Is America a Christian Nation? American Reform tells us
The Journal for American Reform has published its first original essay, on what it means to call America a 'Christian nation.'
(WM Reports) – The Journal for American Reform has published its maiden Substack essay, titled: Contra Lazar: is America really a Christian nation?
(AR) offers a frank account of his nation’s history and philosophy:A group of modern Catholics who attempt to downplay—even ignore—the substantial incompatibility of the founding spirit, principles and aims of the American founders with Roman Catholicism. To stress, it is not merely an accidental incompatibility.
The men in this camp claim to be motivated by a love of the American patrimony, which there is no reason to doubt, but they unfortunately have a tendency to exaggerate the good aspects of America, while minimizing the (considerable) bad aspects.
Other times, they make tenuous claims about the founding, as they try and paint a rosier picture of the beginnings of our dear country than what transpired. Whitewashing revolutionism is never a good idea.
AR intriguingly lists a “so-called right to revolution” as one of “ten errors that would make it impossible to say America is [or was ever] a Christian nation.”
Indeed?
AR continues, painting a more balanced picture than some:
The set of errors seems to be generated—to some extent—as a reaction to traditionalist critiques, which sometimes error in the opposite direction. Critiques of America, from a Catholic perspective, that are, perhaps, too harsh.
Directionally, these are correct, but their presentation can be needlessly inflammatory, or make it seem like reforming America is a hopeless task.
The latter is not true, and we know from the words of Our Lord (Matt. 19:26) “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” Our duty, then, is a true and lasting reform of America, which must be at a foundational level, despite the obvious difficulty.
He goes on to give a thorough analysis of the role of religious liberty—a topic which is a recurring theme for us at The WM Review:
AR has previously focused more on translations and classic texts, as well as mini-essays on Twitter.
He adheres to the Cassiciacum thesis of Bishop Guérard des Lauriers, but we won’t hold that against him.
Go and check his work out.
HELP KEEP THE WM REVIEW ONLINE WITH WM+!
As we expand The WM Review we would like to keep providing free articles for everyone.
Our work takes a lot of time and effort to produce. If you have benefitted from it please do consider supporting us financially.
A subscription gets you access to our exclusive WM+ material, and helps ensure that we can keep writing and sharing free material for all.
(We make our WM+ material freely available to clergy, priests and seminarians upon request. Please subscribe and reply to the email if this applies to you.)
Subscribe to WM+ now to make sure you always receive our material. Thank you!
Read Next:
Follow on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram: