Why is American not Christian
The first question many people ask when confronted with the idea that American is a religion separate from Christianity is what that means. Do I not believe in Jesus? Do I rewrite him to deceive people like the devil worshiping Muslims? The answer is no.
Jesus carried God’s wisdom to Humanity, and the Bible must not be rewritten.
American is simply the next religious step. Christians agree Moses brought God’s commandments to the earth. That does not make them Jews. They embrace Jesus, so they are Christian. Similarly, as an American, I agree Jesus brought God’s teachings on how to be a good person to the earth. That does not make me Christian. I accept God’s next lesson, how to build a Just Society in His image, which He gave us through the Founding Fathers, so I am American.
It is my observation that many self-identified Christians, and even Jews, are in fact American. They may lack the framing to express it and use the clarity it brings to sharpen their faith into action, but they have already taken all these principles to heart. That’s why you see phrases like “Judeo-Christian values” inelegantly used to describe our new American religion and a very clear split among “Christians” between those who are actually American and those who reject the Founding Fathers.
This split between Americans and Christians runs deeper than many people realize. If you read Saint Augustine’s seminal work, The City of God, which was published in 426 AD and is a cornerstone of Catholicism, you will not find the principles that guide us, but the woke cancer burning civilization to the ground. From a practical perspective, his single most important theme is that Christians should focus all their effort on getting into Heaven even if it means burning civilization to the ground. This mirrors today’s woke politics where ideological conformity is the priority, not results, leading to the endless continuation of clearly catastrophic policies like open borders. Thus, it should come as no surprise that most churches embrace the toxic Marxist “compassion” burning civilization to the ground with the suicidal passivity of Saint Augustine.
The explanation for this problem is glaringly obvious if you read the Bible. Jesus only ever talks about the individual scale. He gives no instructions on how to run a society and clearly disavows interference in government with the famous quote “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” Jesus knew humanity could not do better than a corrupt, authoritarian government at the time, so he taught lower class people how to be good within that unfortunate framework.
This limitation of Christianity was well understood by those in power. Early rulers sidestepped this problem with deathbed conversions, and later rulers found workarounds like indulgences. Corruption was necessary to let rulers govern effectively while pretending to be Christian. Theology had to be bent to alloy the pacifistic teachings of Christ with naked greed and the warrior culture inherited from earlier pagan civilizations, and the combination allowed Europe to conquer the world.
However, those pagan roots were burned away in the fires of the world wars, leaving only Jesus’s teachings to rebuild with. Forgiveness at an individual scale turned into criminals running rampant at a societal scale. Turning the other cheek to pre-industrial government became rule by the most corrupt. Loving your neighbor turned into opening the country to an invasion of degenerate, genocidal monsters.
We scaled up Christianity beyond Jesus’s teachings, and our misapplication of His lessons allowed evil to spread through inaction. This is the difference between Americans and Christians. As Americans, we accept not just what Jesus taught us, but what he chose not to teach us because He knew we weren’t ready for it 2,000 years ago.