Christianity in Eclipse
Much of what is being peddled as Evangelical Christianity today is a contemporary version of an ancient heresy: State-worship.

By Laurence M. Vance, Contributing Writer

Biblical Christianity is fast becoming eclipsed by state worship. Many in the evangelical Christian community have violated the first commandment and put another god before the God of the Bible. Their new god is the state.

State worship is nothing new. Throughout history there have existed those who were more than willing to make apologies for the state and its wars. What is so troubling now is that many who name the name of Christ are likewise guilty of this ghastly statolatry.

If there is one positive thing the war in Iraq has done it is this: It has revealed the true god of many evangelical Christians. When it comes to the subjects of war and the military, many Christians who are otherwise sound in the faith suddenly lose their mind and turn into, not only defenders of, but apologists for the immoral actions of the state, its leaders, and especially its coercive arm of aggression—its military.

There exists an unholy alliance between many conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christians and the military. These Christians will generally agree with you if you denounce some of the more outrageous abuses of the government; most will concur if you condemn the welfare state; many will go along with you if you disparage one of the presidents; some will put up with you if you criticize the U.S. global empire; a few will even tolerate you if you denigrate the warfare state; but once you question the military in any way—its size, its budget, its contractors, its bureaucracy, its efficiency, its purpose, and especially its acts of death and destruction as the coercive arm of the state—you are dismissed as a liberal, a pacifist, or even a traitor.

But the love affair that these Christians have with the military is an illicit affair. It is contrary to the tenor of the New Testament. It is an affront to the Savior. It is a cancer on Christianity.

What would never be tolerated from individuals is tolerated when done on a grand scale in the name of the state. Bombing, maiming, “interrogating” through torture, and killing are okay as long as it is done in service for the state. The military and the CIA are held up as great employment opportunities for Christian young people. But as the famous nineteenth-century English preacher Charles Spurgeon once said of the Bible: “If there be anything which this book denounces and counts the hugest of all crimes, it is the crime of war. Put up thy sword into thy sheath, for hath not he said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and he meant not that it was a sin to kill one but a glory to kill a million, but he meant that bloodshed on the smallest or largest scale was sinful.”

Why is it that when a soldier wears a uniform, travels thousands of miles away from U.S. soil, and kills by government decree that he is lauded as a hero defending our freedoms, instead of denounced as a hireling in service of the state?

To defend this war is to defend the state; to defend the military is to defend the state.

As the fiasco that is the war in Iraq has shown, it doesn’t matter how senseless the war, it doesn’t matter how many lies the war is based on, it doesn’t matter how much the Bush administration manipulated intelligence, it doesn’t matter how much the war costs, it doesn’t matter how long the war lasts, it doesn’t matter how many thousands of American soldiers are killed or injured, and it certainly doesn’t matter how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are killed or injured—too many Christians can be found who still mindlessly repeat the mantra of “obey the powers that be.”

This paraphrase of a portion of Scripture, along with a few others, has been turned into a mantra in order to justify the war. No Christian warmonger actually believes that a Christian should always accept the latest government pronouncement, support the latest government program, or obey the government in every respect. It is all a ruse to justify an unjust war. If the government commands one of these Christians to shoot his neighbor and destroy his property, he will choose to disobey and suffer the consequences. Why should it be any different when in a uniform of the U.S. armed forces?

The U.S. military, in spite of being called the Department of Defense, does very little to actually defend the country. If it did then U.S. troops would not be stationed in 150 different nations all around the world. To really defend the country, American soldiers should be guarding our borders, patrolling our coasts, and protecting us from terrorist attacks instead of dying halfway around the world trying to impose American-style democracy on a country and a people that have never been so inclined.

Of all people, it is Christians who ought to be among the most vocal critics of the state, its legislation, its regulation, and its wars. The greatest threat to the freedoms of the American people is not some country six thousand miles away; it is our own government.

Mr. Vance, who teaches at Pensacola Junior College, is Director of The Francis Wayland Institute. He is also author of two books: Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State, and King James, His Bible, and Its Translators.