A Duke Univ. Theologian Attacks America for Being Un-Christian, but Betrays His Own Prejudices

By Mark Tooley Published on February 28, 2016

Apparently upset over Donald Trump, and no doubt a lot more, a Duke University theologian writing in The Washington Post wants an end to hypocritical “Christian America.”

“Though voters may speak piously and rather vaguely about Christian values and ideals, polls and election results communicate clearly that this is a nation consumed by fear, anger and suspicion, none of which are Christian virtues,” gripes Norman Wirzba,

He recounts that since first moving to the USA 30 years ago from Canada he was “repeatedly” told that the “identity of America as a whole, its history and its destiny, are somehow tied to Christianity.”

But Wirzba has since learned that the pious talk is “all rubbish.” After all:

If voters were serious about presenting to the world a picture of a Christian America, they would need to be painting with the colors of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, fidelity, gentleness and self-control, because these are the colors that, as the Apostle Paul said (in Galatians 5), witness to Jesus Christ and the power of God at work in their lives.

Looking to God’s final judgment of all nations, Wirzba is pessimistic about America’s fate, “especially when we admit as evidence the millions of Americans (many of them children and the elderly) who do not have enough good food to eat, or the millions of Americans who have to drink water polluted with lead and industrial/agricultural pollutants?”

And Wirzba ominously asks:

What about the refugees and immigrants who are being refused at our borders and made to feel unwelcome in our land, or the homeless (many of them ill) who do not have a home and proper protection from the elements, or the prison inmates (many of them African American) who are treated like the garbage of society?

If Americans were serious about being a Christian country, Wirzba suggests, they would elect leaders who are “patient and kind, and never boastful or rude,” in a “political process much less characterized by vitriol and noise.”

His broad assertions bury several questionable assumptions. Can a nation ever be Christian, and if so, what are examples, today in the world or anytime in history? How do they measure by his standards? And how will all nations, Christian or otherwise, be judged according to his expectation at the final judgment? Who will be found righteous?

Does Wirzba think America was ever Christian? Since slavery persisted until 1865 and legal racial segregation until the mid-1960s, presumably he thinks Christian America to have been an even greater sham during those years. What about since?

As to his sweeping denunciation of America as callous, cold and cruel, Wirzba is at the least uncharitable in his sweeping denunciations. America spends trillions of dollars, more than any other nation, on its social welfare state. Private charity spends hundreds of billions more aimed at helping the needy, more than any other nation. Private relief groups send tens of billions overseas to help the global poor.

America accepts more immigrants, about a million legally every year, than any other nation and, by some measures, than all other nations combined. America permanently resettles more refugees than any other nation. Seemingly these millions of immigrants are quite deluded or foolish, flocking to such a vicious and cold-hearted land.

As to America’s homeless, they likely have access to more help than in the vast majority of other nations. As to America’s prison inmates, for “garbage,” they likely have better living conditions and access to more impartial legal justice than the vast majority of other societies. It would be interesting to know in what countries Wirzba would prefer to find himself homeless or imprisoned. As to air and water pollution, it’s at unprecedented lows and getting better. Most of the world suffers far worse.

Maybe Wirzba thinks comparing America to other countries is irrelevant, because America’s professed Christianity demands a higher standard. But other countries profess to be Christian, some even in a legal sense. Putin’s Russia professes Christianity, and so do many African countries, among others. Are they purer, nobler places than America? Or are they hypocritical, too?

Or maybe it’s American Exceptionalism that most goads Wizba. If so, he like many others misunderstands its purpose. America’s greatest self-criticisms are premised on Exceptionalism, exacting of American standards not levied against any other people in history. Wirzba’s own essay reeks of Exceptionalist expectations.

He hopes for a greater infusion of Christianity in America even as Wirzba demands an end to “Christian America,” which is a bit contradictory. America’s self-understanding of itself as Christian has fueled nearly every social reform movement across the centuries. An America that abandons its religious heritage will follow much of secular Europe into cultural confusion and a sclerotic reluctance for self-improvement.

When Wirzba examines America he loathes the “violence and hate, and the greed and the lack of sympathy for those deemed dangerously other,” along with the “fear, anxiety [and] arrogance.” These lamentables are indeed present, as they are wherever there is sinful humanity. America has no monopoly on sin and vice. But if from his campus perch he sees only darkness and evil in our land, his perspective is neither fair nor Christian.

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