Strangers, Exiles, And Civil Religion

 By Dr. R. Scott Clark - Posted at The Heidelblog:

November 28, 2024

Since most of us have grown up with the Thanksgiving Holiday, it is easy for us to assume that this is the way things are and should be, but it has not always been so nor is it necessarily so. The American Thanksgiving holiday is the result of a series of presidential proclamations. It became a federal holiday in the mid-twentieth century. The apostolic churches in the first century, however, experienced no such national or official affirmation of their faith. The apostle Peter called the Christians of Asia Minor “strangers and exiles” (1 Pet 2:11). Indeed, they were. They had much for which to be thankful. Peter reminded them that they had been redeemed (1 Pet 1:18–19) by the blood of God the Son incarnate.

The modern American national civil religion, which many seek to defend and which many assume as a given, is largely the result of Cold War reactions to Soviet communism and rising and justifiable fears of aggressive secularism at home and abroad. It would be a grave error, however, to mistake that bland mid-twentieth-century civil piety for Christianity.

The apostolic church did not face this temptation. The civil religion of their day was not a weak, watered-down version of Christianity. It was obviously pagan. Whether it was acknowledging the deity of Caesar, or putting a pinch of incense on a fire, or giving pro forma honor to the Roman gods (essentially the same as the Greek pantheon), there was no confusing it with the Trinitarian faith of the Christians who worshipped, in the power of the Spirit, a crucified Messiah, whom they confessed to be God the Son incarnate raised on the third day and ascended to the right hand of the Father.

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