America’s 250th: Reflections on Faithful Christian Citizenship

This July marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. As we approach the SBC Annual Meeting in Orlando, we’re developing resources to help equip your congregations to live out their faith in the public square—engaging in cultural issues while remaining faithful gospel witnesses. 

On today’s episode, you’ll hear from Dr. RaShan Frost, ERLC director of research, as he speaks with Dr. Nathan Finn and Dan Darling. In light of this significant milestone in America’s history, they’ll discuss what healthy Christian patriotism looks like and how to cultivate a holistic, unified public witness in our current context. 

Episode Transcript: America’s 250th: Reflections on Faithful Christian Citizenship

Narration:

Welcome to The ERLC Podcast, where our goal is to help you think biblically about today’s cultural issues. I’m Lindsay Nicolet, and today we’re talking about One Nation Under God, a special focus of the ERLC as America approaches its 250th anniversary.

This July marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. As we approach the SBC Annual Meeting in Orlando, we’re developing resources to help you equip your congregation to live out their faith in the public square—engaging in cultural issues with a faithful gospel witness. 

On today’s episode, you’ll hear from Dr. RaShan Frost, ERLC director of research, as he speaks with Dr. Nathan Finn and Dan Darling. In light of this significant milestone in America’s history, they’ll discuss what healthy, Christian patriotism looks like and how to cultivate a steadfast, public witness in our current context. 

Dr. Nathan Finn serves as senior fellow at the ERLC and a professor of faith and culture and executive director of the Institute for Faith and Culture at North Greenville University. He is also a bivocational teaching pastor at Taylors First Baptist Church. 

Dan Darling serves as a research fellow for the ERLC. He also serves as director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Darling is a bestselling author of several books, including “A Defense of Christian Patriotism” and his upcoming book to be released this May, “Biblical Wisdom for Everyday Life.”

Now, let’s turn to Dr. RaShan Frost’s conversation with Dr. Nathan Finn and Dan Darling.   

RaShan Frost:

Well, hello and welcome to The ERLC Podcast, and with me here are two distinguished colleagues, fellows of our Research Institute, Dr. Nathan Finn and Daniel Darling. Bringing you guys here, we’re gonna go back a little bit. Last year, the project that you guys helped write that we put out, “Dual Citizens: A Christian Guide for Civic Engagement,” and you guys were key contributors. You guys wrote it,  basically. And thinking about that project in light of America 250, this year we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and so in light of that, how should our identity as Christians, our identity as citizens of God’s kingdom shape, the way we engage as citizens of the United States?

Dan Darling:

Well, I would say, I mean Dr. Finn probably has a lot to share on this. A lot of times American Christians feel or maybe are made to feel that it’s a binary choice. If you’re a citizen of the kingdom of God, as we know we are from reading Scripture, you can’t really feel good about your citizenship in our earthly kingdoms or republics or whatever, however they’re organized. And I really don’t think that’s the case. I think if our priority is the kingdom of God as it should be, that actually shapes and gives a sense of purpose to our earthly citizenship, as citizens of this kingdom. And I think of a couple places in Scripture where we can think about this. I think of in 1 Peter where Peter says, “Respect all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.”

There’s a kind of ordering of loves there as we learn from Augustine and C.S. Lewis, that if God is our highest priority, it shapes our lesser allegiances. We do this with other things like marriage and family, right? When I took a vow 23 years ago to marry my wife, the pastor didn’t say, you have to choose between your allegiance to God and your allegiance to your wife. No, he said, your allegiance to God will shape your allegiance to your wife. I think it’s this way for our country. I also think about Jeremiah 29 when Jeremiah is speaking to the exiles in Babylon. And you know, American Christians feel like exiles because you know, Peter says this, that we’re strangers and foreigners. Hebrews says this. So we can apply what he’s saying to them in some ways to us. And yet he doesn’t say to withdraw, to sort of resist that, but to seek the wealth or the flourishing of the city where God has put you.

And I don’t know how you do that if you are sort of ambivalent or loathsome about the place where God has put us. Now these things can get out of order, right? And we can white knuckle our citizenship as Americans. We can put it above everything else and make that an idol. But I also think if we have these in the right order, it should make us a good citizen. It brings a sense of purpose and also realism so that we can be citizens understanding America’s not going to be here forever. There’s only so many good things we can do. We’re limited in that sense. But I don’t think the two have to always compete.

