Christian America and the Kingdom of God

1. Christian America As God's Chosen People

Chapter 1 CHriStiAn AMeriCA As God’s Chosen People On the morning of October 2, 2006, a man entered a one-room Amish school house in the community of Nickel Mines, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, brandishing guns, ammunition, lumber, nails, and sexual paraphernalia. The children in that school—as with all Amish schools—ranged from first to eighth grade. After the teacher and her mother ran from the building to seek help, the man ordered three other adults and the boys to leave. He then boarded the doors and windows to prevent the girls from escaping—and the police from getting in—and began his assault. He bound the hands and feet of ten little girls, ranging in age from seven to thirteen, then lined them up in front of the chalkboard and shot them in the head at point blank range, killing five. He then turned the gun on himself. Before the day was over, the Amish of Nickel Mines had gathered to process their unspeakable grief. But one by one and two by two, in a completely spontaneous procession that lasted for several weeks, the Amish also made their way to the home of the man who killed their children. There, they offered forgiveness to the killer’s family—his parents, his widow, and her parents.1 16 christian america and the kingdom of god Their forgiveness was more than merely verbal. The Amish also invited the killer’s widow to attend the funerals of their children, and over half the people at the killer’s burial were Amish.2 Only days following the shootings, Sam Stolzfus, a member of the Amish community, explained that the Amish forgave “because that’s what we are taught.” “If we don’t forgive,” he said, “we won’t be forgiven.”3 The news that the Amish had rejected retribution and vengeance and had actually forgiven the man who murdered their children shocked the American public fully as much as the murders themselves.4 And the depth of that shock revealed how shallow the notion of Christian America really is. Without meaning to do so, when the Amish rejected vengeance and embraced forgiveness instead, they held a mirror up to Christian America, and the image that appeared in that mirror was that of a nation that could barely comprehend the fundamental Christian vision that had inspired the Amish to act as they did. Theological Illiteracy in America This failure on the part of Christian America to understand the Christian practice of forgiveness should not be surprising since most Americans—whether Christian or not—have little understanding of the most basic contents of the biblical text, much less its deepest teachings. And that has been true for a very long time. Roughly fifty years ago, Will Herberg reported that between 1949 and 1953, at a time when Bibles were selling at a record rate and 80 percent of Americans believed the Bible to be the “revealed word of God,” over 50 percent of those Americans could not name even one of the four gospels.5 Herberg concluded that while Americans purchased the Bible in record numbers in the early 1950s, they apparently failed to read it. Fifty years later—in 2005—Bill McKibben reported that Americans still didn’t know much about the Bible. While 85 percent of Americans identified themselves as Christians, McKibben wrote, “only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels.” But the most telling fact McKibben reported was this: “Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that ‘God helps those who help themselves.’” The truth is, these words are not in god’s chosen people 17 the Bible but came from the mouth of Ben Franklin. And while this notion may be a popular American idea, it runs completely counter to the witness of the biblical text. As McKibben noted, “Not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it is counter-biblical,”6 since the core message of the Bible focuses on laying down one’s life for one’s neighbor, not on helping one’s self. But that truth is lost on most Americans in this so-called Christian nation. Not long before McKibben published this information, thenpresidential candidate Howard Dean told a reporter that his favorite book in the New Testament was Job—a book that...