With all due respect to Gary North (whose typewriter I am not fit to ribbon and whose hard drive I am not fit to defrag), I think he misunderstands exactly what it is most Christian parents are seeking when they either home school or send their children to Christian schools. It has been my experience that they don’t want less nationalism and state worship for their children — they want more.

American Christianity has, especially since the latter half of the 19th century, always had a problem with confusing Caesar and God, or of demanding — like so many German Protestants did — that the church must somehow be a subsidiary of the state, and that the state is not properly valid unless it endorses God and, in return, has God’s endorsement. The tide has ebbed and flowed as to which “denominations” believe in the state and how they believe, but right now it is hard to find an American “church” that hasn’t included the nation in the Trinity in one form or another, as great dispenser of social justice or as defender of all that is right and proper in the world.

The core of the problem is the American conviction of “chosenness,” that God has somehow singled out the United States of America for a special mission in the world. Personally, I’d like to see some evidence for that view, rather than mere assertions based on interpretations of scripture and self-centered wishful thinking. Did I miss God handing out the law at Plymouth Rock, or making a covenant with Americans at Jamestown or Gettysburg? Did I miss the crucifixion and resurrection of Abraham Lincoln? Did I miss the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Progressives, empowering them to spread the Gospel and save the unsaved through the law and through state power?

I suspect a large number of Christian parents are happy to believe in the divinely sanctioned American state, and want their children to learn them too. Which is why celbrations of the state (with the whiff of incense) will continued to be peddled in Christian schools to Christian parents.

The Best of Charles H. Featherstone