Cultural Christianity: A Surface-Level Transformation?

This morning Eric Metaxas posted this accompanied by a video of the President reading 2 Chronicles 7:14:
The Founding Fathers would approve of God’s Word being read out loud by the President of the United States. 2 Chronicles 7:14 “If my people, who are called by my name,will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

He is probably correct in his assessment that that founding fathers would celebrate this. They loved civil religion and even Thomas Jefferson supported a cultural Christianity among the masses. They would have loved the idea that the people believed the leadership of the country shared their values implicitly without thinking too hard about whether the leadership embraced the message they were reading. And this morning I have already seen several pastors on social media doing exactly this. They are celebrating the fact that America’s leadership took part in a cultural demonstration of reading Christianity’s Scriptures to the public. Underlying this celebration is the idea that 2 Chronicles 7:14 applies to America and if we simply read this verse we will be blessed by God.

I will lay aside the erroneous connection between America and ancient Israel except to say God initiates such covenants in the Bible and until you can show me a time God did so with America I will not trust this connection. Instead let’s focus on the phrase in the verse cited “turn from their wicked ways”. I know that most if not all of the pastors I saw celebrating on social media naturally think of sexual sin and abortion as America’s biggest sins. Let me ask has the President humbled himself and prayed about his sexual sins (and the allegations he paid for abortions), let alone America? So how is this a turning toward God and not simply the kind of culturally Christian stunt that would have made Jefferson smile? But Let’s go further.

Since these modern preachers want to associate America with ancient Israel let’s do that. What were the sins that the prophet’s listed in condemning Israel and cited as the reasons for captivity?

Isaiah 1:17
learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.

Isaiah 1:23
Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them.

Isaiah 10:1-2
Woe to those who make iniquitous decrees,
    who write oppressive statutes,
² to turn aside the needy from justice
    and to rob the poor of my people of their right,
to make widows their spoil
    and to plunder orphans!

Ezekiel 22:6-12
⁶ The princes of Israel in you, everyone according to his power, have been bent on shedding blood. ⁷ Father and mother are treated with contempt in you; the alien residing within you suffers extortion; the orphan and the widow are wronged in you. ⁸ You have despised my holy things and profaned my Sabbaths. ⁹ In you are those who slander to shed blood, those in you who eat upon the mountains, who commit lewdness in your midst. ¹⁰ In you they uncover their fathers’ nakedness; in you they violate women during their menstrual periods. ¹¹ One commits abomination with his neighbor’s wife; another lewdly defiles his daughter-in-law; another in you defiles his sister, his father’s daughter. ¹² In you, they take bribes to shed blood; you take both advance interest and accrued interest and make gain of your neighbors by extortion, and you have forgotten me, says the Lord God.

Zechariah 7:10
do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.

Malachi 3:5
Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow, and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.

This is to say nothing of the longer passages like the parable of the sheep in Ezekiel 34. The overall message from the prophets is that Israel was not caring for the vulnerable in society including the poor, widows, fatherless, and foreigners and so they would be judged. This is because the covenant God had established with Israel (see Exodus-Deuteronomy) made caring for these groups a top priority. So to all those celebrating the reading of the Bible as this country turning back to God, how are we doing on those fronts? Are we caring for the poor or allowing the rich and powerful to thrive? Are we caring for those with limited prospects like the widows and fatherless of Israel’s time? And what about the foreigner, how are we treating them? You who echo so loudly the President’s claim that we are rededicating this country to God how are we doing in modeling what Israel failed to do? What about those deeper commands that Jesus calls Christians to keep in mind like

Luke 6:27-31
²⁷ “But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; ²⁸ bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹ If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰ Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. ³¹ Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Matthew 5:43-48
⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. ⁴⁶ For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸ Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

I am certainly not against public Bible reading, I think God can work through that. But let’s keep this in perspective and make of it exactly what it is. The organizers of this event are intentionally trying to cultivate a cultural Christianity that makes the masses feel good and the leadership is humoring that. There is little desire among these individuals to see real repentance and true transformation. Instead, they want to craft a veneer of Christianity over their own political and cultural ideas. This is about placating people not about true change. Despite this my prayer is that maybe those reading these sacred words will hear them, but until they show signs of repentance I consider them like the king reading Jeremiah’s words and immediately cutting up the scroll and burning it (Jeremiah 36:20-26)