The genesis of this essay was in a Facebook brouhaha over the naming of a landmark building on the campus of Harding University. Thoughts impelled me in a somewhat different direction. Surprisingly, I needed a push from a close friend to publish this essay.
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In this highly racially charged time, a petition has been circulated to remove the name of a man indelibly associated with being on the wrong side of black-white racism in the 50s. The call was to rename the building in honor of a young, tragically killed black man. Now, I rather dislike the whole tradition of naming buildings after people, whether on a Christian college campus or elsewhere, but the crucial point for me is not the building. In the minds of many, past racism lives on in the building named after George S. Benson, Harding’s long-term president who made race-based decisions that some people didn’t like even in the 50s and 60s, much less two-thirds of a century later. His racially oriented policy mistakes aside—and those who call the mistakes “sins” are not wrong, at least with hindsight—I find Benson culpable for a separate reason, so my conceptual focus will not be on racism or on the Benson Auditorium.
Many Harding alumni and supporters have written glowing tributes about the good Benson did on the mission field and for Harding University. I do not dispute that Benson indeed did good things, and I want to be clear about that.
Based on what I have read of certain Harding events of the 1950s, it seems clear that judgment mistakes were made by the administration and board—e.g., pandering to donors and acting in a heavy-handed, even spiritually abusive manner over nonessential matters. Benson and his fellow administrators were basically good, but fallible, men. Yes, the civil rights era was an intense, challenging period. With regard to racism and policy, it would be hard to imagine the strain under which administrators operated! They probably deserve some “passes” as we reexamine their era, although no such passes are appropriate in ours. Here, I’m asserting that the evident racism—and I question whether it ought to be called that, at least not with the same underlying vitriol as the word is used today—was by no means Benson’s worst ill.
Being used for an institution, regardless of missteps, is one thing.
Being used for the spread and lasting influence of a false, pervasive ideology is another.
Benson hobnobbed with the nation’s high-and-mighty in both the business and political spheres. His penchant for fusing Christian and American ideals influenced many. And “making America safe for democracy” became, to a great extent, tantamount to being Christian witnesses and ambassadors. This ill-blended mindset is alive and well in churches today.
This, then, was George Benson’s most serious, far-reaching problem: not analogies about the mingling of bluebirds and blackbirds, but that he promulgated the false marriage of the Kingdom of God (and the ideals of Harding) with the political machine of the United States. His National Education Program became a center of conservative political activism. The American Studies lectures and “Freedom Forums” were also begun during his tenure, and those institutions have long contributed to a misguided focus. One of the programs continues to this day, as documented here:
Harding’s continuing emphasis on the principles of freedom has made an indelible mark on students through the years. Their influence continues to permeate and influence those around them. – https://www.harding.edu/american-studies-institute/about, accessed 6/13/20
As a historical pursuit, “American Studies” is not bad, and learning about the so-called “American way of life,” as though there is such a singular thing, is neutral. On a Christian college campus, however, these will tend to contribute to an amalgamation of God and country. Perhaps you, like me, have witnessed in many churches the annual, fallacious-yet-beguiling connections of the militaristic “freedom is not free” with the freedom of Galatians 5:1 (“For freedom Christ has set us free”). At least in one case, an image of Jesus’ cross was draped with an American flag on Memorial Day. Independence Day and Veterans Day also provide opportunities for the spread of ideologies. Mixtures of American “principles of freedom” with Christian ones have often been paraded before people in the pews, misleading a largely unsuspecting sector of the believing U.S. population into political postures and alignments.
In a biography of Benson (Stevens, John C. Before Any Were Willing: The Story of George S. Benson. Harding University, 1991), the major section Benson and the Government is placed first, out of chronological order, because of its obvious conceptual prominence in Benson’s life and rise to power. Indeed, the thrust of this entire biography displays a very different outlook from that of Benson’s Harding predecessors J.N. Armstrong and L.C. Sears—and also different from that of key administrators at David Lipscomb College, neé Nashville Bible School. Benson is actually seen as an important, early prophet for what later developed into the Religious Right.¹ (That fact alone should give any thoughtful Christian pause.) Even those who believe American freedoms are joined at the hip with Christian ones can surely see that the Religious Right has deepened ideological polarization—making moderate or mainstream democrats feel uncomfortable in churches, and ticking off liberals to the point that they see Christians as a silly, unintelligent monolith. None of this divergent meanness was/is necessary, if Christianity (and, not incidentally, other faiths, including Islam and Judaism) had not been merged with nationalistic ideals and aspirations. George Benson, flourishing in the Cold War era, became one who merged the U.S. and Christianity earlier than most; to the extent that he became a standard, his legacy must be found wanting.
Speaking of wars, the U.S. had engaged in at least two others during Benson’s presidency, so he would have had ample opportunity both to delineate the battles that are of Christ, on the one hand, and those that are of country, on the other. I was pleased to learn of Benson’s grace in personal interview with the late W.K. Moser, a conscientious objector in the times of WWII. Moser recalled,
“Dr. Benson tried to get me to go ahead and go into the service. He felt that it would be right to go, but he wasn’t ugly about it. When I just couldn’t do it, he did all he could to help me get exempted.” – quoted in Brian Casey, Subjects of the Kingdom: Christians, Conscience, Government, and the Reign of the King
With the flourish of a pen on a draft card, or, today, in the mind of an armed forces veteran, “Christianity” can become American, and Americanism has become “Christian.” To fight for the country, the “American way,” the causes of a supposedly Christian nation, now has an unquestionably noble face. I am convinced otherwise: such displays of military might are antithetical and anathema to the cause of the Christ. As one becomes more Americanistic in his pursuits, more a servant of the nation-state, there is a corresponding decrease in his commitment to God as King. The person becomes, then, a servant of the empire.
