American Christianity is failing the litmus test.

By J. Basil Dannebohm

Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state, therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society."

The fallacious notion of Christian Nationalism was inspired by a man who believed that democracy was heresy.

Rousas John "R.J." Rushdoony was an Armenian American Calvinist who alleged that since the year 320 AD, every generation of his family has produced a Christian priest or minister, claiming that his ancestors "would perpetually give a member of their family to be a priest to perform a kind of Aaronic priesthood as in the Old Testament."

Rushdoony, who is likewise credited as the inspiration behind the modern Christian homeschool movement, sought to replace U.S. law with a literal and strict interpretation of biblical law. In his book, "The Institutes of Biblical Law," he expressed his support for the stoning of homosexuals, encouraged the silencing of women, and called for the dismantling public schools.

Like many far right Christians of our day, Rushdoony was a 'do as I say, not as I do, divorced, racist, Holocaust denier, who claimed to be "pro-life," but advocated for the death penalty. He believed that interracial marriage, which he referred to as "unequal yoking," should be illegal. He opposed "enforced integration," referred to Southern slavery as "benevolent," saying that "some people are by nature slaves."

Though he passed away in 2001, his rhetoric continues to exert considerable influence over the Christian far right.

Today, most Evangelicals, and a staggering number of Catholic and Orthodox Christians (the bulk of whom are neophyte converts) hold to the belief that those who do not adhere to their respective creeds are not members of the "true faith," and therefore condemned to Hell, as they espouse several of the same tenets Rushdoony peddled during his lifetime.

In his book, "The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American," Andrew L. Seidel writes:

"Trump's dictatorial tendencies and mendacity, negative attributes for many voters, poised him perfectly to manipulate the evangelical mind. Like the biblical god evangelicals worship, Trump is a thin-skinned authoritarian with totalitarian tendencies. He craves love and punishes any disloyalty or slight. Evangelicals have been taught to worship and adore that type of being above all others. This strain of religion cultivates a veneration for extreme authority. Studies bear this out: religious fundamentalism and a tendency to submit to authoritarianism are highly correlated. Trump acted like the character evangelicals worship and benefited from their ingrained adulation. Evangelicals were simply seeing in Trump a character they'd been taught to revere. As if to prove the point, Ann Coulter called Trump her 'Emperor God."

Yet, as Brian Zahnd writes in his book, "Postcards from Babylon - The Church In American Exile":

"It’s not the task of the church to “Make America Great Again.” The contemporary task of the church is to make Christianity countercultural again. And once we untether Jesus from the interests of empire, we begin to see just how countercultural and radical Jesus’ ideas actually are. Enemies? Love them. Violence? Renounce it. Money? Share it. Foreigners? Welcome them. Sinners? Forgive them. These are the kind of radical ideas that will always be opposed by the principalities and powers, but which the followers of Jesus are called to embrace, announce, and enact. And the degree to which the church is faithful to Jesus and his radical ideas is the degree to which the church embodies a faith that is truly countercultural."

Perhaps Walter Brueggemann sums it up best in his book, "A Way other than Our Own: Devotions for Lent":

"I believe the crisis in the U.S. church has almost nothing to do with being liberal or conservative; it has everything to do with giving up on the faith and discipline of our Christian baptism and settling for a common, generic U.S. identity that is part patriotism, part consumerism, part violence, and part affluence."

If it's true, as the old hymn goes, that they'll know we are Christians by our love, much of American Christianity is failing the litmus test.

In Isaiah 10: 1-2, the prophet cautions us:

"Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the orphan."