Pastor Loran Livingston is not an obscure voice. He is the longtime pastor of Central Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he has served for more than four decades. That makes his recent remarks all the more significant. When a pastor of his experience and influence declares that America has never been, is not now, and never can be a Christian nation, his words carry weight. They also merit careful examination.
Pastor Livingston recently argued that America cannot rightly be called a Christian nation because of its many sins. He cited the killing and displacement of Native Americans, the evil of slavery, the carnage of the Civil War, the slaughter of the unborn, gender confusion, the mutilation of children, and the promotion of same-sex unions.
Much of what he condemned deserves condemnation. No Christian should defend the mistreatment of Native Americans, slavery, abortion, sexual confusion, or the redefinition of marriage. These are not minor matters. They are serious national sins.
But Pastor Livingston’s conclusion does not follow from his evidence.
Livingston acknowledged that godly people came to these shores seeking religious freedom, that great Bible preachers thundered from American pulpits, and that some who helped build this country were godly. “But,” he concluded, “it has never been a Christian nation — and never will be.”
That may sound bold. It may even sound prophetic. Nevertheless, it seeks to answer an argument many serious Christians are not making.
When thoughtful Christians speak of America as a Christian nation, they do not mean the United States is the Church. They do not mean every American is saved, every Founder was orthodox, every law was righteous, every war was just, or every public act was pleasing to God. Only individuals can be redeemed by the blood of Christ. America is not the Kingdom of God.
However, that is not the full question.
The real question is whether America’s founding principles, moral assumptions, legal traditions, understanding of liberty, and concept of human rights were significantly shaped by Christianity. On that point, the historical record is extensive.
The Declaration of Independence appeals to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” asserts that men are “endowed by their Creator” with certain unalienable rights, appeals to “the Supreme Judge of the world,” and closes with “a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”
Those words do not make the Declaration a church confession. But they do show that America’s founding was neither secularist nor atheistic nor religiously neutral. Rights were not treated as gifts from the government but as gifts from God. Government was not the source of moral authority. It was answerable to a higher authority.
This understanding is not a recent invention of conservative Christians. In 1892, the United States Supreme Court recognized this historical reality in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States. After reviewing numerous public acknowledgments of God and Christianity in American life, the Court concluded that these declarations contributed “to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”
That statement meant then what many Christians still mean today: America’s laws, customs, institutions, and moral assumptions were profoundly formed by Christianity.
Pastor Livingston points to America’s sins as though they erase her Christian inheritance. They do not. They only reveal how often the nation has betrayed it.
A nation may possess great religious light and still rebel against it. Israel worshiped idols, oppressed the poor, shed innocent blood, and rejected the prophets. Yet Scripture still recognized Israel’s religious identity while condemning Israel’s sins.
Nor should we speak only of America’s sins while ignoring the immeasurable good this nation has done because it has adhered to Christian principles. Under the influence of those principles, America has helped advance human dignity, moral accountability, ordered liberty, charitable service, education, hospitals, orphan care, prison reform, abolitionist efforts, civil rights appeals, and countless ministries to the poor, the addicted, the hungry, the sick, and the forgotten. America has often failed to live up to her own ideals, but when she has lived nearest to the Christian truths that gave those ideals moral substance, she has been a blessing not only to her own citizens but also to the world.
In their book 'What If the Bible Had Never Been Written?', the late Dr. D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe observed that claiming America is, or ever was, a “Christian nation” has become “fighting words.” They noted the irony that in a country so profoundly molded by Christians, believers now find themselves on the defensive. The secularist who attacks Christianity in America, they wrote, is like “a petty ingrate standing atop a large pyramid constructed by the sweat and blood of Christians, hurling stones at their descendants.”
That is a powerful image. But it is even more grievous when one of our own Christian brethren repeats an argument that, however unintentionally, does similar harm. Pastor Livingston surely does not intend to aid secularism. Still, his argument undermines the sacrifices of countless faithful Christians who labor to reconnect America with her religious moorings. Those moorings are part of why preachers like Livingston and all of us have the liberty to stand in a pulpit, open the Scriptures, and proclaim the Gospel without fear of government reprisal. Those moorings are also what secular forces in our day are working tirelessly to erase.