Nathan Finn:

Yeah, I agree with Dan on that. Like him, I also appeal to those same passages of Scripture as well as that very Augustinian idea of rightly ordering our loves. I think the only thing that I would add to that is the incarnation also is a reminder that time and place matters. Jesus wasn’t just a generic man who didn’t have any nationality, any ethnicity, any citizenship, any connection with any people anywhere. He was a particular man. And scripture goes to great lengths to tell us in those genealogies exactly who he was and who his people were and who his land was. And if Jesus could be an embodied person who was really a part of a place, I think that there ought to be some recognition that we are embodied men and women who really are a part of a place and that place matters. The Lord Providentially could have put us anywhere else any other time, but for such a time as this, it’s 2026 and it’s the United States and we’re citizens of the United States. And so to appeal to that resource guide, Rashan that you mentioned a few minutes ago, I think the only question is what does it mean to be dual citizens who are first and foremost citizens of the Kingdom, but who also as an overflow of that citizenship also really are faithful citizens of the United States?

RaShan Frost:

That’s really good. It’s important for us to think about the categories that you guys provided. And Dan, you actually kind of stole some of the thunder I was going to ask for a little bit later, but it’s all good. We’re going to continue forward and really tee it up for you with a particular question. But it’s really helpful when you think about the right ordering of our loves in a particular time and place. And you can’t separate the two because the time and place that God has placed us in in his sovereignty is the place where we live out our rightly ordered loves and affections. And so it was really helpful that you guys provided those categories so that we can develop a framework of what it means to be a dual citizen. What does it mean to love the Lord with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves, to love our nation as the place that God has placed us in his sovereignty? 

And along those lines, continuing with the theme of America 250 and dual citizens, we’re also compiling a series of essays from our research fellows and staff. I happen to be the editor of that project, but Nathan and Dan are contributors to this project called “One Nation Under God: Reflecting on 250 Years of Faith and Democracy.” And I want to start off with you with this question, Nathan, as our senior fellow of religious liberty, and as a historian, why is it important for us to reflect on our past as we live and look forward?

Nathan Finn: 

Well, I think that it matters that we look back on the past as Christians in particular, because Christianity is a uniquely historical faith. We live in a pluralistic world where there are all kinds of different faith traditions. And many of those traditions are only nominally historical. If we discovered today that the Buddha never lived, and by the way, he may not have, there’s really not a lot about Buddhism that changes. Hinduism is even more so that case. But there’s something unique about the Abrahamic religions that says these things happen in a particular time and in a particular place. And for Christianity in particular, not just the fact that God created the world in a particular time and in a particular place, but that he had a people in a particular time and in a particular place, and in the fullness of time, the eternal Son became a man.

And at a particular point in time, he was resurrected from the dead. And so the past matters. The past is pregnant with meaning if you affirm a biblical worldview. And so for Christians in particular, it’s important that we understand the past, that we reckon with the past, and that we understand that the past is not just the past, it’s not just things that took place way back when, but the past continues to have meaning. It continues to have relevance, it continues to shape the way that we think about the present and that we imagine the future. And so when we come up on a milestone anniversary, like the 250th anniversary of the United States, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on ways that we’ve seen God at work in the history of our nation. It gives us the opportunity to reflect on ways that we as fallen men, have fallen short of God’s ideal in American history. It gives us the opportunity to rejoice at his good gifts that he’s given to us as Americans, like our first amendment to the United States Constitution that includes that first freedom of religious liberty for all. Being Christians helps us to rightly order the way that we approach the past and to think about its ongoing relevance for us today.

RaShan Frost:

Dan, along those lines in your particular contribution, and like I said, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here, but I think some of the stuff that Nathan has said really tees it up what you wrote about the concept of Christian patriotism, and along those lines about a reflective perspective within Christian patriotism. Can you just share what does that look like from a framework as a Christian who’s a citizen, who loves his or her nation well, rightly ordered, how does history, that reflection, draw out of that particular perspective? 

