“Is the United States a Christian nation?”

Steve Brown:
Is the United States a Christian nation? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s nobody’s guru, but he does have honest answers to hard questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, and worship. Now, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hey Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey.

Steve Brown:
How are you?

Pete Alwinson:
Good, buddy. How you doing?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing good. I wish the United States was a Christian nation.

Pete Alwinson:
I know. So, there’s a quick answer.

Steve Brown:
People would be nicer to each other if we were. Well, we’ll get to that question at the end of time.

Pete Alwinson:
We’ve got time.

Steve Brown:
That’s Pete Alwinson, check out ForgeTruth.com you’ll be glad I told you about it. That’s the ministry that Pete leads, I was over with you guys for a couple of times. We had a great time.

Pete Alwinson:
We’ve got a great podcast with you. And then we had a great up on the floor conversation. That was fun.

Steve Brown:
Those men love you deeply

Pete Alwinson:
and they love

Steve Brown:
they would follow you through a wall.

Pete Alwinson:
I don’t know about that.

Steve Brown:
I started to tell them the truth about you, but I decided, but they really, Pete has a supernatural, unbelievable ministry with men. By the way, he comes in on Fridays, as you know, and we answer questions and we love your questions. You can ask a question anytime you want, call 1-800-KEY-LIFE and follow the instructions. Or you can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

in Canada, it’s

P.O. Box 28060

Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

or you can send your question to [email protected] and if you can help us financially, please do. So many people stand with us, and we’re sometimes controversial, but they stand with us because they believe in getting those you and those you love home with radical freedom, infectious joy, and surprising faithfulness. So, if you can help us do, I promise we’ll be faithful with your gift. If you can’t, we understand. This is our gift to you and your gift to us should be that you say a prayer occasionally for this ministry. Pete, pray for us and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
You got it. You got it. Father, we come into your presence at the end of this week, Lord, just for a moment so grateful that it’s easy to come before the God that, frankly we cannot see, but we know. That we can’t hear with our physical ears, but we can hear through your word. That we can’t touch, but we feel have been touched by you over and over and over. So, we thank you for making a difference in our life that is supernatural. We praise you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for being our Creator, our Provider, our Redeemer, and being the one that takes bad situations and turns them into good. So, we come to you in great praise and we love to lift up your name high and holy and lifted up. And we feel reverent in your presence because of your greatness and your holiness, your mercy and your grace. And now Lord, we enter a time here of Q & A. We have a lot of questions, Lord. We need to know how the gospel pertains to real life as we live it. And we pray that you would give us wisdom as we deal with these issues. But thank you for our pastors, teachers, and preachers for getting ready to lead us in worship this week-end. We pray Holy Spirit that you’d fill them and use them in a powerful way to bring us into the posture and the place of worship and to glorify your name. We commit them to you as we commit ourselves to you now. In Jesus’ Holy Name we pray. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, this is an e-mail. There are two questions. Is the United States a Christian nation? And then the second one, do we live in a theocracy? On the second one? No, we don’t.

Pete Alwinson:
Okay. So.

Steve Brown:
Don’t confuse that.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. So, a theocracy technically speaking is what?

Steve Brown:
God’s nation. It’s like Israel, God’s covenant people.

Pete Alwinson:
In the Old Testament times.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. That’s what a theocracy is. You have to be careful that you, and conservatives are often accused of wanting to institute a theocracy, and that’s not true.

Pete Alwinson:
No! Thank you for bringing that up, because we get criticized for that.

Steve Brown:
And I just wince when I hear it, and sometimes I say something. That’s not true.

Pete Alwinson:
So, go back to the law, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and you can see how the theocracy was set up after the Exodus.

Steve Brown:
And I don’t want to go there.

Pete Alwinson:
No, and how Samuel was led to make that transition to the monarchy, because the people basically rejected the theocracy.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. Is the United States a Christian nation?

Pete Alwinson:
No, but we were founded primarily by those with Christian convictions, Biblical convictions and morality. And so, they by and large, believed in the existence of the Christian God and the teachings of the Old Testament and the New.

Steve Brown:
And that’s found in our Constitution.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, we see it reflected.

Steve Brown:
The founding documents of our country. You know, people see that, we live in a culture where there are those who see that as a negative, as robbing them of their freedom, and stuffing your religion down their throat. That’s not true.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s not.

