America today is a nation at worship. Under many forms and in a variety of practices, the people of the United States are bowing before the Eternal God. Men and women, boys and girls everywhere go to church, say their prayers, participate in the offices of praise and thanksgiving in this period of national spiritual renewal. Once more at this season of the year we are being summoned by the President to observe our only national religious day—a Day of Thanksgiving.
All of this is as it should be. America began with men on their knees, has been strengthened and sustained as it has kept close to God, and Americans—when most truly themselves—have been people of faith and prayer.
The Reformation And 1776
The United States was born at a pinnacle in the progressive emancipation of the mind and spirit of man. Although many streams in the historical process flowed to the confluence of time on July 4, 1776, the most significant stream was the floodtide of the Protestant Reformation. And the dominating influence at our origin was the Calvinian theology and the way of life it fostered. God was the sovereign ruler of a moral universe before whom all nations and all men would finally be judged. A man was a man in his full stature only as he acknowledged the majesty and holiness of the Creator and humbly yielded himself to the divine will and purpose in life. Our forebears were committed to the elemental Christian virtues of chastity, sobriety, frugality, and the disciplined will. God, in the most vivid sense, was the source of our national life. And this life can be sustained only at its main source. That is why the worship and knowledge of God are so important.
Life Nourished By Worship
From the very beginning to this Thanksgiving Day in 1956, we have been a people whose life has been undergirded by faith in God and nourished by worship of the Almighty. In this faith our institutions were created, our culture promoted, our philanthropic endeavors initiated, our liberties secured and freedom for men everywhere promoted. Men accustomed to freedom in their approach to God, as they were accustomed in the dissenters’ paradise—the American Colonies—insisted upon freedom in the public expression of their ideas and the ordering of their lives. Men could be trusted with their own destiny so long as they lived in obedience to a higher authority—the authority of God. The soul of man in this new world would be most free, most trustworthy when captive only to God.
America has become great and strong not simply by vast natural resources made secure from all enemies by wide oceans and friendly neighbors. Other nations have had all that and for longer periods. America has become great and strong principally because of a creative spirit emanating from her religious faith, chiefly and dominantly evangelical Christian faith. In some, this faith has been intimate and personal. In others, it has been a way of life derived from the social atmosphere and psychological climate produced chiefly by evangelical piety.
God And Our Survival
The United States is so completely the child of a great religious heritage that the worship of God is essential to its survival in the purity of its pristine character. The worship of God is not an option in our life, but an indispensable requisite for our very existence. Allow worship to languish and we begin to deteriorate. I am not now concerned with the technical liturgical concepts of worship, although I believe that a true Protestant liturgy is the only sure protection against shallow, insipid and unrewarding worship. I am here desperately concerned that there be worship, that men go to church, enter into its life and in concert with other men give testimony to the glory of God in our common life.
No Fully Christian Nation
In the absolute sense and on the perfectionist basis there is no such thing as a “Christian nation.” In terms of the higher order of the Kingdom of God, no political entity, in this imperfect world, is thoroughly Christian. But some nations embody more Christian principles than other nations. Some nations are more hospitable to Christian truth than others. And some nations are more thoroughly responsive than others to Christian motivations and to doing the will of God. Christian ideas, ideals and culture flourish to a greater extent in some nations than in others. And such nations, in God’s time, become less obstructed conductors of the Christian evangel and more direct conveyors of God’s truth to the world.
When America is most faithful to its origin, to its truest self and to its God, it is that kind of nation.
In humility and fullness of dedication, it may well be that in this epoch when America carries such a heavy international responsibility, God can use her as an instrument of His purposes on the earth. Should that be true, as I believe it is true, the leaders and the people of this land must keep close to God, seek to discover His will and resolutely perform this providentially bestowed role of world leader.
A Nation Under God
A nation under God is a nation under His authority, under His power, and under His judgment.
If a nation is to be a “nation under God,” it must be a worshipping nation. Genuine worship is the offering of one’s self to God. For the Christian, it is accepting the gift of a new life in God through Jesus Christ, which is the result of repentance and faith. God is not to be used but to be served.
The Exploitation Of Religion
Much is being said these days in religious circles about the “exploitation” of religion as a weapon of ideological conflict. In the highest sense, pure religion is not to be “exploited” for anything except God’s purposes. God is to be worshipped and served for God’s sake. Righteousness is to be sought for righteousness’ sake. Nothing in Jesus’ teaching is more emphatic than that. But is it not true that a nation spiritually weak in our kind of world is also ideologically vulnerable? It therefore follows that a people constantly strengthened and renewed by the worship of God is better equipped for an age of sharp ideological warfare. When God is sought for God’s sake, and righteousness is served for righteousness’ sake, the nation becomes a citadel of strength for free men.