Dan Darling: 

I think it’s really important, as Nathan said about history, and, obviously, Nathan being a historian, you know, has a vested interest in that. I consider myself an amateur historian, meaning I love reading history, but I think it’s really important for a couple of reasons. I think of, and again, the United States is not the same thing as the children of Israel. I want to add that caveat to what I’m about to say. But I do think there’s a principle in the Old Testament where God was always calling the people of God to remember, to remember, and to look back and to know their history. We are people who did not just parachute into this time and place. We come from a people, from a place. I think it’s really important. I also think history, at least for myself, can be a guide and have a calming effect.

A  lot of times we live in an age where everything is either the best or the worst, right? The thing that happened yesterday is the greatest thing ever or the worst thing ever. And when you read history, particularly American history, if you’re following the headlines, you realize, okay, some things are new and unprecedented, but a lot of things we’ve been here before. You can see how we’ve gotten through some of these situations, particularly America. But even if you zoom out in world history, I also think it allows us to see God’s faithfulness throughout the ages to see how he has led and guided. I really think when it comes to American history, we make one of two mistakes. Either we want to look back and sort of whitewash some of the ugly parts of our history, you know, slavery, segregation, the interment of the Japanese, or maybe some of the ways we treated the Native American populations and just say, well, maybe it wasn’t as bad as we thought, or something like that.

And I don’t think that’s a very good way of looking at history, because you’re talking about sinners and sinners who sin and make mistakes. The Bible doesn’t do that with its heroes. The Bible presents them warts and all, right? The other mistake, and I think this in many circles, this may be the more prevalent mistake today, is to look back and see and only see the bad and only pull on that one thread as if to say the whole story of America, the entire story is one of oppression and subjugation in all of our national sins. I think that, too, is wrong. You know, really, like the story of any people is that sin and goodness are sort of marveled in together. We’ve made enormous progress in some of these things. We’ve yet to live up to our ideals. And I think patriotism is not whitewashing our sins, but it’s a celebration of our ideals, it’s a celebration of how far we’ve come, those kinds of things.

Nathan Finn: 

There is something aspirational about Christian patriotism. It’s not just that we want to be citizens, we want to be faithful citizens, and that aspirational part really matters.

Dan Darling:

Yeah, it’s somewhat gratitude as well, to say, “Thank you, God, for what you have given us here, for allowing us to be here.” Acts 17 talks about how God has sovereignly placed people in their borders and their places. Richard John Newhouse, 40 years ago, wrote that he felt patriotism was a subset or a species of discipleship. In other words, he didn’t think a full robust Christian discipleship could be full without some aspect of Christian citizenship.

RaShan Frost:

That’s really helpful. So Nathan, this question is for you. I don’t want to give spoilers during our time together because I want people to get the guide and the collection of essays when it comes out. It’ll be available for the SBC Annual Meeting. But in the essay that you wrote, and, like I said, I don’t want to get too much into the essay as a whole because I don’t want give too many spoilers. But you said something that was really profound. You said that Christians should engage in a holistic public witness that integrates bold evangelism and faithful social engagement. And you know, when we think about that term, I heard that term, “a holistic public witness,” and I love that term. But what does that concept look like? What are some things, as we live as Christian patriots, as we live as dual citizens, what does a holistic public witness look like?

Nathan Finn:

This is a great question. So I think there’s a general tendency, and as with every general tendency, there’s lots of exceptions, but I think that there’s a general tendency to have some Christians who get really excited about social action, whatever that looks like, whether that’s serving the poor, whether that’s public advocacy, whether that’s soup kitchens, whether that’s ballot initiatives, like they get excited by the doing. And there’s another type of Christian who gets really, really excited about personal evangelism and winning lost people to faith in Christ. And all I’m arguing is that it’s a both/and not an either/or, and that that is part of a holistic, unified, public cultural witness. It’s all about proclaiming the gospel and its implications and sometimes we’re being overtly evangelistic in how we do that. And then, secondarily, making application to social issues. Other times we’re being overtly advocacy minded or servant minded, while also looking for opportunities to share the gospel.

But it’s always a both/and, not an either or. And I think it’s motivated to go back to something we keep talking about by rightly ordered loves, loving God, first and foremost, loving our neighbors as an overflow of our love for God, and recognizing that our neighbors include everybody that we come into contact with. And the vast majority of the people that we come into contact with, for all the reasons that we’ve stated, are our neighbors, our fellow citizens, people who are a part of this land, not another land. And then there might be times that’s not the case. There might be cross-cultural missionary opportunities in other places, and praise God for that. But even when that happens, we live most of our lives here, in the here and now, in this nation. And so what I’m asking for Christians to do is to be sensitive to the needs of their neighbors.

