The Day After The Tea Party Ends!

      I'd like to discuss two subjects: why "The Tea Party" will eventally end and why the "Christian Right" worldview of America is wrong. America was designed to be a "City Of Refuge" for persecuted Christians of various denominational faiths. As such, each faith group that came had to learn how to live and work together in cultural diversity and do justice. First, Christians in America should be  an example, to our brothers and sisters throughout the world on How to conduct ourselves in a culturally diverse world just as the early Jewish disciples had to work in Gentile nations - who did not share their Jewish faith and practice or share their God. The Church in America is failing to grasp and neglecting the serious call of the Lord to disciple our nation instead of trying to build a Augustinian kingdom based on faulty scriptural understandings of our role in culture.  Secondly, American Christians will never be able to "legislate" their religious views on a democratic republic, especially in this post-modern era. The system of government designed in America was designed to frustrate all groups at sometime or another.  Words like compromise, dissent, minority, tolerance, and reciprocal liberty are the main tenants of our country's constitution.  I'm certainly thankful that out of all the early colonial history God used William Penn and the Quaker frame of government to become the basis of our political system. 

William Penn meets with First Nations In Historic New Castle, Delaware

   Let me begin with my first point about our Christian responsibilities in reaching our culture for Christ. From the founding of our country, four major British cultures were established on the eastern shores of the United States.  The Boston culture was firmly established with Calvinistic Puritan ideas.  Those embedded ideas begin with the Total Depravity of humankind.  God is good - humanity is bad, therefore, we need to legislate people's behavior, life, ways, and customs. So, liberty was based on the Puritan ideas of order, discipline and conformity. If you didn't agree with that way of thinking you were purged or put to death by their system of government.  The Puritan's of New England based much of their thinking on Calvin's institutes and the failed policies of  Geneva, Switzerland under Calvin's rule. From the first-hand accounts, Oxford's Gillian Lewis notes, "The city of Geneva possessed a significance which was symbolic and mythical. Her friends saw her as the mirror and model of true piety, a haven of refuge, a roosting-place for fledglings, a stronghold to train and dispatch abroad soldiers of the Gospel and ministers of the Word." And yet, there were enemies as well, enemies who saw Geneva as "Satan's sanctuary, a source of heresy, atheism, and libertine and a center for the active dissemination of sedition."  Just as soon as Geneva embraced the Reformation officially and severed its loyalties to the bishop and Duke of Savoy, the city was flooded with refugees from all over Europe. Over night Geneva became, after Wittenberg, Zurich, and Strasbourg, a capitol of the Protestant faith. Foreign visitors expressed amazement as they observed both the theological and practical attractions of the city.  Later, as the Puritans of New England came to re-establish the failed Geneva experiment in Boston, they envisioned a Biblical state based on the same principles Calvin attempted to rule his culture on. Quakers, Baptists, and other radicals were a threat to the "City on the Hill" vision of John Winthrop.  Truth is they did not envision "separation of church and state."  They envisioned the church and it's Presbyterian government as a good foundation for government.  They believed in bringing about the Millennial reign of Christ through the righteous governing.  Thank God our nation never adopted these views.  But many Christians in America today hold these views and want to impose them on others. 

First consider the fact that Christ gave
himself up to death on our behalf
and became ours: therefore we ought to
give up ourselves for the good of all men,
not thinking that we are our own,
but that we belong to others.- Zwingli

     These same views were held in Virginia but were embedded in the Anglican Church established by the Cavaliers. Jamestown, Virginia was a business venture with one aim in mind - the Christianizing of the first nations culture in order to enslave the indigenous population, and dispossession of the land.  When this venture failed to accomplish this goal they introduced "African Slavery" only to further their business and economic benefits for the benefit of England's king.  Ideas of building a commonwealth to sustain the loses of the Cavaliers lost lifestyle in England was the goal and vision of the founding of the Virginia colony. When the Nasemond county and eastern shores of accomacke wanted to define their faith in light of Boston they were purged and forced to move to up the Chesapeake to establish a new colony in what is now called, Annapolis, Maryland.  Virginia's idea of "liberty" was that the government is who extends you the freedom and rights of liberty.  There was no liberty of conscience or freedom of worship in Virginia's founding.  This explains why groups like the "Tea Party" holds a worldview demanding to "conformity" of their understanding of the constitution. They have become a political entity engaged to "root out" anyone who disagrees with their version of a  "America" just as much as those who are on the extreme left do.  Our political system was not built on a  right republican, Whig, democrat, or Tea Party party worldview. Nor are we a nation of just white elites, native Americans or African Americans.  We are a diverse people and have been since the beginning of our country!  To reduce everything down to one p[articular statement of faith or be aligned to one a political party platform does not constitute a legitimate form of government. Governor Berkley's Virginian spirit still prevails 400 years after the founding of America.  In my view, this view is based on an anti-Christ spirit. It's arrogant, prideful, and intolerant of other Christian interpretations of Scripture and spirit directed movements that God has used throughout our history.  Could we regain the Quaker spirit that began in William Penn's government?  Reciprocal Liberty where DISSENT is honored?

    God calls us to be salt and light to the unchurched world.  However, that salt and light is not to be based in "Colonial Imperialistic Culture!"  Pocahontas died after she was bathed, put in a proper English dress, was forced to have a hair cut, and presented as a well dressed reformed English Christianized women to the English Crown.  The national Right winged thinking held in various part of Christian Culture too often has tried to impose their "colonial views" on the greater nation rather than do what Christ called us to do (see. Matt. 28:18-20). The United States has several histories.  Euro-centric, Native American, African-American, Asian American, and Latino stories form who we are as a country regardless of those who believe in the Euro-cententic fairy-tale of America's formation. Slaughtering 50 million Native American in the name of Jesus is not my idea of a Christian nation. The truth of our national history with it's slavery, racial hatred, and purging of first nations peoples is not exactly something I think of as the good ole days.  Our nation is an an experiment!  It's a movement that is called to teach the Shites and Sunnies how to live with one another in peace.  We are called to be that kind of people.  That's why I believe that the Christian Right is losing power because it seems that they just can't move our nation backwards to the good ole days.... whatever that may have been in their minds.  It's time for us to wake up - and realise what has been said before "you can't legislate" your statement of faith in a nation that was called to be a "HOLY EXPERIMENT" based on reciprocal liberty.  This is why the "Tea Party" will never succeed and eventually come to an end. My only hope is that the Church In America will get back to reflecting what our country was called to do in the first place... "endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace - until we come into the unity of the faith!