Moral Sag And Revival
In the decade since World War II, American life has been characterized on the one hand by a moral sag and cultural deterioration, and on the other hand by a moral resurgence and a spiritual awakening. Both are real and both arise out of the vast and variegated life that is America. Both the negative and the positive derive from a dynamism inherent in the cultural soil of the New World. The presence of the former does not invalidate the latter. That we are living in a period of great religious revival of continental proportions is too clear to need documentation. The evidence is all about us. It is too cumulative and too impressive to be ignored or minimized. We ought not to mistake motion for power, religious activity for religious renewal. But, allowing for all the exaggeration, the excesses, the sentimentality and the superficiality which appear in every age, the truth remains that there has rarely been a period in our national life when the movement of God’s spirit has been so manifestly real as today.
American Christianity
We have an American way of doing things, an American way of expressing ourselves and the American manifestation of religious vitality. This may be mystifying, even an enigma to foreigners, but it is our way. Our own church statesmen have always contended that in our missionary outreach, we should seek ultimately to make the Christian faith indigenous in the lands to which the Gospel is carried. But when we have such a vigorous indigenous American expression of Christianity, some of the same articulate churchmen lament the “nationalization of religion,” and the “domestication of the church.” Paradoxically, to some folk Christianity is good when expressed in some distant cultural pattern but when it appears under American patterns and forms it appears somehow corrupted. At best it seems to them synthetic or artificial. Indeed, we need always to refine the accent of the Gospel in our nation, and we need to purify the expression of Christian piety among our people. And we must ever be submissive to the searching judgment of God. But we need not be, and we are not called upon to be, something other than Christians in the rich soil of freedom we call America.
Spirituality In Washington
Our nation’s capital has become a dramatic focal symbol of a people at worship. Washington shares with the entire nation the drive and force of the contemporary revival. The way of Christian faith and the life of prayer are the norm for most of the leaders of our government. This return to the ways of the Spirit crosses all party lines and penetrates all religious groupings. In Washington it is transparently genuine.
Most of the persons who hold public office today are men who believe in and worship God, who seek to discover His will and who in the stewardship of their offices attempt to do God’s will. After a decade of intimate association with leaders of national life on all levels, through three presidential administrations, it is my judgment that by and large, the men whom we send to the highest offices of the land make the Christian evangel and the reign of Christ’s spirit as relevant and as meaningful in their lives as do men anywhere in the land.
Politics As Divine Vocation
For generations the church has encouraged Christian laymen to enter politics as an expression of the Christian vocation. We have spent our years persuading Christian men to perform public service. Many have been willing to do this.
Today, when such men come to Washington, enter into the life of the church, attend services, read their Bible, teach Sunday School classes, hold church offices and go to prayer meetings, there are some religious analysts who seem to think this is all hyprocritical and sneer at it as “piety along the Potomac.” Religion is good, they imply, for the barber and the baker, for the banker and the butcher, for the teacher and the tcol maker, but when it appears in Washington in a politician, a diplomat or a military leader, there is something sinister and suspect about it. This is what the new cynicism suggests—a sneer is substituted for sagacity.
Can there be any more effective way of discouraging devout churchmen from seeking public office, or preventing good men already in office from worshipping God, than to impugn their motives?
At this moment of history, when we must be great and strong spiritually, it is no service to the nation and no real contribution to the cause of Christ to indict as insincere those who witness to the truths of God and to our historic faith from high places, or to debunk as something “phony” the widespread revival of religion in our land. By all means, let there be precise evaluation, profound judgment, real prophetic insight. That is the way of correction and growth. But let it all be in the spirit of love, in a constructive and not corruptive mood. The ecclesiastical tent must be big enough for all sincere Christians. In this hour, we need a solidarity of religious witness. We need a nation which is a bastion of spiritual power if we are to be adequate for this age.
It was only from a position of moral eminence and authentic spiritual elevation that the President of the United States was able to make his audacious proposals at Geneva. The whole concept was wrought in prayer. It was that which gave lasting meaning to that historic gathering. And it will ever be so.
Americans simply must honor, worship and serve God as He has been revealed in Jesus Christ, our Lord. For the most part, our ideals are Christian ideals, our standards Christian standards, our goals Christian goals, our motivations Christian motivations. Under whatever form or denominational auspices, let us thank God for every American who today says out of a sincere heart, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.”
Edward L. R. Elson, L.H.D., D.D., Litt.D., L.L.D., is minister at National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., and author of One Moment with God, America’s Spiritual Recovery, and other books.