That’s going to include the need to hear and respond to the gospel. That might also include the need to have some provision made for them because of a real physical need that they have. And there’s all kinds of ways that we might choose to do that that are very local or that might involve advocating for better laws and policies that serve people in general. Serving our neighbor might include speaking truth to them about what marriage is. Why is sports gambling so problematic? Why should we think long and hard about childbearing and contraception? And those sorts of questions. And so it gets into all of the big ethical questions as well. But at the end of the day, I’m a Baptist and I care about the Great Commission. And so even when I think about quote unquote cultural engagement or social ethics or public policy or all of these things, it’s still framed within that holistic witness, bearing witness to the kingship of Christ and all the implications of the kingship of Christ. And so what I’m passionate about is trying to help Christians to catch that big vision so that we don’t fall into the ditch of thinking it’s only about getting people saved, or it’s only about the big ethical questions or the people who are in need. It’s all of the above. It’s all part of what Jesus has commanded us to do. And it’s all part of our holistic, public, cultural witness to a world that needs to hear Jesus’ Lord. And that changes everything.

RaShan Frost:

So Dan, this, this one’s for you here as, like I said, we teed this up for a while. We talked about the concept of Christian patriotism, and you actually wrote a book on the defense of Christian patriotism, which is a phenomenal book by the way. And so looking back at that book in the categories of rightly ordered loves, can you unpack a little bit more about the practical aspects? And you’ve given us a 3,000-foot view, but along the lines, what Nathan was saying about this holistic public witness, what does that look like within the framework of Christian patriotism here in the United States?

Dan Darling: 

I think, you know, first at the 30,000-foot level, it means just as Nathan said, thinking about a holistic public witness, I think it means caring and loving the place God has given us, being grateful for it, that gratitude, understanding that God has called us to live in this place, in this time. He has not called us to live in 1950 or 2050, but right now, with all of its challenges and all of its opportunities, God has given us everything to live for life and godliness and embracing that. And then I think, as much as I call people to live out this public witness, as Nathan said, it really, I think also is predicated on specific calling. And not everybody’s called to the same level of public witness, right? So there are brothers and sisters in our congregations that feel a call to, for instance, run for office.

And I think it’s a noble calling, it’s a hard calling. We should encourage them, we should pray with them, we should form and shape them so they can be men and women of character in public office. God’s called other people to less of an overtly political career. But to just be just as engaged as a business owner or someone who runs a nonprofit or someone who’s building educational institutions or things like that. I think at a baseline, all of us should have this sort of baseline level of love for our country and engagement even at the sort of voting level and where we have voice, speaking to that. But when I talk about public engagement, what I don’t want people to think is that I mean, everyone needs to be mad on social media about the same thing at the same time, right? 

Or every four years, right? There’s a lot we can do in between those things and it really depends on calling. The other thing I think people miss is a lot of times when we think public engagement and patriotism, we think big national things and those are important, right? Foreign policy, family policy, all those things. But there’s a lot we can do locally in our communities, in our towns, in our church groups, and all that can really help advance the kingdom of God and help seek the flourishing of our cities. And I really like that Nathan talked about both evangelism and social action. I think those two have to go together. I would say the best Christian leaders who have done this have embodied both. I think of Chuck Colson who was in prisons persuading people to come to faith in Christ, who experienced the rebirth and regeneration he experienced, but was also speaking out about these issues.

I think of Francis Schaeffer, we know him as this real forceful apologist for the Christian faith and against sort of the false ideologies of the culture. And yet there’s story after story where he would be late for important meetings because he was sharing Christ with the hotel staff or something like that. Carl Henry, who wrote volumes that are really still read today on public engagement, public witness, was known to be an evangelist when he lived in Washington, D.C., who would pass out tracks on the train and things like that. So I think both of those going together really matters. I think evangelism and ethics going together where evangelism reminds us of the end of our ethics, that we’re not just speaking things to be right, but that we really care about human souls and people being right with God. And yet, ethics keeps our evangelism from becoming too overly pragmatic, lowest common denominator, do anything to make the sale. Both of those together make a really good public witness and really can be embodied by people across the sort of vocational spectrum, whether you’re a business owner, whether you’re a member of the school board, a teacher, or whatever.