Such a zero-sum game may repel the reader—and understandably so: we have decades, even centuries of American enterprise philosophy infecting our theologies and our collective sense of Christian being. If there weren’t such a thick cataract² clouding so many Christians’ vision—in the entire, evangelical world—perhaps we could see that “Christian nationalism” is a contradiction in terms. “God and country” is a misleading amalgamation. All too often, I see much-loved, sincere sisters and brothers using the plural pronouns “we,” “us,” and “our” to describe both American citizens and Christians. “We need to vote our conscience,” we’re told, as though there is a collective conscience. “We need to stand up for what’s right be good citizens.” “If we don’t vote for God-fearing people, who will? I ask, who is this “we”? Things get very confused as Christian and national identities are blended indiscriminately and ignorantly. This mixture is what is so toxic to the Christian life, to the prospects of spreading a genuine gospel message. It also ticks off the adversaries of Christianity. No good thing ultimately comes of mixing nationalism with the Kingdom of God.
Quite a few authors/thinkers have provided fodder in recent years along the lines of the fallacy of the American-Christian connection. Chief among them, for me, are Richard Hughes, Scot McKnight, and Lee Camp. Here is the cover of Lee Camp’s latest book:
Camp has amassed not a few quotations from prominent politicians (e.g., Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, Madeleine Albright, and Donald Trump). Each quotation seems, almost progressively, to sink more deeply into idolatrous worship of the U.S., putting it in the place of God and God’s working through human history to bring about an ultimately just, good end. Camp has written,
“When ‘America’ forces himself on ‘Hope,’ a bastardized form of Christian hope is born.” (Camp, Scandalous Witness, 33)
“[T]he harm is in the social propagation of falsehoods. It simply is not true that America is the hope of the world.” (66)
These are provocative statements, to say the least. They may turn the reader away. On the contrary, they draw me in. I’m more than convinced that anyone who seeks to put forward the American experiment/dream/manifest destiny/capitalism/democracy as though it were of Christ is off-base. (This is not to say that one must deny the good in this, or any, country.)
Now, one might justifiably question whether such an evolved ethical/philosophical mind as Camp’s would imagine such a jarring image in the first quotation above. Quite so, I would reply. Those words are his. In my estimation, the reader is supposed to gasp in horror. The “child” is the illegitimate product of an illegitimate, violent act. And I (not Camp) might go so far as to say that that child should be aborted, not adopted out or kept/nurtured.
If, as Camp has it, human history is purposefully progressing toward God’s end, for what purpose do we live? I’ll shy away from any extended reference to the Westminster Confession, but its primal notion of living for the King (God) is worthy. Regardless of the believer’s particular eschatology, we’re not likely to disagree much with the overarching notion that living for God is life. Eternal life. In contrast, the idea of living for country is quite temporal. It can be noble—if one does not have a higher purpose, that is. Multiple concerns arise along with the mixing of political/nationalist and Christian systems and goals. As Camp has said, “no nation-state can be a Christian nation-state.” The two “cannot be conjoined.” “We must accept that the quest for a Christian America betrays an elementary and fundamental misunderstanding of what Christianity is. Those who piously assert the importance of a Christian America are precisely those, in other words, who are contributing to the very perversion of Christianity.” (73, 75)
We ought to see the things of America things as American, and the things of the Lord as His. This bifurcation is no uncalled-for compartmentalization. Rather, the Christian American must do not as George Benson did in this arena. We must not seek to use national pedestals and platforms to “advance the cause of Christ”; neither may we rightly use God to achieve political goals.
Wisdom says that an entire matter should be seen and dealt with—not just part of it. The whole of a single biblical book. The whole of a person’s life. The whole story of George Benson should be analyzed, not just part of it. To the extent that George S. Benson blended loyalties to King and country, he devalued each. This realization does not mean anything about the naming of a building, necessarily, but it bears a longer, deeper look than the racism issues have recently received.
All of us in the present time have choices to make, just as Benson and his fellow administrators did.
For the believer, there is but one allegiance. It is to the King of All, not to the country.³
– B. Casey, 6/13/20 – 7/7/20
¹ Maxwell, Robbie, “’A Shooting Star of Conservatism’: George S. Benson, the National Education Program and the “Radical Right.” Journal of American Studies, 53(2), 372-400, 2019. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-american-studies/article/shooting-star-of-conservatism-george-s-benson-the-national-education-program-and-the-radical-right/ED5F8D1FA88B2111E065EDCF388E5901, accessed 6/14/20.
² Here, I credit Lee Camp’s Mere Discipleship. Camp wrote at some length about the “Constantinian cataract”—referring, of course, to the significant paradigm shift that came with Constantine’s and Theodosius’s influence in the 4th century CE.
³ The title of the post derives from the name of a popular Christian music act, “For King and Country.” I knew only the name, not the music or background. The name of their group is immediately suspect, though. I find the mixing of the King of All (God) and the country (no matter which country) to be a travesty, so my title here seeks to detach the two from one another: “For King, Not country.” I do not seek to criticize any country, nor am I anti-America. I am not by anyone’s definition patriotic, and I am comfortable with that. Still, here, I only seek to detach King and Country. One may not serve them both simultaneously. For the sake of contributing to “affirmative action,” I feel conscientiously bound to propose stronger phrasing than “King beyond country” or “King over country.” It is “King, Not Country.”
A sincere reader might ask (and one did!), “How is one supposed to feel about one’s country then? Is patriotism anti-Christian? Can I participate in its government, its social life, its goals and agendas without being charged with blended loyalties?” Some of my answers would be unpalatable to most, but I will offer a strong response to the last two notions here: the degree to which a Christian participates in the goals and agendas of a geopolitical entity is the degree to which his allegiance is compromised.
Dr. Brian Casey 