What Does It Mean To Be A Christian In America These Days?

Musings somewhere between prose and poetry.

What does it mean to be a Christian in America these days?
If you have a quick, easy answer, you probably don’t understand the question.
Of late the venerable moniker has been commandeered by (un)patriotic imposters and disreputable actors with decidedly unchristian aims.
Something about wolves in sheep’s clothing comes to mind here.
Of course this is nothing particularly new.
In its long journey from Antioch to America
(with its notorious digressions through empires and crusades, pogroms and inquisitions, conquests and colonization, civil religion and culture wars)
Christian as a label has been sullied by some unsavory stains and picked up more than a little incriminating baggage.
It’s true and I don’t deny it.

But despite the imperious sneers of burn-it-all-down cynics,
That doesn’t tell the whole story either.
From the first to the twenty-first of these Christian centuries,
By means of . . .

     Worship and sacrament
     Mission and martyrdom
     Evangelism and catechism
     Benevolence and compassion

Christians have carried the torch and kept alive the gospel story of Jesus Christ.
And that’s worth something—it’s the gold buried beneath the wood, hay, and stubble.
That the gold of the gospel can still be found today,
And that the world is not entirely as it was in AD 33,
Is a good thing—probably far better than we realize.
Surely even the most jaded cynic does not believe the world would be better off without . . .

     The Sermon on the Mount
     The Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son
     Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter
     Paul’s ode to love tucked away in First Corinthians
     James' idea that mercy triumphs over judgment
     John’s vision of a future when every tear is wiped away and death is no more.

These are treasures far too precious for me to timidly surrender the name of Christian to the miscreants who would use it as a cover for their power-grabs and the nefarious agendas of partisan politics.

(And let’s not forget that, when actually tried and not merely presented as abstract ideas in a polemic text, Nietzsche’s Übermensch alternative to the Christian ideal goose-stepped onto the world stage and left a hellscape littered with death camps and a continent smoldering in ruins. As it turns out unchaining the Earth from its Sun may not be such a good idea.)

So back to my original question:
What does it mean to be a Christian in America these days?
I suppose it means what it’s always meant.
It means to take up the cross and follow Christ.
In means to choose a life, that in some ways, is made more difficult for the sake of Christ.

     It’s easy to hate enemies—it’s hard to love them.
     It’s easy to fight back—it’s hard to turn the other cheek.
     It’s easy to choose self-interest—it’s hard to lay down our lives.
     It’s easy to overlook the least of these—it’s hard to see them as Jesus.
     It’s easy to reach for the sword—it’s hard to take up the cross.
     It’s easy to curse those who curse us—it’s hard to bless them and pray for them.
     It’s easy to follow the crowd—
     (and the crowd comes in every political and religious form)
     —it’s hard to follow the Crucified.

To be a Christian in America these days means that it must cost us something.
If it costs us nothing, it’s not following Christ, it’s following the crowd.
But most of all, what I think it means is this:
That in a world driven by fear, doom, and hate
We find a way in Christ to live a life marked by faith, hope, and love.

BZ