've decided structures can stand on air, and national sanity can abound in a vacuum, how much spiritual discernment have we retained? Is religious freedom still valuable?

Let's not kid ourselves, we don't have a wailing wall, a Mecca, we don't wash our sins away in the Ganges. What happens if America slips completely off its scriptural foundations? Could the USA become so foreign to our values that we attempt a Christian space settlement, a new Mayflower exploration for believers who "don't feel at home in this world anymore?" Or will we attempt to occupy some still vacant earthly real estate, and welcome all who come seeking religious freedom? We did that once, you know. Could we found another Christian State?

...to be continued