One of the first associations I made in my own thinking over this political and theological language was the biblical language of Kingdom of God. If we are going to talk about a Christian Nation, are we going to talk about a historical occurrence or a biblical application?
Kingdom of God is all things in heaven and the in-breaking of God’s work into this world ruled by sin. There is a lovely paradox in theological thinking about the “already-not yet”, the idea that the Kingdom is already here but it is not yet fulfilled. That lends itself to the New Testament descriptions of the imminent return of our Lord Jesus when the Kingdom of God will be fulfilled.
Of course, in an American political debate, we could not use the terminology of Scripture concerning a Kingdom. We are not a monarchy. In fact, we were established specifically not to be a monarchy. In addition, we owe a great debt of gratitude to George Washington, who set the traditions of the Presidency, that this nation did not become a monarchy in its first generations.
And we dare not use language directly ascribing authority to God. We are not a theocracy, we are a democracy. Being a Christian Nation lays off the direct reference to the divine. It also gets us out of the real mess of trying to figure out who would speak for God if were a Nation of God as opposed to a Christian nation. There are a lot of pastors and others out there who, I suspect, would be glad for the job.
No, Christian Nation and Kingdom of God must be separated from each other. The Kingdom of God went from being an Old Testament political experiment in Israel to becoming a trans-natural acknowledgement of the authority of our Lord.
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