Steve Brown:
Listen, if you’re gay, or you’re lesbian, or even transgender, you need to know that you have the freedom to do that in this country because of those Christian principles. If they weren’t there, and you ought to look at some nations around the world where they don’t have them, you’d be dead by now. But it’s that benign, wise, balanced thing that comes from Scripture that gives us the freedoms that we have and tells us not to adopt a state church.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
That’s a part of that too.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
But a nation without any kind of standards is going to die.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And it’s scary right now.

Pete Alwinson:
It is. And so many of those key core foundational teachings from the Bible, like the value of human life is as a major case in point. And also the fallibility of human nature. And that was built into the process of why we have elections and term limits and things like that.

Steve Brown:
Because of that understanding.

Pete Alwinson:
Because of that understanding, why we have checks and balances in three levels of government, because there was a basic mistrust of human nature. When monarchy says no, the divine right of a king, this king is always right. Well, no, we know historically that’s not true. So, but now, just as there are the freedoms in this country to differ with human, Christian views. There is also the right of Christians to articulate their views, as well as other religions.

Steve Brown:
Anybody that wants to, and that comes from what’s basic to our culture.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And as we do away with that, you know, if I were an atheist and didn’t believe in God and hated God, I would fight that our nation go back to its founding principles that are Biblical principles, just so I could be an atheist.

Pete Alwinson:
Give so much more freedom before that.

Steve Brown:
If you understood it, that’s what you would do, of course.

Pete Alwinson:
The conflict comes in when Christians want to vote their, and assert their Christian views in whatever politician they vote for. That’s not trying to establish a Christian nation, it’s that Christians need to stand up and want to stand up for what they believe to be true and how we will flourish. That’s the point.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, good stuff. Is cremation wrong?

Pete Alwinson:
I love what you say about what Anna says about that.

Steve Brown:
It’s the only time, you’re going to be cremated because it’s the only time she’ll ever be warm.

Pete Alwinson:
I know that there are many that make the point that the body ought to be in a funeral service because it points to the future resurrection of a body. And I hear that, but nowhere in the Bible do we see that it is actually wrong to pursue cremation. And we know that the resurrection of the body is a supernatural event anyway, no matter what takes place.

Steve Brown:
I agree. You know, think maybe our Roman Catholic friends have a pretty strong thing on cremation. And maybe some other denominational people do too.

Pete Alwinson:
Some of our Jewish brothers, Jewish friends, probably the same thing.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s true. And that’s okay. I just don’t think, I can’t find anything in the Bible that says you can’t do it.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
And sometimes that can be a good way to dispose.

Pete Alwinson:
Mm hmm. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
My family have their two dogs in an urn. I wonder if that’s a sin.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, wow.

Steve Brown:
I mean, they didn’t kill them, but when they died.

Pete Alwinson:
I’m not going to go there. There’s some people that see animals on the same level as human beings.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. What exactly happens at communion?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, different denominations divide over this, of course, right? And here we have to have generosity because in interpreting Scripture, there are some differences, but certainly we would say, wouldn’t we, that something spiritual does take place.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. In fact, instead of arguing about communion, experience it.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
That’s new to me. I’m always in my head trying to discern what’s going on and whether I can take communion from this person. And a friend of mine cautioned me and admonished me, quit trying to analyze. Just experience the reality of Christ who is present in the Eucharist.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And I think that’s true. And you’ve got Lutherans that have a view of beside. You have Roman Catholics that are apart. You have Noxians who say that he’s in the hearts of believers, whatever. Do it because Jesus said to do it.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And when you do it, something spiritual and good happens.

Pete Alwinson:
Clearly it’s a faith involvement of worship and it can be powerful and we need to follow Paul’s prescriptions about it.

Steve Brown:
Exactly.

Pete Alwinson:
I Corinthians

Steve Brown:
You know, and I don’t tell many people this, now I’m telling everybody, but at our communion, we go forward, they call it an intinction, and we take of the bread and the wine up front and then go back to our seats. When I sit in the congregation and watch people in wheelchairs, and black and white people, and Asian and little children, and teenagers and old people that have to walk with a cane all coming down that aisle, I get emotionally involved. It really, and I think that may be just my proclivity, but it may be Jesus.

Pete Alwinson:
I think so.

Steve Brown:
Hey guys, we’ve got to go. But before we go, let me say, Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.