Whether the United States is a Christian nation — founded on Christian principles — is sometimes debated from the left to the right.
The best argument is that while most of the Founding Fathers evoked God and while many of our basic laws reflect Judeo-Christian ethics, our government is secular. Our founders feared a government sanctioned church, and the Constitution calls for separation of church and state.
But that doesn’t mean the majority of our elected officials shy away from calling themselves Christians; and not just in Mississippi or other so-called “Bible Belt” states.
The Pew Research Center recently released a report on a survey of the 115th Congress. It found that while the share of U.S. adults who describe themselves as Christians has been declining for decades, Congress is about as Christian today as it was in the early 1960s. Among members of the new Congress, 91 percent describe themselves as Christians. This is just a slight decline from 1961, the earliest years for which comparable data are available, when 95 percent of members said they were Christian.
Polls have consistently shown that for American voters, non-belief is the single most disqualifying factor in a candidate for public office. In a 2016 poll, 51 percent of American adults said finding out a candidate was an atheist would make them less likely to vote for that candidate. Esquire Magazine notes “that makes atheism less desirable than a number of traditional negatives in American politics, like having an extramarital affair, being gay or lesbian, being Muslim, smoking marijuana, or having personal finance troubles.”
We haven’t seen any surveys on religion among Mississippi legislators, but you can check out their individual church affiliations on the internet. If Congress is 91 percent Christian, it stands to reason that the Mississippi Legislature is close to 100 percent.
While professing Christianity is beneficial to getting elected in this country, especially in the South, actually applying the principles of Christianity, as taught by Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, is a different matter. Not many of us, when struck on the right cheek, want to turn the other as Jesus instructed his followers to do.
When it comes to government most of us subscribe to the Old Testament teaching of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Some who advocate more Christianity don’t necessarily want to “give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you,” to quote another passage from that sermon.
Maybe that’s one of the reasons Donald Trump drew so much support in the recent presidential election. The president-elect grew up Presbyterian, but he isn’t much of a churchman now. His speeches are prideful and boastful, and other facets of his life are not what is taught in Sunday School.
But it could be argued we weren’t electing a pastor or a Sunday School teacher but, hopefully, a strong leader who professes Christianity but is not overly encumbered by the teachings of Christ. The last Sunday School teacher we had as president, Jimmy Carter, is still unpopular with many of the Christians who helped elect Trump.
