The Myth Of A Christian Nation

I've been waiting to check out this book from the library for the past month and a half, but somebody had it checked out and kept renewing it...so when I saw that it was available, even though I'm reading five or six other books right now, I knew I had to get it.

And I'm glad I did. So far Greg Boyd's book has articulated very well my own frustrations with politics and Christianity.

Here are some quotes from the introduction and the first couple of chapters.

- For some evangelicals, the Kingdom of God is centered on "taking America back for God," voting for the Christian candidate, outlawing abortion, outlawing gay marriage, winning the culture war, defending political freedoms at home and abroad, keeping the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, fighting for prayer in the public schools, and fighting to keep the ten commandments in government buildings.

- Instead of providing the culture with a radically alternative way of life, we largely present it with a religious version of what it already is.

- For many in America and around the world, the American flag has smothered the glory of the cross, and the ugliness of our American version of Caesar has squelched the radiant love of Christ.

- The governments of the world seek to establish, protect and advance their ideals and agendas. By contrast, the kingdom Jesus established and modeled doesn't seek to "win" by any criteria the world would use. Rather, it seeks to be faithful.

- While all the versions of the kingdoms of the world acquire and exercise power over others, the kingdom of God advances only by exercising power under others. It expands by manifesting the power of self-sacrificial, Calvary-like love.

- In all of recorded history, only a few decades have seen no major wars - and even during these times of relative peace, much local violence existed. In the twentieth century alone, over 200 million people died as a result of war and political conflict.

- The community of those who submit to Christ's lordship are in a real sense to be Jesus to the world, for through the church Christ himself continues to expand the reign of God in the world.

- God's not primarily about getting people to pray a magical "sinner's prayer" or to confess certain magical truths as a means of escaping hell. He's not about gathering together a group who happen to believe all the right things. Rather, he's about getting together a group of people who embody the kingdom - who individually and corporately manifest the reality of the reign of God on the earth. And he's about growing this new kingdom through his body to take over the world.

- Conservative religious groups involved in the kingdom-of-the-world thinking often believe that their enemies are the liberals, the gay activists, the ACLU, the pro-choice advocates, the evolutionists, and so on. On the opposite side, liberal religious people often think that their enemies are the fundamentalists, the gay bashers, the Christian Coalition, the antiabortionists, and so on. Demonizing one's enemies is part of the tit-for-tat game of Babylon, for only by doing so can we justify our animosity, if not violence, towards them.

- Our battle is not against flesh and blood, whether they are right wing or left wing, gay or straight, pro-choice or pro-life, liberal or conservative, democratic or communist, American or Iraqi. Our battle is against the "cosmic powers" that hold these people, and all people, in bondage.

- A person may win by kingdom-of-the-world standards but lose b the standards that eternally count - the standards of the kingdom of God.

- We can possess all the right kingdom-of-the-world opinions on the planet and stand for all the right kingdom-of-the-world causes, but if we don't look like Jesus Christ carrying his cross to Golgotha - sacrificing our time, energy and resources for others - our rightness is merely religious noise.

- Jesus taught that there will be many who seem to believe right things and do religious deeds in his name, whom he will renounce, for they didn't love him by loving the homeless, the hungry, the poor and the prisoner. However right we may be, without love we are simply displaying a religious version of the world, not the kingdom of God.