That is why Pastor Livingstone’s argument is troubling. It tells Christians, in effect, that there is nothing to return to — that America was never meaningfully shaped by Christianity, never possessed a Christian moral foundation, and can never legitimately be described as Christian in any historical or cultural sense.
That is simply not true.
No serious Christian claims America is a redeemed nation or that citizenship is the same as salvation. The debate is not whether America has always obeyed God. She has not. The debate is not whether America’s history contains grievous sins. It does.
The debate is whether America’s founding ideals were rooted in a moral order derived from the Christian understanding of God, man, law, liberty, and justice. They were.
The very sins Pastor Livingston names can only be rightly judged by a standard higher than the shifting opinions of men. Why is slavery wrong? Why is abortion evil? Why is the mutilation of children wicked? Why is marriage not whatever the culture says it is? Why should the poor, the veteran, the unborn, the stranger, and the weak be treated with dignity? Why should civil government protect the innocent, punish wrongdoing, and recognize moral limits at all?
The answer is clear: because there is a just God in heaven, because man is made in His image, because His law is righteous, and because no government has the authority to redefine what God has established.
Granted, America is not saved by patriotic sentiment. America needs the Gospel. Americans need to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, nations remain accountable to God and will be judged by Him. A nation can expect to prosper when it honors righteousness and be ruined when it celebrates evil.
The Scriptures say, “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).
That verse does not say righteousness exalts only the Church. It says righteousness exalts a nation. Any nation. And sin is a reproach to any people.
Therefore, Christians should not become discouraged and give up the effort to call America back to truth. In recent years, after many years of political advocacy by Christians, old ground has been retaken. There is still much work to be done.
It is a serious error to argue that America has no Christian heritage simply because she has often sinned against it. America’s sins prove that she desperately needs to return to the same Christian truths that provided her with her highest ideals — the very truths she has so often betrayed.
See Related Article by Rev. Mark Creech: Navigating Faith and Civic Responsibility: Pastor Loran Livingston’s Controversial Sermon
https://www.renewamerica.com/columns/creech/240506
If you found this article helpful or meaningful, please share it with others.
You can read this article, as well as many others by Rev. Mark Creech at RevMarkCreech.org
Pastor Loran Livingston is not an obscure voice. He is the longtime pastor of Central Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he has served for more than four decades. That makes his recent remarks all the more significant. When a pastor of his experience and influence declares that America has never been, is not now, and never can be a Christian nation, his words carry weight. They also merit careful examination.
Pastor Livingston recently argued that America cannot rightly be called a Christian nation because of its many sins. He cited the killing and displacement of Native Americans, the evil of slavery, the carnage of the Civil War, the slaughter of the unborn, gender confusion, the mutilation of children, and the promotion of same-sex unions.
Much of what he condemned deserves condemnation. No Christian should defend the mistreatment of Native Americans, slavery, abortion, sexual confusion, or the redefinition of marriage. These are not minor matters. They are serious national sins.
But Pastor Livingston’s conclusion does not follow from his evidence.
Livingston acknowledged that godly people came to these shores seeking religious freedom, that great Bible preachers thundered from American pulpits, and that some who helped build this country were godly. “But,” he concluded, “it has never been a Christian nation — and never will be.”
That may sound bold. It may even sound prophetic. Nevertheless, it seeks to answer an argument many serious Christians are not making.
When thoughtful Christians speak of America as a Christian nation, they do not mean the United States is the Church. They do not mean every American is saved, every Founder was orthodox, every law was righteous, every war was just, or every public act was pleasing to God. Only individuals can be redeemed by the blood of Christ. America is not the Kingdom of God.
However, that is not the full question.
The real question is whether America’s founding principles, moral assumptions, legal traditions, understanding of liberty, and concept of human rights were significantly shaped by Christianity. On that point, the historical record is extensive.
The Declaration of Independence appeals to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” asserts that men are “endowed by their Creator” with certain unalienable rights, appeals to “the Supreme Judge of the world,” and closes with “a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”
Those words do not make the Declaration a church confession. But they do show that America’s founding was neither secularist nor atheistic nor religiously neutral. Rights were not treated as gifts from the government but as gifts from God. Government was not the source of moral authority. It was answerable to a higher authority.
