America Is Not God's Chosen People

David P. Gushee, Ph.D. - Graves Professor of Moral Leadership & Senior Fellow of the Carl F.H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership

It is one thing to argue, as I did in my last column, that Christian people are obligated to make a constructive contribution to the various forms of community in which we are embedded—including our nation. It is quite another to claim that the United States of America stands in a relationship to God that sets us apart from other nations as a kind of chosen people.

Yet just such a belief remains significant in American life, whether explicitly articulated or, more frequently, as a subtle feature of the way many Americans think about our nation and its role in the world. It seems to be an aspect of our president’s faith. It certainly surfaces in conversations with many Christians.

It is not difficult to trace the origins of such a notion. The Christian convictions of so many who settled these shores were formed by saturation in the biblical texts. The Bible tells the story of Israel, a nation selected from all the peoples of the earth and set apart as God’s chosen people, with the ultimate purpose of bringing redemption to the world. The New Testament does not end the telling of Israel’s story but instead proclaims that those who embrace Jesus as the Messiah are in fact the new chosen people who continue the history of Israel in a new dispensation.

It is a matter of historical record that many of the white European Christians who settled and eventually conquered these lands came to believe that this nation was the new holy land and that they themselves were the new chosen people. This was a tragic interpretive move, for it provided justification for all manner of mayhem against the natives who ended up playing the unfortunate role of Canaanites in this historical drama.

The irony is that when the average Christian person is trained to interpret reality in biblical terms most Christian leaders consider it a great success for God’s cause. After all, many so-called Christians actually do not interpret reality within the framework of a Christian worldview but instead really live and think on the basis of other convictions, usually driven by self-interest or ideology. This assimilation of Christians into a pagan culture is precisely what serious Christians try to prevent in our homes, churches, and schools. So when we see Christians actually get out their Bibles and use them to interpret reality, we usually think there is something to celebrate.

Yet the interpretation of reality from within a biblical framework is fraught with its own kinds of dangers. One of them is that Christians will draw inappropriate historical analogies between the biblical texts and their own context. One such inappropriate analogy is the concept, explicit or not, that the United States is God’s new Israel.

The analogy makes for bad theology. There is no warrant for believing that God’s special relationship with biblical Israel could ever be, or has ever been, transferred to another nation. Classic Christian theology affirms that after the coming of Christ “holy peopleness,” as it were, belongs to the faith-community gathered around Jesus. (The apostle Paul says that God also retains a covenant tie with the Jewish people, whom he has not rejected). That faith-community is multiethnic and multinational. Its very international and interethnic character symbolizes the unity amidst diversity under God’s sovereignty that was God’s intent for humanity all along. There are no chosen nations anymore, not even our own beloved land.

The analogy also makes for bad policy. It tends to infuse American statecraft with a missionary zeal. It can lead us to try to save the world through the exercise of our power for what we consider holy purposes. It can tempt us to think that we are the bearers of goodness and our enemies the embodiment of evil. It can lead us to believe that the normal rules that apply to other nations don’t apply to our own. Such a crusade mentality certainly stirs our passions, but at the same time it muddles our thinking, making it difficult for us to make prudent and nuanced judgments amidst the complexities of international affairs in a world armed to the teeth.

Certainly there is a moral dimension to international relations and to any nation’s foreign policy. But there is a difference between a morally informed foreign policy and what can better be characterized as a messianic-redemptive foreign policy. It is the latter course, I fear, that we are pursuing today. It is underwritten by a disastrous misreading of the theological meaning of America.