America is not a Christian country, according to Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Though America is predominantly Christian, it is not a Christian nation in the way that people mean when they use the term, which implies that America is "a new Israel", he said.
"If what you mean by that, is that a nation in which most of the people profess to be Christians, then, certainly, the United States of America was – and is – a Christian nation, based upon that sociological definition of a 'Christian nation,'" Moore said in a new video for The Gospel Coalition.
"That's not what most people mean though."
What they actually mean, he suggests, is that "God was in covenant with the United States of America in order to bless the United States of America as a special people, as a new Israel, as a group of people covenanted under Christianity," he said.
On these terms, the answer to whether America is a Christian nation is "clearly, no".
While the founders of the nation were deeply influenced by Judeo-Christian ideas, stemming from the Protestant reformation, they were also acting from an enlightenment perspective, which led to the separation of church and state.
"They did not found the country as a Christian nation, which is why there is, for instance, no religious test for office holders and why there is a separation between the responsibilities of the state from the responsibilities of the church or of worshipping communities," he said.
Moore highlights that many American Christians wrongly impute Old Testament passages onto America, assigning the country a "providential place in history that the Bible never assigns".
"This shows up in people taking, for instance, Old Testament passages and applying those passages directly to the United States," Moore said. "The most common of these would be 2 Chronicles 7:14, [which says,] 'If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves, repent of their sins, and pray and seek my face, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sins, and I will heal their land.'"
God never transferred this promise to a political body, he added. It is only given to people through "the mediation of Jesus Christ".
"So the idea that we're living in a Christian nation in that sense, is really a form of theological liberalism," said Moore.
"It assumes the person or the nation can be a Christian apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, apart from new birth. That is contrary to the gospel that we have received in Jesus Christ.
"Instead, we must say that we are Christians who live in a nation among many people who profess to be Christians –some of whom are and some of whom aren't. And we must be the people to give a faithful gospel witness in those days."