This understanding is not a recent invention of conservative Christians. In 1892, the United States Supreme Court recognized this historical reality in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States. After reviewing numerous public acknowledgments of God and Christianity in American life, the Court concluded that these declarations contributed “to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”
That statement meant then what many Christians still mean today: America’s laws, customs, institutions, and moral assumptions were profoundly formed by Christianity.
Pastor Livingston points to America’s sins as though they erase her Christian inheritance. They do not. They only reveal how often the nation has betrayed it.
A nation may possess great religious light and still rebel against it. Israel worshiped idols, oppressed the poor, shed innocent blood, and rejected the prophets. Yet Scripture still recognized Israel’s religious identity while condemning Israel’s sins.
Nor should we speak only of America’s sins while ignoring the immeasurable good this nation has done because it has adhered to Christian principles. Under the influence of those principles, America has helped advance human dignity, moral accountability, ordered liberty, charitable service, education, hospitals, orphan care, prison reform, abolitionist efforts, civil rights appeals, and countless ministries to the poor, the addicted, the hungry, the sick, and the forgotten. America has often failed to live up to her own ideals, but when she has lived nearest to the Christian truths that gave those ideals moral substance, she has been a blessing not only to her own citizens but also to the world.
In their book 'What If the Bible Had Never Been Written?', the late Dr. D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe observed that claiming America is, or ever was, a “Christian nation” has become “fighting words.” They noted the irony that in a country so profoundly molded by Christians, believers now find themselves on the defensive. The secularist who attacks Christianity in America, they wrote, is like “a petty ingrate standing atop a large pyramid constructed by the sweat and blood of Christians, hurling stones at their descendants.”
That is a powerful image. But it is even more grievous when one of our own Christian brethren repeats an argument that, however unintentionally, does similar harm. Pastor Livingston surely does not intend to aid secularism. Still, his argument undermines the sacrifices of countless faithful Christians who labor to reconnect America with her religious moorings. Those moorings are part of why preachers like Livingston and all of us have the liberty to stand in a pulpit, open the Scriptures, and proclaim the Gospel without fear of government reprisal. Those moorings are also what secular forces in our day are working tirelessly to erase.
That is why Pastor Livingstone’s argument is troubling. It tells Christians, in effect, that there is nothing to return to — that America was never meaningfully shaped by Christianity, never possessed a Christian moral foundation, and can never legitimately be described as Christian in any historical or cultural sense.
That is simply not true.
No serious Christian claims America is a redeemed nation or that citizenship is the same as salvation. The debate is not whether America has always obeyed God. She has not. The debate is not whether America’s history contains grievous sins. It does.
The debate is whether America’s founding ideals were rooted in a moral order derived from the Christian understanding of God, man, law, liberty, and justice. They were.
The very sins Pastor Livingston names can only be rightly judged by a standard higher than the shifting opinions of men. Why is slavery wrong? Why is abortion evil? Why is the mutilation of children wicked? Why is marriage not whatever the culture says it is? Why should the poor, the veteran, the unborn, the stranger, and the weak be treated with dignity? Why should civil government protect the innocent, punish wrongdoing, and recognize moral limits at all?
The answer is clear: because there is a just God in heaven, because man is made in His image, because His law is righteous, and because no government has the authority to redefine what God has established.
Granted, America is not saved by patriotic sentiment. America needs the Gospel. Americans need to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, nations remain accountable to God and will be judged by Him. A nation can expect to prosper when it honors righteousness and be ruined when it celebrates evil.
The Scriptures say, “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).
That verse does not say righteousness exalts only the Church. It says righteousness exalts a nation. Any nation. And sin is a reproach to any people.
Therefore, Christians should not become discouraged and give up the effort to call America back to truth. In recent years, after many years of political advocacy by Christians, old ground has been retaken. There is still much work to be done.
It is a serious error to argue that America has no Christian heritage simply because she has often sinned against it. America’s sins prove that she desperately needs to return to the same Christian truths that provided her with her highest ideals — the very truths she has so often betrayed.
See Related Article by Rev. Mark Creech: Navigating Faith and Civic Responsibility: Pastor Loran Livingston’s Controversial Sermon
https://www.renewamerica.com/columns/creech/240506
If you found this article helpful or meaningful, please share it with others.
You can read this article, as well as many others by Rev. Mark Creech at RevMarkCreech.org
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