Doing Jesus a Favor?

On New Year’s Day this year, a convert to Islam drove a pick-up truck into a crown on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was killed in a subsequent confrontation with police. Before the attack, he had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

In 2023, a Christian damaged a statue of Baphomet erected by members of the Satanic Temple in the Iowa state capital, Des Moines.

The reaction to both incidents came from Christians suggesting that Muslims be disallowed from building mosques and Satanists be prevented from erecting statues near nativity scenes on display, all in the name of “protecting” Christianity and a “Christian nation.”

While some of those individuals were well-meaning, we have to ask a vital question: Does Christianity need protecting? Does that protection require the destruction of statues and denying zoning provisions for mosques?

Are we doing Jesus a favor?

In order to answer this question, I think there are three truths that we must consider.

First, the United States is not a theocracy. While our country has benefitted from a foundation of moral principles from a Judeo-Christian background, we are not exclusively a Christian nation. A church, denomination, or religious perspective does not lead the state.

Second, our laws promise neutrality. The first amendment to the Constitution says that our government cannot establish religion nor prohibit its free exercise. Many have taken this provision to mean that religion must be separate from government. In the name of the “separation of church and state,” religion has been driven from the public square. This, in and of itself, is a wrongheaded application of the first amendment. Put simply, the federal government cannot establish a state church or religion. Interestingly enough, several states supported Christian denominations when the first amendment was ratified. Within several decades after the ratification of the Bill of Rights and after the Second Great Awakening, states moved to give favored status and support to particular denominations. Neutrality between denominations and religions is the true Constitutional rule.

Third, the rule cannot be “freedom for me, but not for thee.” Those who would say that the United States is a Christian nation and needs a Christian government would seek freedom of worship for themselves and also would deny it to others who disagree with them. Christians should uphold the freedom to believe, the freedom to assemble, and the freedom not to believe.

Jesus Christ does not need to be protected from the world by Christians who would lop off the heads of statues or deny the ability of others to worship. If the gates of Hell cannot prevail against Him and His church (Matt. 16:18), then what can false religions or statues do? We are not doing Jesus Christ a favor by destroying statues or denying the freedom of others. The God-given freedom that we enjoy in the United States allows us to live out our Christian discipleship and make a defense of our Christian faith in the public square.