Friday, August 07, 2009

Allegiance to...who?

So Dr. Richard Gamble, the professor who influenced my last post on system building so greatly, has just written a review for the American Conservative of the American Patriot's Bible (which, coincidentally, I first directed his attention to several months ago...at least I think I was among the first). Within his scathing review, he states much more eloquently than I can the system constructed by the modern evangelical movement.
Modern American evangelicalism has its own way of reconciling church and state. It imagines an ideal American founding on Christian principles, blames the nation’s decline on secularists, and mobilizes politically active believers to “reclaim” America as God’s chosen land. It sees no inherent conflict between America and the gospel. Christianity is safe for America’s political and economic order. In fact, a return to the Bible’s wisdom and morality would automatically heal the nation and secure its bright future. No one need choose between allegiance to Christ and allegiance to America.
It's a great article in general, which I highly encourage you to read.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Sam,

I'm Megan Kunkel; I met you earlier this spring. I'm sure you thought I was pretty weird, but oh well. :) I thought I'd come and leave you a comment anyway. I enjoyed reading your Contra Ideologica post. Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Zach said...

Hey Sam,

Unfortunately, my comment on your last post got lost in cyberspace, so I thought I'd drop you a line now. It was an excellent piece, and I hope we can talk about some of the ideas when we get back to school. I've been doing some thinking/reading about Christianity and Politics this summer.

Actually, it was Dr. Gamble showing us the American Patriot's Bible when he was in D.C. a few weeks ago that initiated my thoughts. He doesn't pull any punches in his review and manages to get a little of Gamblism in there too. :)

Zach

ps. if you are interested, I started a blog myself which you can see here: http://zachseekslifeabundant.blogspot.com/

Peter S said...

I heard about Gamble from Matt Stone and was very impressed when he delivered Patrick Henry College's Faith & Reason Lecture last semester. Thanks for the link!