RaShan Frost:

We’re about to land this plane, proverbially speaking. And so I want to leave you guys with this last question based on our conversation, based on the upcoming project that we’ll be releasing and the resources that we will be releasing, and the Dual Citizens guide that you guys put out. How can Christians be praying in our current moment in time? Obviously, everybody is quick to tweet, everybody is quick to share their opinions about the topic du jour of our political figures. But how can Christians be praying, and how does that inform what faithful civic engagement looks like today? Dan, you made the point, we can’t all do everything, but we can do something. And we know as believers, we are called to pray. And so as followers of Jesus, how should we be praying? What should we be thinking about as churches and as Christians in this current moment?

Nathan Finn:

So I can think of two things. I think there are a million things, but I can think of two things immediately. I agree with Dan that we have different vocations whenever it comes to this, but I think every Christian should be praying at least two things. I think we have a biblical obligation to pray for our rulers. And I think a broad application of that in American society would be our elected and appointed officials at both local, state, and national type levels. And so I think we have an obligation to pray for those individuals by name, ideally, as much as we can, and to pray that the ones who are followers of Christ would exercise just and wise leadership in a way that is consistent with their professed beliefs. And that in God’s common grace, those who are not yet followers of Christ, would also be wise and just rulers and that the Lord would lead them in that way. 

So I think we have an obligation to pray that way. I think something else that I would urge everyone here listening to do is pray that your pastor would have the right combination of wisdom, conviction, compassion, courage to know when to speak to these matters and when not to know what sort of application to make and when it’s best not to say anything, to know what to be bold and upfront about and what’s better maybe left to one-on-one conversations or smaller teaching moments. I talk to so many pastors who wrestle with this and they feel like they’re not saying enough, or maybe they’re saying too much and maybe they’re speaking to the wrong things, or maybe they need to be speaking to other things. And so I would just urge everyone who’s listening, pray for your pastor because chances are he’s really wrestling with how to get this right. He wants to shepherd the church well without being the wrong type of separatistic or the wrong type of activistic. And pray that the Holy Spirit would give him wisdom to form that church into a church that does think rightly about these issues. And then that’s filled with people who are seeking the welfare of the city for the glory of God and the good of others. At least those two ways I think every Christian should pray. 

Dan Darling: 

That’s exactly what I would urge people to pray for. If I could add a couple of them, I think of 1 Timothy 2, Paul urges us to pray for all those in authority, as I believe Nathan referred to. And I think we should make it a habit of really doing this, do we pray as often as we post and complain about our leaders? Probably not, right? And so I know some churches practice this. Every Sunday, they pray for a different government leader, whether it’s local all the way up to national. And he tells us specifically what to pray for, essentially telling Timothy to pray for religious freedom, pray that we’ll have freedom, the Church will have the freedom to do the work God has called us to do, and we should not take our freedoms for granted. We should pray that we continue to have freedom.

And the second thing I would urge folks to pray for, that everyone can pray for, is spiritual revival in the country, that, first, the church would be revived through the preaching of the Word, through evangelism, church planting, and church revitalization. Pray for this work that God would send a fresh wave of his Spirit in revival, and then that would spill out of the church to those who don’t know the Lord and they would turn from their sins and come to him in faith. Ultimately, the fate of our country, as important as politics is, and it’s very important, and as important as ethics and public policy are vitally important, the fate of our country really rests on the spiritual character of the country. And let’s pray for revival. God may not send revival, but we can pray for it and ask for it.

Narration:

Our participation in and witness to our communities and cultures is essential. God uses our words and deeds to bring about flourishing to those around us and draw them to himself. The ERLC is here to walk alongside you and your church as you consider what it looks like to live as dual citizens, being faithful to engage in the public square while remembering your ultimate citizenship is in God’s heavenly, eternal kingdom. 

As we consider America’s 250th anniversary, let’s reflect on God’s providence and pray for his continued provision and guidance in the years to come as we seek to point people to Jesus. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of the ERLC podcast. Join us next time as we speak with newly-elected ERLC President, Dr. Evan Lenow.