Aug 16
The American Heresy?
Halden has a fascinating post on Inhabitatio Dei in which he draws attention to the group American Vision. Their strapline is “Restoring America’s Biblical Foundation—From Genesis to Revelation.” While they represent a very particular strand of evangelicalism, I think Halden is right when he claims that:
Now, of course it would be easy to claim that these people represent a small fringe group of wackos out somewhere in east Texas. But, I would contend that what we have here is simply a large segment of the evangelical political ethos made explicit where it usually remains implicit.
However I would note that while not expressed in anything like the same way, there have been periods of British history, particularly in the Victorian age, when a similar blending of theology with a sense of national vocation has arisen.
I would suggest that this happens when people transfer the theo-political vision of Israel’s calling in the Old Testament directly to their own nation, bypassing any of the significant transformations of that vision in the New Testament, except to claim that all is now promised to them as Christians.
So no, to answer my own question in the title of this post, I don’t think it is an exclusively American Heresy, but it is certainly a characteristically American heresy in our own time. I do wonder, however, whether it might be in some respects a characteristically Protestant heresy also. If insufficient weight is given to the Church as a visible and international society of God’s people, but instead all language of the Church catholic refers only to an invisible entity, then that does, I think, make it easier to confuse the only other society one knows, a geopolitical one, with the fellowship of the Spirit.