Of Christianity and Liberty

  Pastor Chuck Baldwin posted a very well written and compelling thesis on the misguided efforts of contemporary preachers in the area of eschatology (end times prophecy). 

  "Now that the GOP has control of both houses of Congress in Washington, D.C., and with a pro-war Democrat in the White House, we can expect an escalation of foreign wars during the next two years analogous to those of the G.W. Bush years. And, unfortunately, most of the Christian war fever seems to be predicated on the erroneous John Hagee theology that modern-Israel is Bible-Israel and, somehow, it is America’s responsibility to fight all of Israel’s wars.

  The war fever demonstrated by too many Christians and conservatives is destroying our country. Endless wars abroad; hundreds of thousands of innocents killed--many of whom are our Christian brothers and sisters; trillions of dollars of deficit spending to fund these perpetual, unconstitutional wars of aggression; a burgeoning Police State at home under the rubric of “we are at war”; ad infinitum.

  Worse still is the way Christian war fever has turned the nations of the world, not only against America, but against Christianity. How are our missionaries supposed to take the message of the Prince of Peace to a people whom we have just bombed into the Stone Age, killing their parents, children, brothers and sisters, etc.?"

  Were we, as United States citizens, a meddling nation from our founding? Certainly not. We were the nation folks could remove to, in order to stay out of the destructive an violent aggressions of  other continents.

  Benjamin Franklin wrote a pamphlet called, “Information to Those Who Would Remove to America.” It was intended to be a guide for Europeans who were thinking about relocating to this country. In it, he said, 

  “Hence, bad examples to youth are more rare in America, which must be comfortable consideration to parents. To this may be truly added, that serious religion, under its various denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced.”

Franklin continued, 

“Atheism is unknown there; infidelity rare and secret; so that persons may live to a great age in that country without having their piety shocked by meeting with either an Atheist or an Infidel.”

Franklin went on:

   “And the Divine Being seems to have manifested his approbation of the mutual forbearance and kindness with which the different sects [Christian denominations] treat each other; by the remarkable prosperity with which he has been pleased to favor the whole country.”

  Noah Webster (himself an outspoken Christian, of course), said,

 “The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and His apostles, which enjoins humility, piety, and benevolence; which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen with equal rights. This is genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free Constitutions of Government.”

Pastor Chuck Baldwin

Chuck Baldwin concluded with this;

I, for one, would never want a so-called theocracy administered by the likes of the vast majority of Christian teachers and pastors today. Are you kidding? Most of them can’t even govern a small congregation of believers who are ostensibly assembled under the same ideology, same eschatology, same ecclesiology, etc. Have you been to a church business meeting lately? You really want those people dictating national laws? God forbid!

No! There is no Moses on the scene today with new revelation dictating God’s will for the nation. That being said, there is no mistaking the fact that America has a deeply-rooted, rich Christian tradition.

America’s founders, even those who were not professing Christians, as we understand the term today, acknowledged that fact.

So, Liberty is, and ought be the message of our common heritage.

• It is Liberty which Christ declared as he began his teaching ministry.
• It is Liberty which Paul defined as the central mindset of our new testament principle of worship
• It is Liberty which our diverse collection of colonies found as a binding principle to build a nation upon.
• It is Liberty which flowed through every tenet of the Bill of Rights.
• It is Liberty which drove our unequaled economic legacy through industry and trade.
• It is Liberty which we have turned our backs on, in a return to totalitarian, socialist, and punitive legislative, executive, & judicial abandonment of all that history should have taught us.

David Van Risseghem