The annual National Day of Prayer will be held on May 7th and while it is often viewed as a "high holiday" within evangelicalism in America, I think it is really something that Evangelicals need to avoid and distance themselves from.
Begun as a regular "holiday" by an Act of Congress in 1952, the National Day of Prayer really came into prominence during the administration of Ronald Reagan, who set the "first Thursday in May" as the official day of observance. While it has been challenged several times in the courts, the law establishing it and the official observance has always prevailed.
But what does this day actually celebrate or accomplish? What is seems to be forgotten is that days like this are part of what a several writers, including Robert Bellah, called the “Civil Religion” of the United States. While the Constitution prohibits the United States government from establishing an "official religion" (and subsequent court decisions have prohibited to one degree or another the "promotion" of one religion over any others) since the founding of the country, this "Civil Religion" has been what might be called the "Shadow Denomination" of America, to borrow a phrase from the parliamentary system of Great Britain.
The problem, which many well-meaning Christians don’t seem to understand, is that this “Civil Religion” was never really Biblical Christianity (as opposed to the theonomist perspective, the American Vision group of Gary DeMar, and the majority of the home schooling literature) and America was never a "Christian Nation." Certainly there were many Christians instrumental in the founding of America and the dominant worldview was largely a Puritan influenced, Christian view; but that is not the same thing as a "Christian Nation." From 1783 to about 1929 the Civil Religion was, at varying times, very close to a Biblical Christianity; but even then it was always a pluralistic form of Christianity wherein denominational differences (when those still meant something) and nuanced theological issues (mainly between Calvinistic and Arminian theological constructs) could be set aside with relative safety, embracing the larger purposes of evangelicalism that were held in common.
However, the Civil Religion is not “fixed;” that is, it has no absolutes that it can anchor to and changes with the overall changes of societal norms. It is true that the Civil Religion was, fairly well settled within the larger norms of evangelicalism and decidedly excluded Catholicism, Orthodoxy, the various American cults (e.g. Mormonism), and all non-Christian religions. However, between 1920 to 1950 the norms changed and so did the Civil Religion and the connection between it and Biblical Christianity began to erode.
While I am not one to "bash" Billy Graham, who accomplished much for the Kingdom in his lifetime; I believe it is still true that for better or worse, he was the national pastor of the Civil Religion (even as Billy Sunday and Dwight Moody perhaps had been before him); and as he expanded the participation in his crusades from the 1970’s onward to include Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the Civil Religion itself was altered and realigned. Now we have the inclusion of Judaism and normative Islam into the Civil Religion. By normative Islam I mean non-extremists who are brought into the fold of civil religion as a way to give them a platform to promote this “safe” Islam as over against the radical and dangerous Wahhabism.
The Civil Religion was never Biblical Christianity, but for a long time Biblically minded Christians could participate in the meetings and events of the Civil Religion in good conscience. However, for me, that is no longer possible. Were I preaching or speaking about the National Day of Prayer, I would probably preach something along this line, pointing out the difference between Biblical Christianity and the Civil Religion of America. The former has a fixed guideline, The Scripture and the "faith once for all delivered to the saints." The later is phenomena of culture and by definition derives its foundational principles from the will of the collective whole. It is the ad populum fallacy presented as a systematic theology.
Of course, some Christians and churches want to "use the day" and take advantage of its notoriety to promote the Biblical concepts of prayer. But what is the true and Biblical relation of the Christian to the government? Here are some basic principles that the New Testament presents:
For churches to identify with the National Day of Prayer, however they may try to nuance that participation, is largely an approach which only continues to confuse the difference between Biblical Christianity and the Civil Religion of America.
There is also a separation from ungodliness and false religion that must also be remembered. Christians in the early church would not even toss a bit of incense on the altar to the "Genius of the Emperor" and I seriously doubt that they would have engaged in the recitation of the flag salute, another common ritual of the Civil Religion today. For too long I think American Christians have lived with the illusion that the Civil Religion and Biblical Christianity were one and the same. They aren't, they never were, and the efforts of some well-meaning Christians to bring the Civil Religion back to a closer conformity with Biblical Christianity are simply a misdirected waste of time, effort and resources.
Why not participate in the National Day of Prayer? Because, it’s now largely an exercise that involves oneself in the rituals of a false religion.
Posted by Narnia3 at April 21, 2009 2:14 PM | TrackBack