BWA: UNAMERICAN?

The same friend says:

HOWEVER, the reasons given by the SBC for splitting from the BWA include the idea that the BWA was increasingly "Unamerican." I was under the impression that the Church transcended the state.

Now you're hitting on something that stuck me as odd also. When I first became a Christian, I and most of my friends tended to think of ourselves as members of the universal Body of Christ first and Americans second; America on an accelerating path of wholesale rejection of Christianity, and needs missionaries just as badly as any other nation, etc. This is certainly what comes through in the New Testament. Paul was a citizen of Rome but was frequently at odds with the government of Rome, and was ultimately executed by Rome. And I think ideally Christianity is healthier when not mixed with hypernationalism.

Now that I've been at this religion thing a while, though, I admit I'm more America-centric than I used to be. Around 1993 I remember going to a Christian men's retreat and overheard some guys speaking more passionately of Rush Limbaugh than about the Lord. The SBC and the GOP are simply not the freakin' same thing.

For most SBC folks, we think of ourselves as preservers of America's Christian heritage. Not attempting to revert all of society back to the Eisenhower era, but desperately trying to cling to the few overt touchstones of Christianity in the public square. Not a bad thing in my view, but then we tend to take criticism of America way too personally from outsiders while reserving the right to demonize liberals. We do need to see ourselves in the same family as believers in other nations before we see ourselves as voters in Red States.

The BWA didn't leave the SBC behind when they embraced segregation, I don't think the SBC should leave the BWA when they don't embrace America.

But maybe they should have. I wonder how the SBC would have received loving correction on that subject around 1959.